THE PLACE OF ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES AND TECHNIQUES IN YEMEN TODAY:

PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

Sanaa, Yemen

June 18-20, 2000

Traditions as a burden for agricultural development

The impact of ancient and traditional water-rights on the agricultural crisis in Yemen

 

Stefan Kohler

University of Zurich

 

Abstract

 

The recent problems in Yemeni agriculture can be explained if viewed in the context of the conflict between the rapid economic and social developments of the last 30 years on one hand, and the retention of traditional rights and institutions governing these developments, on the other. The author advances the thesis that agricultural developments have become far from sustainable due to a divergence between the technology in irrigated agriculture and the regulations governing resource use. Future development will never be sustainable if these regulations are not modernised as well.

 

1. After only eight years the right answers to the right questions

 

One of the aims of that seminar is to try to improve the situation of the Yemeni agriculture by bringing back the traditional knowledge in farming into discussion. By explaining you, why I think that traditions going back to the „Arabia Felix" period are also a burden for agricultural development I am some kind of spoil-sports but I hope that this contribution at least helps to have a vivid seminar with a fruitful outcome.

When I was in Yemen in 1992 there were significant negotiations about solving the water problem. A UNDP project just organised a seminar on a new water law. I thought I was just in time to analyse this legal process, as I was working on my graduate degree on sustainable resource use. The new water-law was supposed to be introduced in a few months because everybody saw that there was an urgent need for the right answers to the question of how to prevent the water crisis. After three years, in January 1995, I returned to Yemen. This time I wanted to see how water users dealt with the new water-laws. But still the water-laws were just weeks away from being signed. I received from the High Water Council, which was then in charge of solving the problem, three propositions toreview. But I could see that different ministries, there was the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Electricity and Water, as the three most important-ones, did not work together well, and the propositions seemed unlikely to be introduced soon. Anyway I stayed some time in Harib and discussed the new water-laws with farmers. During my last stay in Spring 1997 there was a new agency assigned to solve the water problem (the NWRA) and it developed a new proposition. This time I found that finally the right questions and the right questions were given to solve the water problem in Yemen. But as it seems now the soulution has not been laid on a political stable ground.

 

2. Similar problems all over the world

 

Imagine you are travelling and stay the night in a good hotel. In the morning you go to the dining-room to have breakfast. You notice that the buffet already is fairly bare; croissants and butter have already run out. You know that there are many guests who haven't eaten yet, so you go to the waitor and ask him to fill up the buffet. He declares that the food delivery has failed this morning, and moreover, that no food is expected the next couple of days.

 

What will happen now? You might be polite and take only one piece of bread, so that at least for this day there will be food enough for everyone. But already after five minutes you notice a peculiar egoistic guest who fills up his plate and puts a yoghurt in his pocket, probably stocking up for tomorrow. At least now you will get up and take a second bread, because you know that your politeness will only serve to those who are impudent enough to help and serve themselves. Only after 15 minutes there would have been nothing left.

 

What does this example have to do with the agriculural problems in Yemen? It illustrates how a commonly used resource without clear property rights runs short, in this case the breakfast buffet, which is considered as a resource. There is the very famous example from Garret Hardin. He used the example of the pasture being overused by many herdsmen because each wants to maximise his individual use. On the global level there is the worldwide-fishing industry which overuses a commonly owned resource.

 

To find a way out of the dilemma, there is a need for rules to bring an order into the common use. The hotel has to rationalize the available food among the guests, the number of animals has to be limited on the pasture, every fishing nation has to obey strict quotas. Where problems like this appear, there is something out of balance. Where you have a sustainable resource use, the rules have developed simultaneously with the technology and the economy of the resource use. This is what I am going to show in relation to irrigated agriculture in Yemen.

 

3. The Water-Overuse in Yemen

 

The extent of water-overuse in Yemen is immense. Without discussing seasonal and regional details, international studies estimate the water use as 135% of sustainable use. That means that the farmers, industry and domestic users take 3400 Mio cubic meters of water each year. This is 900 Mio cubic meters over the sustainable quantity of 2500 cubic meters. These rather theoretical numbers have a very practical consequence: the groundwater table sinks every year up to 9 meters. Overuse of water is almost exclusively caused by agricultural use, as over 90 % of the water is used in the primary sector.

 

What are the reasons for excessive agricultural consumption of water? For sure you can say that there are reasons, related to the dry climate, being responsible for that, because water indeed is the minimum-factor. But I don't have to mention that the water-table has been stable for centuries until the late sixties. Since that time there have been ambitious projects in the irrigated sector in spite of the unprofitable climate. The modern development of Yemeni agriculture can be seen in the fast growth of irrigated surfaces all over the country. It is clear, that modernization would never have been possible, if water still was lifted by camels and oxen. Development grew out of control and it is obvious that economic and institutional reasons are primarily responsible for the deterioration of the situation.

 

The most important economic change in the last two decades has been the improved availability of capital. With employment opportunities in the Saudi oil export business, farmers had an income as foreign workers and sent their salaries home to their villages. A part of that money was used for the modernisation of the irrigated agriculture. And we should not forget, that most of the development in the Yemeni agriculture was initialised by the private sector and not by the public sector.

 

Besides investments in water-pumps, the easy availability of money has also led to other changes. People started to have other desires, the villages grew and villagers asked for products other than sorghum and wheat. Nothing can demonstrate that clearer than the spread of qat-production all over the country. Qat-production dominates the Yemeni agriculture nowadays. It contributes between 25 and 50 % of the agricultural income, and consumes about 30 % of the water use.

 

4. The failing adaption of the institutional infrastructure to the modern technology

 

The economic infrastructure would never have had such a strong influence on water overuse if peculiar institutions not had supported it. We can watch how farmers have adapted to the declining water table: they react by drilling new wells or by deepening them. Higher water costs because of higher energy-input have to be compensated for by higher productivity of the soil or workers' input. In most cases, this also means higher water use. A vicious circle between the sinking water-table and restraint on higher water use has started. From the perspective of the farmer, the situation is similar to the customer in the hotel: why should he worsen his situation, which is bad anyway, by renouncing his water use voluntarily, as he knows other farmers could profit from his deterioration.

 

Therefore the problem must be solved on the institutional level. Technological or educational solutions would fail in any case. The technology is modern already and is part of the problem and can therefore not help to solve it. Education fails because people are already aware enough of what is going on. Let us have a look at the institutions. There are many institutional rules for irrigated agriculture. Institutions rule the access and distribution of the water. Hundreds and thousands of traditional rules differing from region to region exist and they are determined and modified by local organisations. At the same time there are modern authorities and laws but they are not effectual.

 

One of the main questions of this seminar is, "how did farmers in ancient times manage the available natural resources while preserving them?" The answer is at a first sight simple: With traditional techniques, overuse of groundwater was just not possible. There were many rules for using surface water, as well as for ground water, to protect sustainable use. Let me give you two examples: if you drilled a new well you had according to the traditional right to keep a certain distance (mostly 500 m) from a neighboring well. By following that rule, an existing well was protected from others. Or there were many rules about how dams have to be built, so that the run of the wadi will not be changed by. This was very important for the sustainable use of a whole valley. But these rules, which are known and are obeyed by the farmers, do not make sense because nowadays a well has a capacity influencing other wells farther than 500 m and dams are constructed with materials that do not dissolve a few days after a flood.

 

The image of the breakfast buffet has several similarities on that of the irrigated agriculture: in both cases there is a concurrence between individuals for a limited resource. The farmers notice a change and they feel the danger. Then they react in a very rational manner by trying to keep their individual yield at the expense of the existing stock. And then it is very important to see, that it is a new and an unusual situation where society doesn't have any previous experience.

 

Groundwater in the Islamic world is a resource where strict ownership is considered something strange. It is logical that you cannot own something that you don't know the extent of. For centuries, cultivating land knowing that water is open property, ensured the permanent availability of the essential resource.

 

5. Traditional water rights promote the overuse

 

A similar situation occurs with on surface water, although you have modern technology to build solid dams. Farmers rely on the traditional water right "the upper the upper". In the hydrological situation where you have short but strong floods this is the economically ideal use with small dispersed and each year newly built dams. But when an upper builds one huge dam he maximizes the profit for himself, while the group as a whole gets less. After economic and technological change the traditional rights have lost their sense. More than that the traditional rights even promote the overuse of water.

 

Traditional laws together with traditional techniques have managed the available resources well. Traditional laws together with modern techniques lead to overuse. Modern laws are formulated, but they don't work. The power of the state is too weak to be able to enforce them. Up to the late 90s the state also made two mistakes in formulating the new laws. First it wanted to centralize control of the water, making one law to rule water use in all regions of Yemen. Second it aimed at a nationalisation of the water resources, i.e. it wanted to become the legal owner of the water. I do not have to teach you, that in Yemen the state is not considered as a representative of the community, but the tribes are those who have the power. Nationalisation therefore is considered rather as an appropriation of somebody else's property.

 

The persistence of traditional rights coupled with technological and economical progress led to the actual problems. Farmers have to drill their wells deeper and deeper, getting less and less water, which at the same time is getting more salty. You cannot ask them to regard for future generations or neighbouring areas. It is clear that they will take advantage of the legal deficiency as long as they can.

 

6. The qat sector as key-player

 

To achieve long term improvement, economic development must be obviated in the direction of using water-saving technology. What do I mean with this? Economic incentives for water-saving irrigation do not exist yet. On the contrary, the agricultural-policy in Yemen motivated the use of a lot of water up to the late 90s. For example, by subsidising Diesel or by giving cheap credits for buying water pumps or by the protection of the qat-industry from foreign imports.

 

But I have to be frank: I do not know a good recipe to translate my findings into action, but I would be happy if some of my ideas could help that traditions are seen in a more critical way. But let me end with two general findings which can be part of a further discussion: First the decentralisation of the responsibilty about the water resources is an absolute must. Without local solutions there can never be a sustainable water policy. Central power must give only incentives and can only be the frame. And secondly it seems that the qat sector has the key. Qat is consuming between 25 and 50 % of the water use. When qat prices get lower farmers will not irrigate as much to get a little better yield. And it seems that at least in this field the country is just now making much progress.