ADB to launch integrated water resources project in the west

About 400,000 low-income Afghans stand to benefit from a water management project for country's western basins thanks to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) assistance package totalling US $75 million, the bank said on Wednesday. The project will help boost agricultural production and rural livelihoods in the Hari Rud River Basin, which includes parts of Herat province and the Murghab River Basin located in Badghis, Ghowr and Herat provinces, the ADB said. "Given the importance of water to livelihoods in the Hari Rud River Basin, improving integrated water resource management is critical to the area's development," said Thomas Panella, an ADB water specialist from the bank’s headquarters in Manila. The project will improve irrigation, and promote more efficient agricultural practices to increase productivity in an area that contains some of Afghanistan's most extensive and intensively farmed fields. "Irrigation systems can be rationalised to operate more efficiently and increase the total irrigated area, while water allocation also needs to be rationalised,“ Panella noted. Poor irrigation directly limits yields of wheat, which is the primary crop grown in the western region of Afghanistan. Farmers cite lack of water as the primary constraint on agricultural productivity. The project will provide for the rehabilitation and upgrading of 55,000 to 65,000 ha of traditional irrigation systems. Local communities developed low-tech irrigation systems to provide water for crops, livestock and domestic use more than 500 years ago. But the systems deteriorated due to neglect during decades of war and civil unrest, which have impeded routine maintenance and repair. The project will also enhance capacity among staff at the Ministry of Energy and Water, which handles irrigation, as well as the mirabs who are the traditional community managers of irrigation systems responsible for overseeing system management and operation and maintenance, the ADB said. Taking into account this project, the ADB provided $235 million in loans and grants to Afghanistan in 2005, fulfilling a commitment to the country made in 2004. Of this total, $100 million was in the form of grants and the remainder in highly concessional loans.