Emerging water scarcity issues and challenges in Afghanistan

Abstract

Afghanistan’s strategic location hasled it toplay an important role in the regional geopolitics, which is increasingly playing out in natural resource contestations. Although it is a semi-arid country, around 80% of the country’s water resources come from the snow-melt draining from its mountainous peaks. The country is divided into five major river basins: namely, the Kabul, Helmand, Hari Rod Murghab, Panj-Amu and Northernbasins. Except forthe northern river basin, the remaining four are transboundaryin nature and discharge into neighbouring countries. Decades of war and political instability have decimated most of the hydrological infrastructure of the country. Besides infrastructure damage, the country suffers greatly from institutional failures and poor capacity in the water resources management sector. The growing population and increased repatriation of refugees from neighbouring countries is another challenge that requires strategic measures to meet heightened food and water demand. Suffering already from water scarcity, the per capita availability of water is 2,500m3/s which is largely unused and that’s why it underlines the country’s food security conditions. In order to meet the recommended food and water demand, the ultimate dependency comes over crop water productivity which is directly linked to irrigated agriculture which suffers from multiplicity of management and technical deficiencies. Although around 98% of the country’s surface water supplies are used for agriculture purposes, and the remainder for industrial and municipal consumption, Afghanistan continues to have to rely on imports to sustain the population. This highlights the conveyance and application losses within the supply based irrigation network across the country. Based on the need to develop the local industry and ensured municipal water supply, the inter-sector competition for water abstraction is expected to raise manifold and therefore needs to be addressed on priority basis. There are large gaps between water availability and demand especially for the most demanded (e.g. Agriculture) sector. In addition to this, the upstream-downstream interaction along the rivers, canals and watercourses is being largely ignored, which has geopolitical reverberations, given the transboundary context. There have been attempts to establish a transparent and dynamic local water governance framework through legislation and institution-building. Despite many challenges, including weak institutions and ongoing conflict, there are the makings of a water governance system which can be harnessed to ensure Afghanistan is able to sustainably manage its resources in the context of a growing population and a changing climate.