Yemen between the Impact of the Climate Change and the Ongoing Saudi-Yemen War: A Real Tragedy
Publisher: Center for Governance and Peace-building-Yemen and Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen
Author(s): Hadil Mohamed, Moose Elayah, and Lau Schuplen
Date: 2017
Topics: Climate Change, Humanitarian Assistance, Renewable Resources
Countries: Yemen
Climate change is one of the global inevitable challenges that face societies in our time. The process of global warming shows no signs of decreasing and is expected to bring about long-term changes in weather conditions. Climate change poses a fundamental threat to the places, species and people's livelihoods. It affects countries' economies and food security through a variety of channels. Rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns affect agricultural yields of both rain-fed and irrigated crops. A higher frequency of droughts may impair hydropower production and an increase in floods can significantly raise. Such sector-level impacts will have knock-on effects on other sectors and thus influence economic growth, food security, and household incomes.
For Yemen, War has had a devastating effect on Yemen’s people and its infrastructure, many civilians have been killed in the fighting and parts of the country stand on the brink of famine. 12,000 of 14,400 schools in Yemen have been shut down and teachers’ salaries have not been paid. Around 2600 schools were partly or destroyed by the Saudi-led coalition. Health, water and sanitation systems have been bombed to the point of collapse leaving over 15 million people without adequate access to clean drinking water and safe sanitation. Millions more are hungry and need help in getting a decent meal. Waste is piling up on the streets and in the settlements of displaced people because sanitation services, severely damaged by the two-years’ war. International aid agencies tackling the cholera crisis are in danger of being overwhelmed by the scale of the outbreak. Up to the time of writing this report, there are around 956,000 discovered cholera cases, mostly among children. More than 50,000 children are expected to die of starvation and disease by end of year 2017.
This paper assesses the impact of climate change and Saudi-Yemen ongoing war on Yemen’s economy, agriculture, households and health and the proposed solutions for adaptation to climate change.