More than one billion people around the world have no access to safe, clean drinking water, and over 2.5 billion do not have adequate sanitation service.
Though water covers two-thirds of the surface of the earth, but fresh water estimated 0.002% on the earth.
In Afghanistan, as experts say, the water table has dropped unprecedentedly, and thousands of settlements and farms face sever water crisis.
According to the recentreports of ministry of energy and water, the total volume until a few years ago had been 76 billion cubic meters but this dropped by 10 billion cubic meters in recent times.The ministry reports emphasizethat the drop in water was extremely worrying and that if the situation continues – with people using too much water – the water resources will drop another five billion cubic meters within the next five years.
The government need to make bigger plans to control Afghanistan’s waters and these plans should be implemented in the framework of a clear water policy.
As experts believe, If the situation continues in this way, by 2030 we will face a lack of water in our river basins and we will also face shortage inunderground water.
However, the issue which has raised now, follows several decades of steady droughts across Afghanistan’s northern, northeastern, central and western provinces which already led to a large-scale of food crisis but now it is the high time to take a strategic action.
The good news for now, is that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently announced that they plan to launch a two-year water distribution program to the people in 27 provinces across Afghanistan.The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) has said that the UNICEF will provide $43 million to implement the program in 2018 and 2019 to help Afghan children and their families get access to safe drinking water.
The Government of Finland has contributed $2.4 million to support UNICEF’s program in Afghanistan to provide children and families with safe water, sanitation and hygiene, according to UNICEF’s statement.
According to experts, the amount of rain and snowfall in Afghanistan makes 57 billion cubic meters of water annually but due to lack of proper management only between 30 to 35 percent of this water can be used in Afghanistan and the rest ends up in foreign countries.