Kabul is running out of water. If present trends continue, the capital of Afghanistan could run completely dry by 2030. There are several reasons for this. The first is climate change: there is less snowmelt to feed the city’s aquifers. The second is aging infrastructure: pipelines are decrepit or, in some cases, non-existent. The third is management: in a city reeling from water shortages, people are drilling their own wells in yards and basements, with no regulation from the de facto Taliban government. The fourth is population pressure: the city has grown sixfold in the last twenty years. And over the last year alone, millions of Afghans who had fled to neighboring Iran and Pakistan have been forcibly returned, adding to already substantial resource pressures.
This is causing extreme stress on the people of Kabul, who, according to my guest today Marianna von Zahn, are now spending about 30% of their income on water. Marianna von Zahn is the Afghanistan Country Representative and Director of Programs for Mercy Corps, which recently released a report on the dire water crisis in Kabul and will soon release a similar report on water shortages in other parts of the country.
We kick off by discussing the scale and impact of the crisis in Kabul before having a longer conversation about what can be done to mitigate it. This includes exploring ways the international community can work with Taliban authorities to stave off an impending humanitarian catastrophe.
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