Afghanistan: Where Water Means Food
Publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
Date: 2018
Topics: Livelihoods, Renewable Resources
Countries: Afghanistan
Farmers have been relying for centuries on Hari Rud (“Rud” means “river” in Persian) to irrigate their land. But rivers’ basins and watersheds have suffered greatly from uncontrolled water exploitation, overgrazing, deforestation and a gradual degradation of the environment. Decades of civil unrest have also made it impossible to properly maintain and repair the country’s water systems. To address this, FAO, the Government and its partners have been working to restore and upgrade 17 water irrigation canals, covering 10,000 hectares of land in western Afghanistan’s Pashtun Zarqhun district.