This city is on track to run out of water by 2030. For many residents, that day is already here

Shazia knows what life will be like in a major city that’s run out of water because she’s already living that reality — and it’s unbearable.

The 34-year-old lives in the Khair Khana neighborhood of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul with her three children and her husband, who ekes out a living as a street vendor. They have no running water and can’t afford to buy it from the water tankers that often outnumber cars on the city streets.

Every day she and her kids must walk to a local mosque and wait in hour-long lines to fill buckets from a hand pump, before heading back with their heavy loads. Her back aches and she hates having to drag her kids out after school, “but we have no choice,” she said.

Kabul is on track to be the first modern city to run out of water, and could do so as soon as 2030, according to a recent report from the nonprofit Prosper Global. But for Shazia, and many other residents across this fast-expanding city, that day is already here. They are on the frontlines of a spiraling urban water crisis that isn’t confined to Kabul.

Cities across the world — from Corpus Christi, Texas , to Iran’s capital Tehran — are teetering on the edge of water shortages so severe that residents are bracing for a “ day zero ,” the point at which taps run dry for large parts of the city.

Their crises tend to follow familiar beats: Booming populations colliding with insufficient, underfunded water infrastructure. Beneath it all hums the climate crisis, driving hotter, drier weather and pushing the water cycle off balance .

Of all the urban areas facing day zero, Kabul’s situation may be starkest. It’s one of the fastest-growing cities, located in one of the most climate-vulnerable countries. Afghanistan has also suffered from decades of conflict and global aid has all but dried up since the return of Taliban rule in 2021.

Kabul is staring down a “human catastrophe,” said Mohd Faizee, a professor at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. “We have only a limited window of time.”

Those who want to understand what the future of water looks like in our changing world should look to Kabul.

Sayed Hassib/Reuters

On the streets of Kabul, water is a huge topic of conversation, said Mirza Jan, who lives in the city’s Taimani neighborhood. Everyone is affected.

When Jan’s family bought their house in 1990, they could pull up water by hand in a bucket from a shallow well. Over the years, he has had to dig the well down farther and farther as it kept drying up. It’s now more than 700 feet deep, an expensive endeavor only possible because of money sent by his two sons who live in the US.

As groundwater shrinks, those like Jan who can afford the upfront cost keep digging deeper; those who can’t rely on expensive tanker water or hand pumps at mosques. None of these options are sustainable. “It is an invisible catastrophe in the making,” Jan said, “the city will soon run completely out of water.”

Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

Kabul should not be water scarce. Sprawled across a wide valley, it is framed by the Hindu Kush Himalaya.

The rugged peaks of Afghanistan’s section of this vast mountain range act as water towers. Melting snow and glacial ice feed the Kabul River, which cuts through the city, and recharge aquifers, which form the backbone of the city’s water system, supplying 80% of residents. Just a fifth have access to piped water.

Over the past decade, however, groundwater levels have plummeted nearly 100 feet, according to Prosper Global. Water is now being pumped out far faster than it can be replenished, leaving an estimated shortfall of more than 1.55 billion cubic feet a year . Nearly half the city’s boreholes have dried up. “In many neighbourhoods, water has already run out,” Faizee said

It’s the result of soaring demand, from homes, greenhouses and businesses. But the human-caused climate crisis also plays a role. The country has endured six consecutive years of drought, with last year one of its most severe. Snowfall reached a 25-year low in Afghanistan at the end of last year, according to UN data, and it’s part of a long-term trend which has seen snow levels fall by nearly 20% between 2014 and 2020.

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When the rain does fall, Kabul’s hard, impermeable surfaces mean the water doesn’t replenish aquifers, but instead sweeps through the city as flash floods, destroying homes, killing people and rolling away.

Kabul’s vanishing groundwater isn’t a crisis, said Najibullah Sadid, a Germany-based water and environment researcher with the Afghanistan Water and Environment Professionals Network. That word implies a short-term shock to the system. He prefers the term “water bankruptcy” because “you’re running out of a resource which is not recoverable anymore.”

Said Agha and his family live in an apartment in the densely packed Kabul neighborhood of Karte Naw. He makes decent money working for a company, but the city’s water crisis spares few.

His building is home to 14 families but relies on one well that dries up every few months. Most of the time they only have running water for short bursts. Sometimes it’s off for days.

Agha is convinced the city’s aquifers will soon run dry and he doesn’t know what to do. His job is tied to Kabul and leaving would be a “calamity,” he said.

Kabul is expanding vertically, with multistory buildings stacked on top of existing structures. Instead of one family on a plot of land, there are now dozens and it’s dramatically increasing pressure on already strained water resources, Sadid said.

Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

Kabul is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Experts estimate its population has ballooned from less than 1 million in 2001 to 6 million today.

People have gravitated there for different reasons. Many returned after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, in the hopes of better opportunities. More recently, there’s been a surge due to the large-scale expulsion of Afghans from neighboring Iran and Pakistan amid increasing regional tensions.

People are also migrating to the city from rural regions, in search of jobs and sometimes, ironically, a better water situation.

For the last two years, Asadullah Ahmadi has been spending at least 150 Afghanis ($2.35) a day, a big chunk of his income, to get enough water for his family of seven. Even then, the water they get is dirty and must be boiled. “It is not sustainable, and I don’t know how long we can afford this,” he said.

Running out of water is expensive. Many in Kabul, like Ahmadi, are forced to rely on tanked in water from private companies. Some of these companies are motivated to help people, but others are simply looking for big profits, said Marianna von Zahn, the former Afghanistan director of programs at Prosper Global. They pump groundwater and sell it back to residents at inflated prices.

Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images

The impacts are most acute for residents already facing high levels of poverty, said a UN official based in Afghanistan. That’s “the most dangerous part” of the situation, they said.

Poorer people are spending up to 30% of their total income on water, analysts estimate. The UN considers affordable water costs to be 3% or less of household income.

To add to the dire situation, up to 80% of large parts of the city’s groundwater is contaminated, both by sewage and by naturally occurring substances such as arsenic. It’s “another hidden crisis.” said Jalal Naser Faqiryar, a Netherlands-based water specialist and former director general of Kabul River Basin.

Kabul residents have few options. Ahmadi fears he’ll need to abandon his home but “even if I do leave, where can I go in search of water? The whole city is suffering from this problem.”

Some may leave Kabul altogether, but water scarcity is common in many parts of Afghanistan. And leaving the country is fraught with difficulty. Neighboring Iran and Pakistan are forcibly returning Afghans, and further afield in Europe, fervent anti-immigration rhetoric makes the situation very challenging.

“There’s not really anywhere to go,” the UN official said.

There are plans to help alleviate Kabul’s impending catastrophe by harnessing surface water.

The Shahtoot Dam, which would be built on a tributary of the Kabul River, could provide water for more than 2 million people in the city. India agreed to fund it, but the project stalled after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

The Taliban insists it’s going ahead imminently but construction has yet to begin , and it faces steep opposition from Pakistan, which claims the dam will significantly reduce the water it receives from the Kabul River.

Another plan is a 124-mile pipeline that would transport water from the Panjshir River to Kabul, to supply 2 million city residents. But it’s still at the survey and design stage.

Even if these projects move ahead, they would take years to construct and would also require treatment plants and a proper network to bring the water into people’s homes. “The Taliban do not have the capacity to deal with a problem this big, and they know it,” Faizee said.

Kabul’s water situation is “heading toward a serious crisis,” said Matiullah Abid, the spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water. He said the ministry is acting, including by constructing dams and thousands of wells in the city to recharge groundwater, controlling commercial water use and completing the Shah wa Arous Dam in 2024, designed to supply 20,000 households.

There are many ongoing efforts to tackle the water problem but “these measures require time and resources,” Abid added.

The Taliban, itself, is an added complication in Kabul’s water story. It is not recognized as a legitimate government by most of the international community due to its human rights abuses, including stripping away the rights of women and girls .

As a result, international aid has plummeted, even as Kabul and other parts Afghanistan edge toward water disaster. The world is “watching the crisis unfold” instead of preventing it now, Faizee said. “Later, it will pay for the emergency response, such as water trucking, disease outbreaks and displacement.”

For now, people will “continue to suffer silently,” said Susanne Schmeier, professor of water cooperation, law, and diplomacy at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands.

Kabul shows what a day zero looks like. It’s not every single tap suddenly running dry, it’s a slow-moving catastrophe that sees residents forced into ever-harder decisions.

Do they sink money into expensive, deeper wells that will inevitably run dry, or rely on private water tankers that push them further into poverty? Do they make arduous, daily journeys to hand pumps, taking kids away from schoolwork and play, while also risking their physical health and safety? Or, do they move away from the city and their jobs, and risk finding themselves in an equally bad water situation?

What’s happening offers a snapshot of what may be coming for many other cities, as climate change meets urban water systems built for a very different world.

For Kabul residents, it’s trauma on top of trauma. “Years ago, we were running away from bombs and rockets in Kabul,” said city resident Said Agha. “Now we may have to flee because of a lack of water.”

莎齐亚知道在缺水的大城市里生活会是什么样子，因为她已经生活在那种现实中——而且这种现实令人难以忍受。

这位34岁的女子和她的三个孩子以及靠摆摊为生的丈夫住在阿富汗首都喀布尔的凯尔哈纳区。他们家没有自来水，也买不起水，因为街上送水车的数量往往比汽车还多。

每天，她和孩子们都必须步行到当地的清真寺，排一个小时的队，才能从手压泵那里打满水桶，然后背着沉重的水桶返回。她腰酸背痛，也讨厌放学后还要拖着孩子们出门，“但我们别无选择，”她说。

根据非营利组织“繁荣全球”（Prosper Global）最近的一份报告，喀布尔很可能成为首个面临水资源枯竭的现代化城市，最早可能在2030年就出现这种情况。但对于沙齐亚以及这座快速扩张的城市中的许多其他居民来说，这一天已经到来。他们正处于日益严重的城市水危机的最前线，而这场危机并非喀布尔独有。

从德克萨斯州科珀斯克里斯蒂到伊朗首都德黑兰，世界各地的城市都面临着严重的缺水危机，居民们正在为“零日”做准备，届时城市的大部分地区将断水。

它们的危机往往遵循着相似的模式：人口激增与不足且资金匮乏的水利基础设施发生冲突。而这一切的背后，是气候危机的阴影，它导致气候更加炎热干燥，并打破了水循环的平衡。

在所有面临“零日危机”的城市地区中，喀布尔的处境或许最为严峻。它是世界上发展最快的城市之一，而阿富汗又是全球最易受气候变化影响的国家之一。此外，阿富汗还饱受数十年冲突之苦，自2021年塔利班重新掌权以来，全球援助几乎完全枯竭。

联合国大学水、环境与健康研究所教授莫哈末·法伊兹表示，喀布尔正面临一场“人道主义灾难”。“我们只有有限的时间窗口。”

想要了解在不断变化的世界中水资源的未来走向，就应该关注喀布尔。

Sayed Hassib/路透社

住在喀布尔泰马尼区的米尔扎·詹说，在喀布尔街头，水是人们热议的话题。每个人都受到影响。

1990年，扬一家买下这栋房子时，他们还能用桶从一口浅井里打水。这些年来，随着井水不断干涸，他不得不把井越挖越深。如今，这口井已经超过700英尺深，这项耗资巨大的工程全靠他住在美国的两个儿子寄来的钱才得以实现。

随着地下水位下降，像简这样有能力承担前期费用的人只能不断向下挖掘；而那些负担不起的人则无法依赖昂贵的水罐车供水或清真寺的手动水泵。这些方法都不可持续。“这是一场正在酝酿的隐形灾难，”简说，“这座城市很快就会彻底断水。”

路透社/Mohammad Ismail

喀布尔不应该缺水。它横跨一个宽阔的山谷，背靠兴都库什-喜马拉雅山脉。

阿富汗境内这片广袤山脉的险峻山峰宛如一座座水塔。融化的冰雪汇入喀布尔河，这条河流穿城而过，并补充着地下含水层。这些含水层构成了城市供水系统的支柱，为80%的居民提供用水。然而，只有五分之一的居民能够用上自来水。

然而，据Prosper Global的数据显示，过去十年间，地下水位下降了近100英尺。如今，地下水的抽取速度远远超过了补给速度，估计每年缺水超过15.5亿立方英尺。该市近一半的钻井已经干涸。“在许多社区，水已经用完了，”费兹说道。

这主要是由于家庭、温室和企业的需求激增所致。但人为造成的气候危机也起到了一定作用。阿富汗已连续六年遭受干旱，去年更是干旱程度最为严重的年份之一。根据联合国的数据，阿富汗去年年底的降雪量降至25年来的最低水平，而这只是长期趋势的一部分，2014年至2020年间，阿富汗的降雪量下降了近20%。

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当雨水落下时，喀布尔坚硬、不透水的地表意味着雨水无法补充地下水，而是以山洪暴发的形式席卷城市，摧毁房屋，造成人员伤亡，然后迅速蔓延。

阿富汗水与环境专业人士网络的德国水与环境研究员纳吉布拉·萨迪德表示，喀布尔地下水的枯竭并非危机。他认为“危机”一词暗示着系统面临的短期冲击。他更倾向于使用“水资源破产”一词，因为“你正在耗尽一种无法再恢复的资源”。

阿加一家住在喀布尔人口密集的卡尔特瑙区的一间公寓里。他在一家公司工作，收入还不错，但这座城市的水危机几乎影响到了所有人。

他所在的楼里住着14户人家，但只有一口井，而且这口井每隔几个月就会干涸。大多数时候，他们只有短暂的自来水供应，有时甚至会停水好几天。

阿加确信这座城市的地下蓄水层很快就会枯竭，他不知道该怎么办。他说，他的工作与喀布尔息息相关，离开那里将是一场“灾难”。

萨迪德说，喀布尔正在向上扩张，多层建筑层层叠叠地建在现有建筑之上。以前一块地上只有一户人家，现在却有几十户，这极大地加剧了本已紧张的水资源压力。

萨贾德·侯赛因/法新社/盖蒂图片社

喀布尔是世界上发展最快的城市之一。专家估计，其人口已从2001年的不足100万激增至如今的600万。

人们出于各种原因涌向那里。许多人在2001年塔利班政权垮台后返回阿富汗，希望寻求更好的发展机会。而近年来，由于邻国伊朗和巴基斯坦大规模驱逐阿富汗人，以及地区紧张局势加剧，阿富汗人涌入阿富汗的人数激增。

人们也从农村地区迁往城市，寻找工作，有时，具有讽刺意味的是，也是为了寻求更好的用水条件。

过去两年，阿萨杜拉·艾哈迈迪每天至少要花费150阿富汗尼（约合2.35美元），这占了他收入的很大一部分，才能买到足够一家七口使用的水。即便如此，他们得到的水也很脏，必须煮沸才能饮用。“这样下去不行，我不知道我们还能负担多久，”他说。

缺水代价高昂。像艾哈迈迪这样的喀布尔居民，被迫依赖私营公司提供的罐装水。繁荣全球组织（Prosper Global）前阿富汗项目主管玛丽安娜·冯·扎恩表示，有些公司确实出于帮助民众的动机，但另一些公司则纯粹是为了牟取暴利。他们抽取地下水，然后以高价卖回给居民。

Wakil Kohsar/法新社/盖蒂图片社

一位驻阿富汗的联合国官员表示，这些影响对本已生活在高度贫困中的居民最为严重。他们说，这是局势中“最危险的部分”。

分析人士估计，贫困人口在水上的支出高达其总收入的30%。联合国认为，可负担的水费应占家庭收入的3%或更低。

雪上加霜的是，该市大部分地区高达80%的地下水受到污染，污染源既有污水，也有砷等天然存在的物质。荷兰水资源专家、喀布尔河流域前总干事贾拉勒·纳赛尔·法基里亚尔表示，这是“另一场隐蔽的危机”。

喀布尔居民的选择寥寥无几。艾哈迈迪担心自己不得不放弃家园，但他又说：“即使我离开，我又能去哪里找水呢？整个城市都面临着这个问题。”

有些人可能会彻底离开喀布尔，但阿富汗许多地区普遍缺水。而且，离开阿富汗困难重重。邻国伊朗和巴基斯坦正在强制遣返阿富汗人，而更远的欧洲，强烈的反移民言论也使局势变得异常复杂。

“我们真的无处可去，”这位联合国官员说。

已有计划通过利用地表水来帮助缓解喀布尔即将发生的灾难。

沙图特大坝计划建在喀布尔河的一条支流上，建成后可为该市200多万人提供用水。印度曾同意为其提供资金，但该项目在塔利班于2021年重新掌权后陷入停滞。

塔利班坚称大坝即将开工，但建设尚未开始，而且遭到巴基斯坦的强烈反对，巴基斯坦声称大坝将大幅减少其从喀布尔河获得的水量。

另一项计划是修建一条124英里长的输水管道，将潘杰希尔河的水输送到喀布尔，为该市200万居民供水。但该计划目前仍处于勘测和设计阶段。

即使这些项目得以推进，也需要数年时间才能建成，而且还需要污水处理厂和完善的供水管网才能将水输送到居民家中。“塔利班没有能力应对如此巨大的问题，他们自己也心知肚明，”费兹说道。

阿富汗能源和水利部发言人马蒂乌拉·阿比德表示，喀布尔的水资源状况“正走向严重危机”。他指出，该部正在采取行动，包括在喀布尔修建水坝和数千口水井以补充地下水，控制商业用水，并计划于2024年完成沙阿瓦鲁斯大坝的建设，该大坝的设计供水量为2万户家庭。

阿比德补充说，目前有很多措施正在努力解决水资源问题，但“这些措施需要时间和资源”。

塔利班本身就使喀布尔的水资源问题更加复杂。由于其侵犯人权的行为，包括剥夺妇女和女童的权利，国际社会大多数成员不承认其合法政府地位。

因此，国际援助大幅减少，而喀布尔和阿富汗其他地区正逼近水危机。费兹说，世界“眼睁睁地看着危机蔓延”，而不是立即采取行动阻止它。“以后，他们将为紧急应对措施买单，例如运水、应对疾病爆发和安置流离失所者。”

荷兰代尔夫特水教育学院 (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education) 水合作、法律和外交教授苏珊娜·施迈尔 (Susanne Schmeier) 表示，目前人们将“继续默默承受痛苦”。

喀布尔展现了“零日”的景象。这并非指所有水龙头突然断水，而是一场缓慢蔓延的灾难，迫使居民做出越来越艰难的抉择。

他们是该把钱投入昂贵且终将干涸的深井，还是该依赖私人运水车，从而进一步陷入贫困？他​​们是该每天跋涉到手压泵取水，耽误孩子们的学习和玩耍，同时还危及自身的健康和安全？还是该离开城市和工作岗位，却又冒着陷入同样糟糕的用水困境的风险？

目前的情况预示着许多其他城市未来可能面临的局面，因为气候变化会与为截然不同的世界而设计的城市供水系统相遇。

对喀布尔居民来说，这无疑是雪上加霜。“几年前，我们还在躲避喀布尔的炸弹和火箭弹，”居民赛义德·阿加说，“现在，我们可能又要因为缺水而被迫逃离家园。”