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farmers and individuals is resulting in a positive economic impact that benefits large business owners, especially those who control the privately-owned sources of water, in particular the organisation in control of the pipeline that transports water from the Red Sea to the nation’s capital.

For instance, in the Amran Basin, unregulated drilling has led to the creation of new wells, bringing the locals into conflict with the big farmers. More specifically, on the side of an inactive volcano lies the village of Bani Maymoun and holds soil that is perfect for the cultivation of khat. As a result, wealthy farmers have brought in bulldozers, and transported in large tankers of water, increasing the price of water in the area to a level which is unsustainable for the villagers. Althoguh this dispute was resolved by the establishment of a Basin Committee, this example highlights the exploitation of water by wealthier members of Yemen society, for profit, at the expensive of the locals.

Today, the country is in a state of civil war, and a contributing factor for this conflict is because of the energy resource of water, and the negative economic impact that it has upon the people, which only exacerbated previous political unrest to the point of conflict. In an article titled, Water Demand Management in Yemen and Jordan: Addressing Power and Interests, written before the outbreak of the civil war, it is mentioned that, “tensions at the political level in the Yemen water sector derive from the contest between well-established traditional authorities on the one hand, and the rules and organs of the young Yemeni state on the other,” and the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation is opposing the policy of water demand management (WDM) (Zeitoun, et al., 57). This shows that conflict was caused not only at the individual level between farmers and the government, but also at the national level, where different departments within the government itself are creating issues that led to the conflict that beg