A broad-based meeting held today in Taiz, both in person and virtually via Zoom, discussed the structural dimensions of the water crisis, the options available for emergency and medium-term interventions, and pathways toward sustainable solutions. The meeting brought together representatives of executive offices and official sectors, alongside civil society organizations and the private sector.
Organized by the Studies and Economic Media Center (SEMC) and the Local Economic Development Council (LEDC), the meeting featured a series of working papers focusing on the escalating humanitarian risks associated with the water crisis in Taiz Governorate and its social and economic repercussions. The papers also proposed strategic tracks to address the root causes of the crisis and to define partnership roles among the government, local authorities, the private sector, and donors.
Tawfiq Al-Sharjabi, Minister of Water and Environment, emphasized that Taiz’s water deficit has gone beyond being a service delivery challenge to become an issue of human security, social stability, and economic development that cannot be postponed. He noted that more than 600,000 residents of the city face daily difficulties in accessing safe water, as network coverage has declined to less than 29 percent. He added that the ministry is developing a package of reference studies to frame the crisis and market its solutions to donors through emergency, medium-term, and long-term tracks, with particular emphasis on coordination with partners in the Saudi Arabia.
For his part, Taiz Governor Nabil Shamsan stressed that the meeting represents a starting point for a sustained media and policy track on water, built on the integration of efforts between the government, local authorities, and local and international organizations. This, he said, aims to reach root solutions that reduce the humanitarian and economic costs borne by the governorate’s residents. He considered strategic treatment, foremost among it seawater desalination, a decisive option, calling on donors to treat Taiz’s water file as an urgent humanitarian priority requiring exceptional intervention.
Meanwhile, Taiz Deputy Governor Rashad Al-Akhali reviewed the roots of the crisis, its structural causes, and the efforts undertaken in previous periods to mitigate its severity, highlighting desalination as a sustainable solution capable of enhancing water security and reducing reliance on scarce sources.
The Head of the LEDC, Shawqi Hayel Saeed, pointed out that the current phase requires a unified stance and a shift toward implementable strategic solutions, underscoring the Mocha water desalination project as a promising long-term pathway.
In the same context, Mustafa Nasr, Chairman of the SEMC, affirmed the importance of directing efforts toward root solutions to a protracted crisis in a densely populated governorate, in a manner that balances urgent response with the building of a sustainable system.
The meeting also included interventions reflecting the scale of community suffering and its future implications. Participants broadly agreed on the necessity of combining emergency measures to ease the current crisis with strategic options, chief among them seawater desalination, as a long-term solution to enhance human and economic stability in Taiz.