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Cycle 4 (2015 Deadline)
Impacts of climate change on transboundary water treaties/sharing: a case study of Kabul River basin, Afghanistan
PI: Fahima Sadeqinezhad, AZMA the Technical Vocational Private Institute, Afghanistan
U.S. Partner: Devendra M. Amatya, USDA Forest Service Center for Forested Wetlands Research
Project Dates: December 2015 - September 2020
Project Overview
One of the biggest challenges to mankind is climate change in the twenty-first century. The escalation in the frequency and severity of natural disasters and other extreme climate phenomena has been widely discussed in many countries around the world. Responding to climate change requires not only efforts from individual countries but also joint actions on a global scale for both mitigation and adaptation. This project will explore the impacts of climate change on transboundary flows to quantify the required environmental flows for healthy ecosystems, hydropower exports, and irrigated agriculture for the Kabul river basin. The Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) method considering Range of Variability Analysis (RVA) will be used to estimate environmental flow requirements (EFR). Since maintaining natural flow variability is crucial in preserving native riverine biota and river ecosystem integrity, the RVA results will be used as a key reference for evaluating EFR.Maintaining environmental flows of a river means reducing the water demand of one or more sectors to allocate for other ecological requirements, including the biota. Keeping this in perspective, the reservoir simulation technique will be applied to operate the reservoir for hydropower purposes by using HEC-ReSim, a public domain model for reservoir system simulation developed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Finally, alternative mitigation measures will be suggested to reduce the impacts of allocating environmental flows on irrigation and hydroelectric demands. A dry year conservation zone will be developed to reduce irrigation shortages caused by environmental flow consideration. Additionally, this study will demonstrate how sustainable water sharing agreement can be achieved by linking transboundary flows to hydropower exports, irrigated agriculture, and environmental flow demands.
This project relates to USAID’s aimed at focusing investments and identifying priorities within the wider role that water and watershed management play in the fields of energy, conflict, climate change, education, biodiversity, ecosystems, and economic growth. This strategy specifically endorses the principles and proven approaches of integrated water resources management and encourages the use of all appropriate technologies and tools in achieving those objectives. Besides its scientific objectives with regard to water resource management, this PEER project is also designed to help strengthen the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan by reducing the potential for conflict between the two countries on water treaties or resource sharing. Both countries can use and share the water meeting hydropower and irrigated agriculture needs, as well as environmental flow demands.
Overall Summary of Activities
The Kabul River Basin exhibits the unusual riparian circumstance in that Afghanistan and Pakistan are both down and upstream of one another, deterring each from arguing for absolute sovereignty over water on their territory, as this traditional upstream position would then function to their detriment in the downstream position. This characteristic of the KRB is an opportunity for the riparian states to negotiate and cooperate. Nonetheless, distrust and capacity weaknesses have created a complex situation in the basin in terms of mutual utilization.
The findings of this project reveal that the countries will not reach the state of cooperation over the water resources of the basin unless the distrust and capacity weakness challenges are overcome. Furthermore, the project-by-project approach to negotiations are deadlocked in the basin and, therefore, it is required to shift from such a traditional approach towards enlargement of the basket of benefits. The emphasis should be on benefit sharing rather than physical water sharing.
Another important finding of this project is that Afghanistan has shown tangible political efforts and willingness to alleviate the ongoing disputes and improve mutual cooperation. This project has formulated a step-by-step conflict transformation process framework, which may transform the existing conflicts to sustainable cooperation. The framework is formulated in a manner to move the topic of talks from rights to benefits. This framework can be widely used as a decision-making tool for potentially resolving both technical as well as political issues.
Finally, the role of the international community as facilitators and mediators for the transformation process is vital. In the absence of donor and international support, there may not be a willingness to successfully implement the formulated framework of transformation. This was seen throughout the project as the project team struggled to secure accurate data across borders. It is highly recommended that the needs on both sides of the basin be identified and analyzed for benefit sharing and enlarging the basket of benefits.
In addition to the overall frameworks, the project team was able to conduct numerous trainings and workshops on water management. Starting in 2016, more than 1000 students from private and government universities from Herat and Kabul were trained in different software related to water management and climate change. Furthermore, over 100 participants comprised of office staff, lecturers, and professors from the Hari-Rud Murghab river basin Herat office and the Herat University Civil Engineering Department were trained. This was completed through over 35 workshops, seminars and training courses organized by AZMA Vocational Technical Institute for students, government staff in the Ministry of Energy And Water and university professors.
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