This is certainly the case in Yemen, on the southern side of the Arabian Peninsula, where the desert beaches have recently taken on a new look. Satellite images show about 100,000 solar panels glistening in the sunlight, surrounded by green fields. The panels are connected to water pumps, providing free energy for farmers to pump ancient groundwater. They irrigate crops of khat, a shrub whose narcotic leaves are the nation's stimulant of choice and which millions of men chew throughout the day.
For these farmers, Yemen's solar irrigation revolution was born out of necessity. Most crops cannot grow without irrigation, the country's electricity grid has collapsed due to a long civil war, and supplies of diesel fuel for pumps are expensive and unstable. So they're turning to solar power en masse to keep their carts supplied.
Helen Lackner, a Middle East development researcher at SOAS, University of London, said the panel quickly became popular. everyone wants that. But in a hydrologically laissez-faire region, the region's groundwater, a legacy of wetter times, is depleting.
An analysis by Leonie Nimmo, a researcher most recently at the UK-based Conflict Research Institute, found that solar-powered farms are pumped hard and that “despite above-average rainfall, Since 2018, this has caused a significant decline in groundwater. and an environmental observatory. The spread of solar power in Yemen is “providing an essential and life-saving source of electricity,” both to irrigate food crops and generate income from qat sales, but it is also “depleting the country’s scarce groundwater reserves.” “We're depleting it rapidly,” he said.
In the central Sana'a basin, Yemen's agricultural heartland, more than 30 percent of farmers use solar pumps. In a report with Musaed Aklan, a water researcher at the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, Luckner predicts a “complete transition” to solar power by 2028. However, the available water in this basin may run out in the coming years. A farmer who once found water less than 100 feet deep is now pumping water from more than 1,300 feet deep.
About 1,500 miles to the northeast in Afghanistan's desert region of Helmand, more than 60,000 opium farmers have given up on the province's failing irrigation canals over the past few years and turned to solar water pumps to pump groundwater. As a result, water tables typically fall by 10 feet a year, said David Mansfield, an expert on the country's opium industry at the London School of Economics.
A sudden ban on opium production imposed by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in 2022 could provide a partial reprieve. But wheat, which farmers are growing as an alternative, is also a thirsty crop. Therefore, Helmand's water bankruptcy may only be delayed.
“Little is known about aquifers.” [in Helmand]Recharge it or find out when it will be empty,” Mansfield said. But if the pumps run dry, this vital desert resource, the legacy of rainfall from wetter times, will be forever lost, leaving many of the desert state's million-plus people in extreme poverty. there is a possibility.