Mercy Corps, April 2025
An alarming report by Mercy Corps showing that Kabul could become the first modern city to completely run out of water, if there is no urgent, coordinated investment. The organisation says: “Kabul’s water crisis is nearing a tipping point.”
Currently, almost half of the city’s boreholes – the primary source of drinking water for Kabul residents – have dried out and water extraction by far exceeds the natural recharge rate of the city’s three main aquifers. Their level has dropped by up to 30 metres over the past decade alone; and much already before that. One reason is climate change, reducing seasonal meltwater from glaciers ands snowfields on which Kabul is heavily reliant.
If this trend continues, all of Kabul’s aquifers will run dry as early as 2030, posing an existential threat to the city’s seven million inhabitants, three million of which might be acutely displaced.
Furthermore, up to 80 per cent of the city’s groundwater is unsafe, with high levels of sewage, arsenic, and salinity—posing urgent public health risks.
Kabulis are struggling with drinking water affordability, too: “Some households spend up to 30% of their income on water, with over two-thirds incurring water-related debt (and) some private water companies have capitalised on the situation, extracting large amounts of ‘public’ groundwater from their own wells ans selling it back to city’s residents at vastly inflated prices.”
At the same time, funding programmes designed to curb this crisis are “at historic lows”, with 3bn USD Water Sanitation and Hygiene funding frozen, not least after the Trump administration’s crippling of USAID.
The report highlights urgent priorities for humanitarian actors and donors. It also outlines practical, coordinated solutions—including improved water governance and regulation, and renewed investment in strategic infrastructure—to avert a large-scale urban water collapse.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 18 Jun 2025
