Yemen sleepwalks into water nightmare

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIT HUJAIRA, Yemen (Reuters) - Black-clad women trudge across a stony plateau in the Yemeni highlands to haul water in yellow plastic cans from wells that will soon dry up.

"We come here three or four times a day," says Adiba Sena, as another woman draws water six metres (20 feet) to the surface and pours it into jerry cans lashed to her grey donkey. "We use it to clean, cook, wash -- we have no pipes that reach us."

These women are at the sharp end of what Yemen's water and environment minister describes as a collapse of national water resources so severe it cannot be reversed, only delayed at best.

"This is almost inevitable because of the geography and climate of Yemen, coupled with uncontrolled population growth and very low capacity for managing resources," the minister, Abdul-Rahman al-Iryani, told Reuters in an interview.

Yemen relies on groundwater, which nature cannot recharge fast enough to keep pace with a population of 22.4 million expanding by more than 3 percent a year.

More water is being consumed than resupplied to 19 of the impoverished country's 21 aquifers, Iryani said.

Wells and cisterns in villages like Beit Hujaira fill during short rainy seasons and gradually run dry as water is consumed or evaporates. "Then we die of thirst," Sena said.

In fact, villagers are forced to pay for trucks or pickups which struggle up rocky tracks with precious drinking water.