WATER DEMAND MANAGEMENT, NATURAL RESOURCE RECONSTRUCTION AND TRADITIONAL VALUE SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY FROM YEMEN Occasional Paper No. 14 Water Issues Study Group School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London By G. LichtenthŠler & A.R. Turton gl3&soas.ac.uk &
[email protected] INTRODUCTION: Previous research has shown that under conditions of extreme water scarcity, such as in the Middle East, natural resource reconstruction can take place (Allen & Karshenas, 1996). This may not always be the case however, as certain societies seem better able to cope with this process than others. This phenomenon has been linked to the adaptive capacity of a society (Turton, 1999) where it has been shown that all social entities are not equally endowed. A shortage of adaptive capacity has been redefined as a second- order scarcity (Ohlsson, 1998; 1999). What is currently being regarded by most researchers as a manifestation of resource scarcity is in fact probably the result of a second-order scarcity of social resources, which impacts in turn on the way that social entities deal with the first order scarcity of a natural resource such as water. In terms of this thinking, a shift in emphasis to second-order scarcities would be appropriate. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that in a society where resource capture is being actively pursued, natural resource reconstruction is unlikely to occur because it reduces the overall legitimacy of the political system (Turton, 1999). A study of these aspects in Yemen (LichtenthŠler, 1999) is therefore considered to be extremely fruitful because of four fundamental reasons.