Climate Change, Poor Governance, and War Push City of Six Million Toward Collapse
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Kabul, a city of over six million people, could become the world’s first major capital to run out of water by 2030, according to a sobering report by Mercy Corps. The city’s worsening water crisis, driven by the effects of climate change, rampant over-extraction, and prolonged governance failures, is rapidly approaching a tipping point.
The report reveals that groundwater levels have dropped by 25 to 30 meters over the past decade. Water extraction now exceeds natural recharge by an alarming 44 million cubic meters annually—an unsustainable gap that threatens to deplete Kabul’s aquifers entirely within five years. If this happens, as many as three million residents could be displaced.
UNICEF warns that nearly half of Kabul’s bore wells—its main source of drinking water—are already dry. The water that remains is increasingly unsafe: up to 80 percent of the city’s groundwater is contaminated with sewage, arsenic, and salinity, according to the report.
Experts trace the roots of the crisis to a mix of factors: rapid urban population growth, climate-driven drought, and weak institutional oversight. Kabul’s population has ballooned from under one million in 2001 to more than six million today, a surge driven in part by decades of US-led conflict that forced internal migration while weakening rural governance structures.
“This crisis is not a future possibility—it’s a present reality,” said Assem Mayar, a water resource management expert and former lecturer at Kabul Polytechnic University. “The continued imbalance between water extraction and natural replenishment makes the projection credible and deeply concerning.”
The question now is whether Afghan authorities—and the international community—have the capacity and will to intervene before it’s too late.