“Sana’a might very well become the first capital in the world to run out of water,” write Gregory D. Johnsen and Christopher Boucek in a February 2009 article in Foreign Policy. With massive population growth, rapidly shrinking freshwater availability, and weak governance, Yemen’s unsustainable water management policies are exacerbating the threat of international terrorism as the state devolves into a sanctuary for al Qaeda jihadists and other transnational criminals.

Today, Yemen is among the world’s most water-scarce countries. According to the most recent data collected in 2005, Yemen’s freshwater availability has dropped to a mere 186 cubic meters per capita per year – well below the international water poverty line of 1,000 cubic meters per capita per year. Below that, water begins to severely limit “economic development and human health and well-being.”

And since the latest data collection, according to Johnsen and Boucek, overexploitation of groundwater aquifers to satisfy a burgeoning population has resulted in “dramatically falling water tables—up to several meters per year in some places.”

To make matters worse, an annual population growth rate of 3.2 percent, driven by a total fertility rate of 6.2 children per woman, means the population will grow from 22.2 million today to 35.2 million by 2050, putting further pressure on an already-scarce resource.

In Yemen, the “lack of any serious legal oversight, reckless irrigation techniques, and unregulated private exploitation” are clear indicators of poor governance. Nevertheless, the government has begun working with the World Bank to implement an integrated water management program. “Support for the water sector is receiving high priority,” said Nabil Shaiban of Yemen’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, in an interview with IRIN News.

But despite these efforts, the government’s weakness and the country’s “gun-slinging tribal culture” present serious challenges to water management. According to IRIN News, “tribesmen seize control of water projects nearing completion, intending to use them for irrigating their farms.” This occurs with about “80 percent of projects in rural areas,” Ahmed al-Sufi, an information officer with Yemen’s National Water and Sanitation Foundation, told IRIN News.

And so the problems of poor water management and weak governance are circular. As water scarcity worsens, the government’s attempts to mitigate it are undermined by its weak control over the state. But without successful policies to mitigate water scarcity, the government’s legitimacy is further weakened.

With water woes aggravating Yemeni citizens and weakening the government’s authority, al Qaeda and other transnational terror groups are recruiting jihadists and using ungoverned areas as training grounds and safe havens. Forty-five percent of Yemen’s population is under 15 years old—and some claim al Qaeda is now actively recruiting boys as young as 12. With water scarcity worsening economic and human development, Yemen’s youth are particularly susceptible to al Qaeda’s promises of social justice and opportunities for advancement.

Al Qaeda recently made its capabilities in Yemen clear with a September 18, 2008, attack against the U.S. embassy in Sana’a. Several car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades killed 16 people—the deadliest attack against a U.S. target in Yemen since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. According to The Economist, last March “al Qaeda websites posted a message advising members to head for Yemen.”

To be clear, water scarcity is not the only issue plaguing the Gulf state. Falling oil prices and mismanaged oil reserves are making Yemen’s chronic economic and human development problems much worse. But assistance from the international community in implementing effective water-management policies would lend credibility to the government and could bolster its ability to prevent al Qaeda from training terrorists within its borders.

According to the U.S. Army field manual on stability operations, “The greatest threats to our national security will not come from emerging ambitious states but from nations unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs and aspirations of their people.” If Yemen’s government cannot provide even a minimal level of water security for its citizens, it risks becoming a failed state on par with Somalia or Zimbabwe.

Over the long term, a comprehensive approach to development that balances voluntary family planning with effective natural resource management would help reduce pressure on scarce resources and bring lasting stability to the country, while serving U.S. national security interests in the War on Terror.

Photo: In Taiz, south of the capital city of Sana’a, children fill up their water jugs outside a mosque. Courtesy of flickr user Osama Al-Eryani.

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“Water access is no longer simply a global health and development issue; it is a mortal and long-term threat that is increasingly becoming a national security issue,” said Senator Richard Durbin at a March 17, 2009, event on Capitol Hill. Introducing the Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009, Senator Durbin called for renewed American leadership on the global water crisis plaguing billions around the world.

“The United States needs to do much more to ensure that global water access is protected and expanded,” he said. Senator Durbin’s remarks come on the heels of the Fifth Global Water Forum held in Istanbul, Turkey this week, and precede UN World Water Day on March 22, 2009.

“The global water crisis is a quiet killer,” Durbin said. “In the developing world, 5,000 children die every day from easily preventable water-related illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, and malaria, diseases that have been all but eradicated in wealthier nations.”

The Water for the World Act of 2009 expands a commitment from the earlier Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005, which has had notable success in focusing U.S. aid on water-related assistance. From 2007-2008, for instance, the U.S. helped provide 2 million people with access to an improved source of drinking water and more than 1.5 million people to improved sanitation.

But these efforts need to be scaled up to reach the billions of people without clean water. According to Representative Earl Blumenauer, speaking at the same event, there are more people in the world today without access to adequate sanitation than the populations of China and India combined. The Water for the World Act of 2009 will seek to provide “100 million people around the world with sustainable access to clean water and sanitation by 2015,” said Durbin.

In addition, if passed, the act will make water a development priority for U.S. foreign assistance and “designates within the State Department a high-level representative to ensure that water receives priority attention in our foreign policy, and establishes a new Office of Water at USAID to implement development assistance efforts related to water,” Durbin said.

Access to clean water and adequate sanitation is a cornerstone for sustainable development around the world. Developing countries will not be able to build their economies or bring their resources to fruition if people in these countries have to travel for hours to find water, or are “too sick from drinking unsafe water, to work or to go to school,” Durbin warned.

Improving access to safe water will not only reduce mortality from waterborne illness, but will help provide long-term stability in countries that suffer from population pressures due large population growth from high total fertility rates. In developing countries, 3,900 children under 5 years old die every day from waterborne illness. “Mothers who fear the deaths of their children bear more, in a desperate race against the odds,” said Senator Durbin. While access to education and family planning programs is also essential to reducing high fertility rates in developing countries, so too is basic access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

But funding for water infrastructure and sanitation programs is just the first step. In developing countries, poor governance is a major roadblock to implementing successful development projects. Unregulated privatization of water can prevent the “voiceless and powerless” poor from gaining access to the water services they need, Durbin cautioned.

To address the challenges of governance, the bill will help “build the capacity of poor nations to meet their own water and sanitation challenges,” Durbin said, by providing “technical assistance, best practices, credit authorities, and training to help countries expand access to clean water and sanitation.”

Working to ensure access to safe water and adequate sanitation can help implement the “smart power” strategy the U.S. desperately needs during a period when the world is redefining America – a strategy to help provide “things people and governments in all quarters of the world want but cannot attain in the absence of American leadership,” writes the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Smart Power.

CSIS President John Hamre said the U.S. should re-establish its moral leadership in the world by making a serious commitment to increasing access to clean water and adequate sanitation. CSIS recently issued a Declaration on U.S. Policy and the Global Challenge of Water, endorsed by more than 35 leaders in business, government, and academia, and called on President Obama “to launch a bold new U.S. campaign to address the global challenge of water.”

“Throughout history, civilized nations have put aside political differences to address compelling issues of life and survival,” said Senator Durbin. “Our generation owes the world nothing less.”

Photo: Senator Richard Durbin. Courtesy of the Office of Senator Richard Durbin.

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Arab Environment: Future Challenges, the 2008 report of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development, addresses a wide range of issues, including desertification, urbanization, water resources, waste management, air quality, climate change, and the environmental impact of conflict.

Water: A Global Innovation Outlook Report, distills insights from several of IBM’s “deep dives” on water and business, agriculture, infrastructure, and data.

“Securing Our Future: Environmental Security in Mongolia,” a YouTube video from the Asia Foundation, highlights the Foundation’s efforts to ensure that mining in Mongolia protects human and environmental health.

The Economist examines competing claims to land in Peru, where concessions for mining and oil and gas exploration are often “superimposed on towns, farms and natural parks.”

The Washington Post reviewed Sex and War: How Biology Explains War and Offers a Path to Peace this week. Author Malcolm Potts presented the book at the Wilson Center last month, and discusses the themes in a short YouTube video.

In Jordan, “we investigated about forty wells, and in a large number of them we found high levels of naturally occurring radium,” says Avner Vengosh in this short expert interview from the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). “Several studies have shown that long-term exposure to this element in drinking water would increase the probability of bone cancer and leukemia,” and “millions of people are potentially going to be exposed to this level of radium,” he warns. In this short video, ECSP visits Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke University, on location in Durham, North Carolina. Vengosh discusses his recent discovery of naturally occurring radioactivity in Jordan’s fossil groundwater at levels up to 2000 percent higher than the international drinking-water standard.

It is somewhat ironic that the 5^th World Water Forum in Istanbul opened with protesters clashing violently with police. Predictions of “water wars” between nation-states typically grab the headlines despite limited-to-no evidence for countries going to war over water.

As Ken Conca has written in an ECSP Navigating Peace brief, this kind of small-scale, social conflict over water—around privatization, access, pricing, and the human right to water—is the new face of water conflict.

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The Jordan River Peace Park will help “rehabilitate the river, create economic opportunities for communities on both sides of the river’s banks” and serve “as a concrete example of peacebuilding,” says Gidon Bromberg in this short expert analysis from the Environmental Change and Security program. In this short video, Bromberg, co-director of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) – which recently received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship – explains how the new Jordan River Peace Park will help build peace by bringing together Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian environmentalists.

The UN Population Division updated its population predictions through 2050 this week, and global population is now expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050, with most of this growth occurring in developing countries. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times reflected on the findings on his Dot Earth blog.

Although many of Rwanda’s national development policies recognize the links between population, health, environment, and poverty, actually implementing cross-sectoral collaboration remains challenging. A new policy brief from the Population Reference Bureau examines prospects for—and progress in—integrating these sectors. For more on population, health, and environment in Rwanda, read Rachel Weisshaar’s from-the-field dispatches on the New Security Beat.

“Population growth, climate change and demand for greater food and energy supplies are squeezing global water supplies, according to a new U.N. report,” says the New York Times/Greenwire. The report, Water in a Changing World, will be officially launched at the World Water Forum in Istanbul on March 16, 2009.

Karen Hardee and Kimberly Rovin discuss how population affects Ethiopia’s ability to adapt to climate change and increase its citizens’ food security in an article for peopleandplanet.net.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company’s The Current examines the global politics of water in a season-long series entitled “Watershed.” Recent episodes have highlighted desalination in Israel, collapsing fisheries in Nova Scotia, and Karachi’s black market in water.

“Water resources in our part of the world are shared. There is no major source of water that does not cross one or more political boundaries,” says Gidon Bromberg in this short expert analysis from the Environmental Change and Security Program. “Therefore there is this natural interdependence between countries – but more obviously between communities.” And the Good Water Neighbors project uses that “rationale of interdependence to help create trust; to solve livelihood problems that our communities face.” In this short video, Bromberg, a 2008 Time Magazine Hero of the Environment, discusses the Good Water Neighbors project, one of the innovative cross-border initiatives of this award-winning NGO.