Mideast: Yemen is a Nation on qat
Mohammed HUWAIS/AFP
While walking around Sanaa’, Yemen, you may be struck by the array of people walking past you. Farmers came into the city that morning to sell their goods to vendors who are now calling out prices at you. After lunch, the streets get much quieter, you may notice. Peeking into a café, you see young men gathered together, playing chess, drinking tea, and chewing قات [Qat/Khat/Gat]. Around 3 pm, the city grinds to a halt so its residents may practice their ritual habit of chatting over Qat leaves. Even during their civil war, fighting would phase out in the afternoon so soldiers could chew.
Yemen is a semi-arid country on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. It is divided by civil war, swept by drought, and swelling with a population it can barely support. The UN has determined that in Yemen today, 18.2 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, and 15.3 million people lack access to clean drinking water. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates over 21 million are in need of humanitarian aid, and 4.5 million are displaced. Yemen also has been suffering a brutal civil war for the last decade, which is currently at a standstill.
Yemen is one of the driest countries on planet Earth. It receives significantly less rainfall than surrounding countries and has no natural rivers or large bodies of water. Moreover, since 1990, the population has increased by almost 300%, rising from 12 million to 33 million in thirty-four years.
Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world concerning water access. The maximum renewable water use per capita annually is 83 cubic meters in Yemen. Anything below 500 cubic meters is designated as “absolute water scarcity” by the UN. The average American annual withdrawal is over 1200 cubic meters, for context.
The lack of water has made farming very difficult in Yemen. While two-thirds of the rural population depends on agriculture economically, the lack of natural water sources makes farming very expensive. Farmers need to ship water in or drill for deep underground wells. This raises the cost of domestically produced food, and in a country where over 80 percent of the population lives in poverty, rising food costs are not sustainable.
Farmers turn to cash crops when they cannot sell food. The most profitable crop in Yemen is Qat, a tree with leaves that contain a mild stimulant. Its use is extremely common in Yemen; the vast majority of men and a significant portion of women are daily chewers. Some activists in Yemen blame financial hardship and fear of violence for increased Qat chewing. A stressed-out country leans harder on its shared vice when the outlook is dismal. Unfortunately, the national habit is extremely water-intensive, and farmers skirt international water-use regulations to drill up water for Qat irrigation.
Farmers can harvest Qat multiple times per year, unlike many food crops. Typically, the small chewable leaves are harvested 3 to 4 times per year. Additionally, the vast majority of Yemenis are daily chewers, men and women, though men more than women. Therefore, farmers turn to Qat. Yemen’s drought and civil conflict have inflicted famine upon Yemeni people, and yet, 40 percent of Yemen’s renewable water is used to produce Qat.
40 percent of the renewable water is being used to grow a product with no export value. Qat is simply a drain on Yemen’s resources and Yemeni people.
International initiatives, such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, have launched efforts to improve access to water and enforce better water use practices. The violence in Yemen limits the impact of their programming. Many resources brought to Yemen end up being misused without proper oversight, and practices go unregulated without strong central governance.
For example, solar drills donated by aid agencies can be an accessible and relatively low-impact method for small agriculturalists to dig wells. Unfortunately, there is little effective regulation of proper use. Qat farmers have overused them, digging wells far too close to one another and abusing the groundwater sources.
To mitigate Qat's economic and environmental impact on the country, the government needs to step up its regulation structures. This is difficult when the government only controls part of the country. Yemen is a fractured state, and the lack of oversight and regulation between the several actors who govern the country results in dangerous mismanagement of the economy and natural resources.
