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ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan risks losing 40% of its farmland due to the country&#39;s worst drought in decades, a new monitoring report warned. According to the latest Afghanistan Seasonal Monitor from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, the country is experiencing below-average rainfall and above-average temperatures that have triggered soil moisture deficits across the nation, The crisis marks the sixth consecutive year of poor weather conditions. Farmers are abandoning fields as irrigated crops struggle to survive and rain-fed wheat production continues to fall. Northern and central Afghanistan face precipitation deficits of up to 100 millimeters through December 2025, according to the monitor. Water shortages are exacerbating the crisis in these regions, which are seeing widespread crop failures, particularly in wheat farming, with soil moisture at critically low levels. In the northeast and central parts of the country, where rain-fed crops are vital, many farmers are unable to plant or maintain crops. Even irrigated areas are struggling with declining groundwater levels. A survey released in November by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that traditional irrigation systems, such as &quot;qanats&quot;, are failing, forcing farmers to dig deeper wells. Climate change has made droughts more frequent and severe, with above-average temperatures intensifying the situation. Snow water volumes, essential for irrigation, are at their lowest levels in years, the monitor said. Many farmers are seeing their income collapse as 40% of farmland remains unused. Even in irrigated areas, people face difficulties due to water scarcity and climate change. More than 75% of rural households depend on agriculture, and many are struggling with food insecurity, according to the report. The report warned that unless conditions improve, food shortages could worsen, causing higher food prices and economic instability. It predicted that if the situation persists, farmland abandonment and declining crop yields will continue, worsening the crisis for the country&#39;s farmers. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network was established by the US Agency for International Development in 1985 and provides early warning and analysis of acute food insecurity worldwide.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s worst drought in decades has led to widespread crop failures, with severe water shortages exacerbating food insecurity and economic instability, a new report warns.

Afghanistan at risk of losing 40% of farmland in worst drought in decades

TEHRAN: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned in a speech broadcast Friday that the capital, Tehran, may need to be evacuated because of water shortages if it does not rain before the end of the year. &ldquo;If it doesn&rsquo;t rain, we&rsquo;ll have to start rationing water in Tehran between late November and early December,&rdquo; Pezeshkian said in a speech aired on state TV.&ldquo;Even if we do ration it and it still doesn&rsquo;t rain by then, we&rsquo;ll run out of water. We&rsquo;ll have to evacuate Tehran.&rdquo; It was not immediately clear how the capital would be evacuated. Iran as a whole has been affected by dwindling rainfall, but the sprawling megacity of more than 10 million people is particularly vulnerable. On Sunday, the director of the regional water company, Behzad Parsa, warned in state media that there were just two weeks&rsquo; worth of water left in the main reservoir serving Tehran. Meanwhile, the Tasnim News Agency reported that the country&rsquo;s precipitation level this year had reached just 152 millimeters, a 40 percent decline compared with the 57-year average. The agency quoted Mohammad Reza Kavianpour, head of the Water Research Institute, as saying that several provinces &ldquo;experienced a 50 to 80 percent decline in precipitation.&rdquo; He added that storage in the capital&rsquo;s dams in the new water year, which began in late September, was around 250 million cubic meters, roughly half of the 490 million cubic meters recorded in the 2023&ndash;24 water year. &ldquo;We must prepare ourselves for a critical situation,&rdquo; he said, according to Tasnim. Water levels in the reservoirs supplying the capital have fallen to their lowest in decades, according to Mohsen Ardakani, director general of the provincial water company covering Tehran. &ldquo;In the last six months, the population has saved 10 percent of its water consumption,&rdquo; Ardakani said on state TV on Wednesday. &ldquo;If this figure reaches 20 percent, we will be able to ensure a stable water situation for the next one to two months when the rains start again,&rdquo; he added.Winter months in Tehran usually bring rainfall and often snow. A sharp decline in rainfall and reduced dam inflow have deepened the crisis, as Iran faces one of its worst droughts in decades. As a conservation measure, water supplies have reportedly been cut off in several neighborhoods of Tehran in recent months, while outages were frequent throughout the summer. In July and August, two public holidays were declared to save water and energy as power cuts became an almost daily occurrence amid a severe heatwave.

File Photo - Tehran via Wkimedia Commons 

Asia

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned in a speech broadcast Friday that the capital, Tehran, may need to be evacuated because of water shortages if it does not rain before the end of the year.

Iran president warns Tehran may face evacuation due to drought

Reuters

<span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">KABUL: Eight-year-old Noorullah and his twin, Sanaullah, spend their days hauling yellow jerrycans on a wheelbarrow through Kabul&#39;s dusty alleys instead of going to school - an ordeal for one family that reflects Afghanistan&#39;s deepening water crisis. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once supplied with water from their own well, the family of 13 has had to queue at communal taps or pool money for costly water tankers since their supply dried up four years ago. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With climate change increasing the frequency of droughts and erratic rainfall in Afghanistan, aid agencies say Kabul is among the most water-stressed cities in Asia, with shortages fuelling disease, malnutrition and school dropouts. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent Kabul-based research group, in a report this month warned the city&#39;s groundwater could run out by 2030, with other Afghan cities also running dry. The crisis is deepening inequality, as poor families spend up to 30% of their income on tanker water while the wealthy dig ever-deeper private wells. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The twin boys queue with dozens of children at a communal tap, where shoving and shouting often flare into fights as the heat builds. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standing in line for hours <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Noorullah, who has epilepsy, said he once collapsed with a seizure while fetching water. His brother added, &quot;Sometimes we stand in line for three hours. When the heat is too much, we feel dizzy.&quot; <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their father, 42-year-old shopkeeper Assadullah, feels there is no choice. Sitting outside his small shop with empty water barrels stacked nearby, he said, &quot;From morning until evening, my children go for water six or seven times a day.&quot; <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">&quot;Sometimes they cry and say they cannot fetch more, but what else can we do?&quot; <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The shortages have gutted his income too. On a good day, he earns $2&ndash;$3, however, he often closes the shop to help his sons push their loads. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">&quot;Before, we used to receive water through a company. It lasted us three or four days. Now even that option is gone,&quot; he said. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the family&#39;s yard, his wife, Speray, washes dishes in a plastic basin, measuring out each jug. She said her husband has developed a stomach ulcer and she contracted H. pylori, a bacterial infection linked to unsafe water. &quot;I boil water twice before giving it to our children, but it is still a struggle,&quot; she said. Snowmelt once replenished Kabul&#39;s water basin <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kabul&#39;s population has surged past six million in two decades, but investment in water infrastructure has lagged. War wrecked much of the supply network, leaving residents dependent on wells or costly tankers, and those are failing. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just a few streets from Assadullah, 52-year-old community representative Mohammad Asif Ayubi said more than 380 households in the neighbourhood faced the same plight. &quot;Even wells 120 metres (nearly 400 feet) deep have dried up,&quot; he said, a depth once considered certain to reach water. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Droughts and erratic rainfall patterns have limited the snowmelt that once replenished Kabul&#39;s water basin and left the riverbed dry for much of the year. &quot;Kabul is among the most water-stressed areas,&quot; said Najibullah Sadid, a water researcher based in Germany. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UN envoy Roza Otunbayeva warned the UN Security Council earlier this month that droughts, climate shocks and migration risk turning Kabul into the first modern capital to run out of water &quot;within years, not decades&quot;. <span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For Assadullah, the wish is simple. &quot;If we had enough water, my children wouldn&#39;t have to run around all day,&quot; he said. &quot;They could go to school. Our whole life would change.&quot;

A girl carries empty barrels to fetch water, amid serious water crisis in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 28, 2025. 

Eight-year-old Noorullah and his twin, Sanaullah, spend their days hauling yellow jerrycans on a wheelbarrow through Kabul's dusty alleys instead of going to school - an ordeal for one family that reflects Afghanistan's deepening water crisis.

Articles tagged with "drought"

Afghanistan at risk of losing 40% of farmland in worst drought in decades

Iran president warns Tehran may face evacuation due to drought

Water crisis in Kabul sends children from classrooms to water queues