Greening the Deserts
Agricultural Expansion in South West Afghanistan
Desert areas of southwestern Afghanistan are undergoing dramatic change. Over the past couple of decades, these areas have been transformed by households that have moved into these desert areas either by capturing or purchasing what was once and to many still remains ‘Government land’.
Between 2003 and 2016 agriculture in the desert areas increased by more than 300,000 hectares, an area approximately four times the size of New York city. This area supports up to 2.2 million people, the majority of whom have settled there over the last ten years. Analysis of satellite imagery from early 2018 shows that this dramatic pattern of human settlement and expansion of agriculture in these desert areas continues to the present day.
For decades, the agricultural productivity of southwest Afghanistan has been limited to the irrigated lands fed by the river systems in the region, most notably the Argandab and Helmand rivers. The Karez systems of subterranean water supply and rain fed agriculture made up the mix of alternative water delivery systems in the area.
Between 2006 and 2014 increasing numbers of households came to these former desert areas driven by population pressure, the ensuing fighting between ISAF and the Taliban, as well as by coercive efforts to ban opium poppy by the government of Afghanistan and its foreign backers. Agricultural practice in these desert areas was then principally enabled by drawing water through deep tube wells to irrigate established fields. The pumps that drew this water were fueled by diesel, an expense that significantly limited the amount of water households would draw, impacting the extent and nature of the crops that were subsequently cultivated.
Since 2014, the vast majority of these households have adopted solar technology to significantly reduce diesel input costs. As a consequence, agricultural production in this area is both expanding and diversifying, driving increases in the areas of opium poppy cultivation, along with other crops.
In just three years between 2013 and 2016, the area of agriculture in southwest Afghanistan increased by a further 150,000 hectares, an area approximately two times the size of New York city.
At the time of writing, Alcis has not completed the satellite imagery analysis for the measurement of the area of agriculture in 2017 and 2018, but it is clear from imagery collected over the last 2 years that this expansion of agriculture in these desert areas has continued at significant pace.
A good proxy indicator for this continued expansion is the increase in the number of household water reservoirs. Alcis’ recent short report showed that between 2013 and 2016 the number of these reservoirs increased from negligible levels to over 14,000 reservoirs. However between 2016 and 2018, the number has increased by a further 36,000 to over 50,000 reservoirs, pointing to this further considerable expansion and diversification of agriculture in these areas.
For more information on this current dynamic, please see a report entitled Still Water Runs Deep: Illicit Poppy and the Transformation of the Deserts of Southwest Afghanistan, recently released by The Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), written by David Mansfield with support from OSDR and Alcis.
More information can as well be found in this report entitled Draining the Deserts of Afghanistan by Alcis, David Mansfield and OSDR.
If you liked this article please 👏 and follow us. If you want to be kept in the loop with future publications subscribe to our newsletter here
