Yemen’s Disappearing Date Palms: Applied Environmental OSINT
Publisher: bellingcat
Author(s): Wim Zwijnenburg
Date: 2020
Topics: Assessment, Data and Technologies, Humanitarian Assistance, Land
Countries: Yemen
The lush, idyllic region in Hudaydah, on the west coast of Yemen, featuring wadis and fertile valleys, was a place known for its date palm orchards long before a war broke out in 2015. That was the year that Ansar al Allah, better known as the Houthis, an armed group coming from rural areas of Yemen. Years of bloody fighting and a relentless bombing campaign by the Saudi-led coalition ensued to restore the Yemeni government, then led by President Hadi, resulted in the largest humanitarian crisis today. Thousands of civilians are being killed and many more wounded, while millions are displaced by the ongoing war. But it also has wider ramifications, as it includes displaced farmers, damaged water infrastructure, loss of food security, and conflict-affected agriculture. Next to these direct causes, increased droughts and locust swarms also took a toll on Yemen’s agriculture, worsening the food security of millions of people who are now starving or else on the brink of starvation.How severe is the conflict-damage to Yemen’s agricultural industry and how can we know more about what this means for Yemen’s nature, biodiversity, and the people depending on these things?
Going by the latest contribution of the Saudi- and Emirati-backed Yemeni government to the Convention on Biodiversity — in particular its 6th report, submitted in 2019 — the state of Yemen’s environment is grim. Increasing pollution from industrial practices and the dumping of waste water and pesticides is affecting soils, surface and groundwater, with rapidly declining areas for agriculture and climate crisis impacting the land and people who depend on it. Other reports indicate that the limited forestry in the country is declining as desperate Yemenis need firewood due to high fuel price, with an estimated over 800.000 trees cut on a yearly basis. That’s just one of dozens of themes relating to wider environmental issues the report tackles. This is the time to explore links between conflict, environmental infrastructure, natural resources, and livelihoods.
Through online data sources, existing remote sensing analysis, and free satellite imagery we can get a peek at the lesser known consequences of Yemen’s war by visualising this with open-source earth observation data. This article has two parts: The first part is a brief introduction into environmental open-source research, with a focus on data on agriculture changes, damage to water infrastructure, and the consequences for food security in conflict-affected Yemen. The second part will focus on a specific sector, namely date farm plantations in the agricultural rich region of Hudaydah on Yemen’s west coast to see what we can find out about the impacts of the conflict on date production.
This is by no means a comprehensive overview, as there are many complexities related to the agricultural situation pre conflict: these included programs that forced a focus on cash crops to climate crisis factors, as well as mismanagement and wider reverberating effects from past conflicts and policies. Complexities, however, shouldn’t scare interested individuals off from broadening knowledge on this topic.
This article address three key issues:
- Armed conflict can result in direct and indirect damage to water systems and agricultural infrastructure through targeting, displacement, and/or failing environmental regulations. This can severely impact production and thus food security for civilians in and after armed conflicts.
- There is a wealth of open-source information on various aspects of food security, water use, droughts, and wider issues related to environmental conditions that can help researchers and civil society to monitor ongoing risks to food security. UN agencies, international organisations, academic research, civil society reports and open-source investigations provide all bits and pieces of information that can paint a clearer picture of specific environmental security risks.
- Earth observation with various sets of satellites from commercial and public providers was applied to look specifically at the collapse of Yemen’s date plantations in Hudaydah (see image below) governorate. Date palms have been an export commodity and a nutritious fruit, while also providing employment opportunities in the agricultural industry. Open-source reporting indicates that an estimated two out of four million local date palms trees were directly or indirectly affected by the war. Our analysis of three key date palm areas in Hudaydah confirms substantial loss of tree cover and healthy vegetation at these date plantations.