Afghanistan: When Water Runs Out, Everything Falls Apart

In Afghanistan in 2026, warning signs are everywhere. In Kabul, groundwater levels, the primary source of water for residents, have fallen by more than 30 metres over the past decade. As a result, the capital risks becoming the first modern city in the world to run out of water by 2030. Three of the country’s five major river basins are already under water stress, while the Northern Basin is facing outright water scarcity. In Nimroz Province, on the border with Iran, the wetlands fed by the Helmand River, which once sustained fishing and livestock-rearing communities, have dried up. Competition over water between the two countries has led to the disappearance of surface water resources and, consequently, to uncontrolled groundwater abstraction as an alternative source.

In the south-western provinces of Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, the livelihoods of approximately 3.65 million people are directly threatened by rapidly declining groundwater levels, which local farmers report are falling by at least three to five metres per year.

This crisis is affecting communities already on the brink. Afghanistan’s GDP per capita declined by 5.6% in 2026, while since 2025 nearly 6.5 million people forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan have placed additional pressure on already overstretched basic services, including water, healthcare and education. Labour markets and food production systems are already weak and saturated. As Afghanistan enters its fifth consecutive year of severe drought, 22.9 million people require humanitarian assistance and 15.9 million lack adequate access to water.

It is in this context that SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL is operating in the south-west of the country to secure sustainable access to water for the most vulnerable populations, both at community level and within health facilities. Water is not merely one sector among many; it is the foundation of most rural livelihoods. When water disappears, crops fail, incomes collapse, and people are forced either to migrate to Iran or Pakistan or to move towards the country’s major cities.

Poor Resource Management: A Crisis Made Worse

What is most striking is the gap between resource scarcity and the wasteful use of available water. In Nimroz, annual rainfall amounts to only 40 to 60 millimetres. Agriculture, the largest consumer of water, relies heavily on water-intensive crops such as cotton, maize and watermelon. These crops are grown during the hottest months of the year, when temperatures can exceed 55°C, and are irrigated primarily through groundwater pumping. Solar-powered pumps operate only during daylight hours, forcing farmers to irrigate at times of peak evaporation. No significant adaptation of crops, irrigation techniques or agricultural calendars has been implemented. In urban areas, ageing infrastructure, leaks, illegal connections, and deficiencies in metering and billing systems result in the wastage of an already scarce resource.

A second damaging trend is the race to drill ever deeper. The growing availability and affordability of solar technology has made groundwater the principal source of water in many provinces. In the absence of effective regulation and amid severe economic hardship, farmers are driven by a simple imperative: extract water before their neighbour does. This has created a « race to pump, » resulting in resource capture and overexploitation of aquifers, in some places at rates up to ten times greater than their natural recharge capacity. The privatization of groundwater resources is also undermining traditional collective management systems such as the ashar, which governed irrigation through shared surface water resources.

A third form of mismanagement concerns floods. They are treated solely as threats to be controlled, rather than as opportunities for these territories. While dams and flood-control structures are built to regulate flows, poor management often limits or blocks downstream communities’ access to surface water, further increasing dependence on groundwater abstraction. Yet floods play a crucial role in recharging aquifers, replenishing soils through sediment deposits, and sustaining wetland ecosystems such as the Hamouns, which provide livelihoods for local populations.

Water Governance That Deepens Exclusion

Behind this crisis lies a structural failure: water management and planning mechanisms are incomplete and fragmented. Public authorities have little effective local reach. Surface water resources are managed by a patchwork of actors operating with little coordination, including river basin authorities, provincial departments, traditional systems led by mirabs [1], and urban water utilities. Groundwater governance is equally fragmented, with responsibilities spread across several ministries depending on water use, but without any overarching coordination mechanism. Existing regulations are largely unenforced, resulting in the effective privatization of water through individual boreholes. Water user associations, established to replace declining collective systems such as the ashar, remain largely inactive.

Compounding the problem is the systematic exclusion of those most affected by the crisis. In a country where women are largely excluded from public life and decision-making processes, their voices are also absent from discussions on water management, despite being the primary managers of household water. They bear the brunt of shortages, waterborne diseases and the increased workload imposed by water scarcity. Similarly, millions of returnees from Iran and Pakistan, arriving in already overstretched communities, are often excluded from local water-sharing arrangements, fuelling tensions around increasingly scarce resources. This selective governance model, lacking shared data, mechanisms for balancing upstream and downstream interests, and meaningful participation by women and newcomers, leaves each actor to manage « their » portion of the resource without regard for broader impacts. Water governance is largely reactive by default, incapable of protecting resources or ensuring equitable access based on the needs of all users.

Climate Change: A Crisis Multiplier

While poor management created the conditions for scarcity, climate change is accelerating and intensifying the crisis. Temperatures in Afghanistan are projected to rise by between 2.6°C and 6.3°C by 2100, increasing evaporation rates and the frequency of droughts, whose agricultural losses could reach US$3 billion in every drought year. At the same time, destructive flooding is also expected to become more frequent. The strong El Niño event observed in 2026 adds another layer of uncertainty, bringing the risk of flash floods during the winter followed by unusually severe drought conditions.

This rapid deterioration is affecting ecosystems that have already been severely degraded: disappearing wetlands, deforested riverbanks and impoverished soils. With every passing year, the window for sustainable solutions narrows. In Afghanistan, weak water governance, economic crisis and climate disruption reinforce one another in a vicious cycle whose first victims are the country’s most vulnerable rural populations.

Acting Now: An Urgency That Can No Longer Be Ignored

By 2030, around five million people in Kabul may face water shortages, while 3.5 million people in the south-western provinces risk losing their livelihoods. Afghanistan’s water crisis can no longer be treated as a future concern. It is an immediate emergency, and solutions are available.

• Raise awareness of the crisis by funding studies and widely sharing data on water resources.
• Support context-specific analyses at the river basin level and promote multi-stakeholder governance involving all water users, particularly women, returnees and other vulnerable groups, through dialogue platforms, local capacity strengthening and territorial planning initiatives.
• Invest immediately in « no-regret » measures, including rehabilitating existing infrastructure to reduce leakage, promoting water-efficient irrigation systems co-designed with farmers, and developing value chains that generate greater economic returns per drop of water used.
• Reduce vulnerability to floods and droughts through reliable early-warning systems and anticipatory action, rather than relying solely on emergency or corrective responses.

What is lacking, however, is time and financial resources. Since the return of the Taliban to power in 2021, structural investment in Afghanistan has collapsed. Every passing season brings the country closer to water scarcity. As groundwater levels continue to decline, wells are drilled deeper and environmental degradation becomes increasingly irreversible. Failing to act now means accepting large-scale displacement, the loss of livelihoods for millions of people and an unprecedented humanitarian bill.

Afghanistan’s water resources have never been more urgent to protect.