Water Issues in Himalayan South Asia

Internal Challenges, Disputes and Transboundary Tensions

Amit Ranjan, Amit Ranjan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789813296145
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book looks into the domestic water issues and disputes in the Himalayan South Asian countries, and based on it analyzes trans-boundary water disputes. Himalayan South Asia comprises India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. All except Afghanistan share river waters with India. Home to some of the major river basins of the world, a part of this region falls into water scarce zone, and according to the United Nations Water Report of 2018 some of them will experience severe water scarcity by 2050.

The book also studies water issues in China. Though the country is not a part of the Himalayan South Asia, most of the major rivers of this region originate in China. Over the years, China has been alleged by countries like India for diverting, choking or using the trans-boundary river waters for its purpose. Understanding water competition and issues in China will help one to understand its transboundary water behavior.

© The Author(s) 2020

A. Ranjan (ed.)Water Issues in Himalayan South Asiahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9614-5_1

Begin Abstract

Emerging Water Scarcity Issues and Challenges in Afghanistan

Fazlullah Akhtar¹ and Usman Shah²

(1)

Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

(2)

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Fazlullah Akhtar (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Usman Shah

End Abstract

Introduction

Afghanistan’s location at the crossroads of several regions of Asia has placed it in a strategic role in geopolitical rivalries, which are increasingly playing out in natural resource contestations. The country’s terrain is defined by the Iranian Plateau and the Hindu Kush mountains from which water drains through five major river basins. Except for the northern river basin, all of the four river basins are of transboundary nature and discharge water into the neighbouring countries: The Kabul River into Pakistan’s Indus, the Hari Rod and the Helmand rivers to Iran, the Pyanj/Amu Darya into the former-Soviet Central Asian republics. The five major river basins of Afghanistan include the following¹ (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Water availability and demand analysis in the Kabul river basin, Afghanistan

(Source Akhtar, F. [2017], (PhD dissertation). University of Bonn. http://​hss.​ulb.​uni-bonn.​de/​2017/​4824/​4824.​pdf)

1. 1.
   The Kabul (Indus) river basin
2. 2.
   The Panj-Amu river basin
3. 3.
   The Northern river basin
4. 4.
   The Hari Rod-Murghab river basin
5. 5.
   The Helmand river basin

Roughly 98% of surface water supplies in Afghanistan are used for agriculture, with the remaining used for domestic and industrial purposes.² Despite this high usage by the agricultural sector, the country remains greatly dependent upon food imports from neighbouring countries to fulfil local consumption. Scholarly research has suggested that this has been exacerbated by irrigation systems operating at below optimal standards.³ Furthermore, the area of land in Afghanistan under irrigation/crop cultivation has not increased a great deal in the last decade.⁴ An increasing population and the consequent increase in water demand for various purposes, along with climate change, pose threats to different sectors which require heightened attention by the authorities to respond to the growing conflicts and crises relevant to water resources. However, there are serious issues that stand in the way of effective water resource management. Institutional short-comings and overlapping jurisdictions and the overall ‘weak state’ context of Afghanistan have stood in the way of sound, research-based, management outcomes. Importantly, the internecine armed conflict that has characterized Afghanistan for four decades has prevented effective governance, development work, and provided the ‘fog of war’ to allow domestic actors and neighbouring countries to extract water unregulated.

Afghanistan has been designated as one of the countries suffering from the most intense physical water scarcity in the world⁵; it is projected to be suffering from extreme water scarcity by 2040.⁶ Climate change scenarios for Afghanistan project worsening of the existing conditions, affecting crops, livestock, access potable water, or for industrial use, and likely also alter the hydrological regime of most of the watersheds across the country. Currently, other than potential impacts of climate change, ground and surface water pollution, poor water resources management and governance lead to inequality, inadequacy and unreliability during irrigation water distribution which results into inefficiency in irrigated agriculture and poor crop-water productivity.⁷ Consequently, there are gaps between water supply and demand, which ultimately causes failure to meet the growing food demand across the country. Water losses occur during conveyance and application affecting agricultural water consumption. But it also affects future industrial and municipal developments, which are deemed to have enhanced water demands. There is thus, heightened scope for conflicts between water users at different reaches of a given watershed. Research has found that most irrigation systems in Afghanistan are experiencing acute water shortages and require attention in terms of management interventions.

Currently, the irrigation water distribution system among farmers located along the different reaches of canals in Afghanistan is supply based rather than crop-water-need based. As a result, there are structural inequalities in irrigation systems within each canals’ network, as a result of which downstream farmers are not allocated longer irrigation times while the farmers located at the canal upstream divert more water and grow mostly cash crops which creates inequality and results into conflicts among farmers at different reaches. The presence of such inequalities in irrigation systems is supported by consistent reports of higher yields and cash returns for crops grown at the upstream, compared to those located at the downstream.⁸ Further challenges and issues are elaborated more comprehensively in the following section.

Challenges to Effective Water Resource Governance

Climate Change

Although some research on climate change and its impacts on natural resources in Afghanistan has been conducted,⁹ analysis has been limited and has not sufficiently captured the intersecting forces at play that will increasingly play out in the context of a changing climate.¹⁰ Furthermore, previous research has found that the projections for climate change in Afghanistan must be bolstered considerably, as there is a historical dearth of meteorological data.¹¹ Recent studies have been able to point to a growing nexus of environmental and social forces being exacerbated by shifting climate trends. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), about 80% of conflicts in Afghanistan are related to resources like land and water and to food insecurity.¹² The ability of developing countries to mitigate the effects of climate change is an increasing area of study.¹³

Under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5), Afghanistan is projected to warm by approximately 1.5°C by 2050, followed by a period of stabilization and then additional warming of approximately 2.5°C until 2100.¹⁴ However, under the more pessimistic scenario (RCP 8.5) the country will warm by approximately 3°C by 2050, with further warming by up to 7°C by 2100.¹⁵ Under both scenarios higher temperature increases are expected at higher altitudes than the lowlands. In the Central Highlands and the Hindu Kush region, warming over the period from 2021–2050 is projected to range from 1.5 to 1.7°C compared to the base period (1976–2006), while in the lowlands the increase ranges from 1.1 to 1.4°C.¹⁶ The increase of temperature in central highlands will negatively affect the snowfall pattern and amount which will ultimately challenge the amount of w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Emerging Water Scarcity Issues and Challenges in Afghanistan
• Water Management in Bangladesh: Policy Interventions
• Water Issues in Bhutan: Internal Disputes and External Tensions
• The Politics and Policies of Regional Water Management in Southern China
• Mapping the Water Disputes in India: Nature, Issues and Emerging Trends
• Multi-stakeholder Hydropower Disputes and Its Resolutions in Nepal
• Is Pakistan Running Dry?
• Domestic Water Stress, Transboundary Tensions and Disputes
• Back Matter