Yemen Receives Another Highly Structured Master Plan To Prevent The Disappearance Of Its Water Supply

A coalition of the World Bank Group, the Netherlands, the United Nations Development Programme and the UN project office UNOPS has started yet another ambitious effort to improve water management in Yemen. The project, called I-WISE, comes with a grant of 150 million dollars from the World Bank's fund for the poorest countries, a few million in Dutch cofinancing and a deeply reassuring ten year horizon, of which this is phase one. The international community has gathered its finest acronyms to confront the inconvenient reality that one of the most water stressed countries on earth is suffering both droughts and flash floods, on top of years of war.

The plan works with the relevant line ministries, focuses on the Aden-Tuban and Wadi Hajir basins and aims to make some 850,000 people more resilient to climate risks, a beautiful phrase that essentially means catching water before it evaporates or washes away the local infrastructure. UNOPS repairs water and sanitation systems and builds small desalination units; UNDP builds a national climate and water information system and modernises irrigation. International organisations excel at producing well funded, perfectly formatted blueprints for agricultural sustainability in conflict zones.

The bureaucracy will generate workshops and press releases about food security. The hope, this time, is that some of the pipes get laid before the aquifers run dry.