With aid flows plummeting and water shortages becoming ever-more serious, farmers and aid workers in Yemen speak about their struggle to survive as the country’s more than decade-long civil war drags on, reported Nick Ferris.
Ferris, The Independent’s London-based climate correspondent, wrote “Amid the carnage, the Yemeni people face an escalating humanitarian crisis. Some 23 million people, or two-thirds of the population, required humanitarian aid at the end of 2025, and the country is considered the world’s second-biggest food crisis, with nearly half of children under five considered chronically malnourished”.
At the same time, the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the country has been slashed following cuts from Donald Trump in the US and others, with just 24 per cent of requirements met in 2025, leaving a funding shortfall of $1.8 billon.
Oxfam Yemen, one of the key humanitarian actors in the country, has told The Independent that its funding collapsed by 80 per cent in 2025 compared to a typical year.
In the north of Yemen, humanitarian operations are further complicated by the Houthis arbitrarily detaining aid workers, including some 69 UN staff and dozens of civil society staff over the last 18 months, which has deterred some international NGOs from continuing to operate in Houthi-held territory.
“The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is no longer in the headlines, which is really sad because you go into the streets here, and you can see the despair in people’s faces, many of whom have not received a salary for more than ten years,” Nada Al-Saqaf, from Oxfam Yemen, tells The Independent.
As well as enduring conflict that has killed an estimated 400,000 people, Yemen is also considered one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. It is grappling with ever more frequent extreme weather events including flash floods, droughts, and extreme temperatures.
Precipitation levels in the already-arid country have fallen by an average of 6.25 millimetres per decade since 1971, according to the World Bank. Extreme heat and the falling use of traditional water storage infrastructure mean that overall water availability in the country has declined by 60 per cent since 1990.
Experts see the twin challenges of climate change and conflict as exacerbating one another. “Climate change was not the cause of the conflict, but it deepens the wounds,” explains Al-Saqaf. “It multiplies the problems farmers are facing and makes everything more difficult.”
37-year-old Ahmed Mohammed Naji Abdullah, here seen planting saplings, has been struggling to keep the family farm going amid rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and pests (Ahmed Hakim / Oxfam)
Research from the think tank ODI Global, shared exclusively with The Independent, finds that “absence of trust” between communities, local authorities, and external actors is increasing local tensions over water in Taiz, which is a region partly controlled by both Houthis and the Yemeni government. There is now widespread unregulated borehole drilling, described by interviewees as “anarchy”, while there have been “notable escalations” in local conflicts in disputes over wells, land use, energy, and transport.
“War is obviously the immediate crisis, but climate stress doesn’t pause during conflict; it comes on top of it. It deepens and prolongs human insecurity,” Mauricio Vazquez, head of policy at ODI's Global Risks and Resilience programme, tells The Independent.
“If you ignore climate, you make recovery harder and conflict more protracted. Climate action in conflict settings isn’t a distraction from peace, it’s part of what makes peace and recovery possible.”
Despite the challenges presented by ongoing conflict, a trickle of positive stories from some communities in Yemen shows that people are still able to prosper with the right financial support.
Back in Taiz, the farmer Ahmed received training, drought-resistant seeds, and materials to establish a greenhouse with the help of Oxfam. Today, he cultivates avocado, pomegranate and papaya, and also supplies other members of the community with seedlings. “Before, heat and wind destroyed everything,” he says. “Now, with the greenhouse, my seedlings grow faster, stronger, and with real profit.”
In Mujib’s area, meanwhile, Oxfam has constructed a flood water collecting barrier, which is helping to retain water in the soil, replenish the wells, and restore farming conditions. “People’s spirits have returned,” Mujib says. “We feel secure again, and our farms and animals are recovering.”
According to Mohammed Hassan, Oxfam’s programme manager in Taiz, the NGO has so far provided greenhouses for 16 farmers, provided capacity building training to a further 58 farmers, built two dams, and also restored numerous water harvesting tanks. He acknowledges that this might just be a “small number of beneficiaries”, but the focus has been to support those communities that are hardest to reach, he says.
“It’s short-term funding, but this is long-term investment,” he says. “These people are looking to give their land to their children, so the investment lives on.”
The harsh truth, however, is that Jameel, Ahmed and Mujib are among the lucky ones. Most of Yemen's millions of smallholder farmers have been left to fend for themselves amid climate- and conflict-driven challenges they did nothing to create.