Water Knowledge in Afghanistan: Weak but Growing Stronger

Oct 26, 2017 | John Shroder and Sher Jan Ahmadzai
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Water is absolutely critical to woefully arid Afghanistan, yet few people really know very much about their precious fluid.  The natural physics and the different chemistry of water is complicated but well understood by scientists. Other aspects of the use of water resources are yet to be explained for those who are not scientists or don’t have interest in the scientific aspect of water.  New efforts are underway to help multiple levels of Afghan society to better understand all the hidden aspects of water in its many hiding places where it may be misused, over-used, or used up until it is all gone, or filled with garbage and poisons so that no one can use it without special precautions. 

The past four decades of fairly unceasing war in Afghanistan have largely destroyed not only many of the water-delivery systems in the country, but also the water-educational means by which young children to older university students can learn all that they need to know about their life-blood water.  At the same time, the increase of the gas  –  carbon dioxide (CO2) – which comes mainly from the burning of coal, oil, and gas all over the world for the past several hundred years, has accumulated in the air that everyone breathes. This increasing accumulation of CO2allows sunlight to pass through the air easily in one direction down to Earth, but the heat that the sun produces then is trapped and cannot go back out through the air again.