Monitoring Agricultural Stress in Yemen.

 

Agriculture is the lifeblood of the Yemeni economy and its culture. However, our assessment of environmental change during Yemen’s armed conflict reveals severe and widespread agricultural distress. Our analysis indicates these changes mostly occurred because of factors linked to conflict. In many cases, the impact of these factors has been amplified by historical policies, especially around water access, which have increased vulnerability. Yemen is food insecure, and many Yemenis face famine conditions. Because of this it is important that urgent steps are taken to limit further losses to its agricultural sector. The COVID-19 pandemic is reducing humanitarian assistance to Yemen as healthcare comes under greater pressure, aid becomes harder to deliver, and donors face economic pressure at home. Protecting and restoring Yemen’s agricultural sector in an economically, environmentally, and culturally sustainable way will be critical for increasing the resilience of Yemen’s people. When the security situation allows, agricultural recovery programmes must ensure that they are environmentally sustainable, and provide increased productivity, food security and secure livelihoods.

What we found.

 We used open-source datasets to identify agricultural areas in distress, and to investigate to what extent the conflict has been responsible for the deterioration. Multiple stressors were found to be impacting the viability of agriculture and undermining food security. 

Key conflict-related stressors include: 

1. direct attacks to farms and agricultural infrastructure,
2.  the economic blockade and war economy reducing access to water, agricultural inputs and markets, and
3.  the collapse of governance. 

The picture is complex, with some stressors acting in concert, or at different times in different locations. Developing an understanding of the relationships between them required detailed analysis of datasets on population, fuel prices, water availability, climate, and agricultural pests. Our analysis has revealed that by early 2020, 257,000 hectares of cropland were exhibiting signs of distress, approximately equivalent to the total cropland in Jordan or Lebanon. Particularly hard hit is the southern Tihamah (near Hodeidah), Jawf, the southern deltas (near Aden), the upper Hadhramaut valley, the northern highland plains (near Sana’a), and Marib. 

Agricultural pests, like locusts, have flourished because of a combination of weakened governance, insecurity and higher than average rainfall. This summer East Africa suffered a desert locust crisis, resulting in 4.9 million people facing starvation. We tracked their movement, finding that the locust swarms originated in Yemen in August 2019, before migrating to Ethiopia, where their progeny moved to southeast Ethiopia (October), to Kenya and Somalia (December), then within Kenya, Ethiopia, northern Tanzania and northern Uganda (January-onwards). The next generation was expected to transit through South Sudan and potentially into Chad and West Africa. The conflict conditions in Yemen prevented proper control measures, leading to an environmental and humanitarian crisis elsewhere. It is a remarkable example of the environmental dimensions of conflict reverberating across a continent, potentially destabilising areas thousands of kilometres away. As conditions are currently so favourable for locusts, the same pattern may happen again. In the face of locusts, cumulative degradation, water stress and the COVID-19 related loss of humanitarian assistance the immediate outlook for food security in Yemen is bleak. In the longer term, more effective water management and targeted agricultural policies will be vital for the country’s development in the face of an increasingly unpredictable climate. Our research demonstrates that it is possible to remotely monitor the complex interactions of environmental, social, and economic factors during conflicts. However, because of the complexities and often local narratives involved, such work has its limits. Nevertheless, by drawing attention to both the degradation itself, and to the numerous stressors influencing it, it is hoped that we can contribute to improved responses that can ultimately help to limit harm and increase the resilience of communities.