FutureWater, with partner Acacia Water, supports the Government of Yemen and the World Bank in ranking the country's 42 water basins and sub-basins for future investment in water and food security. In one of the world's most water-scarce and conflict-affected settings, the project combines socio-economic, hydrological and remote-sensing data with stakeholder consultations to build a multi-criteria prioritisation of the basins. FutureWater leads the water demand analysis and climate change impact assessment, estimating sectoral water demand across domestic, agricultural and industrial uses and screening each basin for climate risk towards a 2050 horizon. The results give decision-makers a transparent, citable basis for targeting investment where it is needed most.
Yemen is one of the most water-scarce and food-insecure countries in the world, where decades of over-abstraction, fragile institutions, and a changing climate have pushed many river basins beyond sustainable limits. With limited resources and competing needs across domestic supply, agriculture and industry, the Government of Yemen and the World Bank need a transparent, evidence-based way to decide where to invest first. In a data-scarce, conflict-affected setting, no single dataset offers a basin-by-basin picture of water availability, demand and climate risk.
This assignment supports the Government of Yemen and the World Bank in identifying and ranking the country’s 42 water basins and sub-basins for future investment. Delivered by Acacia Water and FutureWater as partners, the work integrates socio-economic, hydrological and remote-sensing data; delineates and characterises the basins; assesses water availability and water balances; analyses climate vulnerability; and brings everything together in a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework, with GIS outputs, maps and investment recommendations. Crucially, this data-driven analysis is complemented by stakeholder meetings that capture local and strategic priorities known to policymakers but not visible in the available datasets, ensuring the prioritisation reflects realities on the ground.
FutureWater leads the water demand analysis and climate change impact assessment. We estimate seasonal and annual demand for each basin across the domestic, agricultural and industrial sectors, combining population and per-capita use with irrigated-area and crop water requirements, and develop future demand scenarios. In parallel, we screen each basin for climate risk using the IPCC hazard, exposure and vulnerability framework, drawing on World Bank climate projections for a historical baseline and a 2050 horizon.
These results, together with the insights from stakeholder engagement, feed directly into the basin prioritisation. The outcome gives Yemeni water-sector counterparts and the World Bank a shared basis for ranking basins, defending investment choices.
