Yemen’s Addiciton of Qat

Yemen’s capital, Somra, could be the first capital in the world to run out of water in the short amount of time of five to ten years. The water shortage will affect the population of Somra, which has quadrupled in the last 50 years. This is due to Yemen’s biggest addiction Qat.

Qat is a mild narcotic that this country, the poorest in the Middle East cannot stay away from. Most of the population requires having it daily for meetings, socializing and weddings. The problem is that Qat needs a lot of water to help it grow, especially when the temperature in that area is so high. Yemen uses 91% of its water on agriculture, and 40% of the water for agriculture is wasted on this narcotic. Most of the farms that used to grow different varieties of vegetation are now growing Qat because of it high demand.

This water problem was cause by human demands. Even though this article didn’t mention how this could effect our climate change, it should make sense that the water being waste is unsustainable. Also the government has thought about getting water from sea to help these farmers keep thriving. Farmers are even drilling illegal wells with the use of diesel and oil generators to help pump the water up, which is just increasing there Carbon Footprint to increase. This could effect the temperature because they are putting more Carbon Dioxide into our Atmosphere.

Even though this is a problem seems to be a hard one to fix, it can be done. Education would play a key role in helping Yemen’s population know the negative effects on Qat. The government also needs to set up new activities for its citizens so that they would not have to waste there time eating Qat and doing other things.

This is a good example of how we humans need to take more action to be more sustainable with what we have, especially water, which most living things needs to survive.

Links of articles below
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-02/world/yemen.water.crisis_1_qat-yemen-s-water-water-crisis?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/11/28/jamjoom.yemen.water.crisis.cnn?iref=videosearch