Support Program Conflict, Climate Change and Environment in the Middle East

Over the last years, Yemen’s largest governorate Hadhramawt has experienced increasing numbers of cyclones and changing rainfall periods due to climate change. The erratic rainfall is mixed with dumped waste and byproducts from oil extraction. With the water, those pollutants are transported over long distances and risk the widespread contamination of water resources, soil and vegetation. In many cases, residents consume the contaminated water and cultivate on polluted soil due to general unawareness, a lack of data regarding the pollution and out of necessity due to dwindling access to natural resources in an ongoing state of war. At the same time, air pollution through unfiltered gas flaring is also prevalent around productive oil fields.
Despite complaints from local communities, efforts to mitigate the threats have been absent so far. Overall, the effects on public health and the government’s inaction put a significant strain on Yemen’s government and could impair peaceful state-society relations long after the war has ended.

Yemen suffers from complex and multidimensional environmental stress. Thus, the first goal of the project is to present a new dataset regarding the impact of the oil industry’s high pollution on the population and their livelihoods. Clear recommendations to local and national policy makers help to develop new strategies to prevent and/or mitigate future incidences of oil pollution and enable policy makers to design adequate adaptation measures.
In the Hadhramawt governorate increased tension between society, the oil industry and governmental institutions as well as NGOs rise, due to the deterioration in health and the damage of agricultural land and water resources. Thus, the second goal of the project is to bring together relevant stakeholders to join forces and to search for a common ground for environmental policy solution and community cohesiveness.

The project tackles several dimensions: One issue is to examine the quality of water and soil and its level of contaminants’ concentration. On this basis, suitable interventions are deduced, such as awareness campaigns, briefing workshop, or trainings. Thereby, vulnerable sections of society will gain special attention. Staff working in national and local environmental institutions receive an on-the-job training program, based on a prioritization of the most pressing environmental threats in the targeted areas. Lastly, briefing workshops among oil industry, environmental government institutions, local communities, and civil society actors are planned. Those can create a communication channel among various stakeholders to lower the potential for conflict.