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Ali al-Emadi, a Yemeni lumberjack, spent hours cutting down an acacia tree with an axe, while his 12-year-old nephew was helping to chop wood.
In a war-torn country, al-Emadi had to turn to logging in his northern al-Mahweet area to make ends meet. The economic collapse wiped out the agriculture and construction work he used to do all over the country.
But with fuel shortages leading to soaring demand for firewood, there are now concerns about the humanitarian crisis in the country. Millions of people are facing starvation, increasing the risk of deforestation-threatening Yemen’s environment and men’s long-term livelihoods like Ai Maddie.
“The owner of the bakery… uses wood and stone to heat their oven. In the past, they used to use natural gas, but now they only have wood,” said al-Emadi.
“If there is a lot of wood available, we can make a living, thank God. But trees are scarce now,” said the father of seven children. “If I get something, we will eat it. At least we will live or die together.”
The six-year war between the recognized government supported by the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis allied with Iran has killed tens of thousands of people, and 80% of Yemen’s population depends on aid.
Due to the coalition’s blockade of the Houthi-controlled areas, including restrictions on access to the main port of Hudaydah, fuel shortages caused companies and households to replace diesel and natural gas with firewood. The coalition stated that a blockade is needed to thwart arms smuggling.
Abdullah Abu-Futu, head of the Biodiversity and Nature Reserve of the Yemen Environmental Protection Agency in the city, said that about 886,000 trees are cut down every year, and food is provided for bakeries and restaurants only in the capital Sana’a. The Houthi authorities and most areas in northern Yemen are managed.
He said that in the past three years, about 5 million trees have been cut down throughout the north.
“This is equivalent to 213 square kilometers (82 square miles) of forest, knowing that 3.3% of Yemen’s total area is classified as forest,” Abul-Futuh said.
The authorities were unable to provide comparative figures, saying that this is a recent phenomenon.
After natural gas was discovered in the Malibu region in the 1980s, wood cutting was limited to remote areas, but the war stifled Yemen’s energy output, forcing Yemen to first rely on imports, and now rely on wood and wood that are more commonly used to build houses.
Yemen has few woodlands in the oil-producing Arabian Peninsula desert, but relatively rich plant species. In al-Mahweet, known for its thick canopy, several types of acacia, cedar and spruce are disappearing.
A capable lumberjack buys an acacia tree from the landowner for about $100, then sells the log to a merchant, and then sends the log to the city.
A 5-ton truck full of logs is equivalent to US$300-700 in Sana’a, depending on the wood and the transportation distance.
“Demand depends on the number of bunker ships arriving at the port of Hudaydah. Today, it (demand) is very high,” said Sulaiman Jubran, a lumberjack who sells firewood to visiting merchants for a living.
“We are afraid that this country will become a desert. This has already happened… You will never see the trees that once covered the mountains,” he said.
Forests are mainly privately owned, and poor families are traditionally allowed to cut wood for free, as long as they only cut branches and keep the trunks for regeneration.
“Now, we use a hoe (pick) to uproot them… nothing is left,” Amady said.
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