Integrated water resources management in an insecure river basin: a case study of Helmand River Basin, Afghanistan

B.J.m Goes, S.E. Howarth, R.B. Wardlaw, I.R. Hancock and U.N. Parajuli

International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2016, vol. 32, issue 1, 3-25

Abstract: The Helmand River Basin is a closed river basin in (semi)arid southern Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Irrigation is by far the largest surface water use. Two of the three main rivers have large dams that regulate river flow for irrigation and hydropower. Water management in the basin faces a number of challenges, among which are insecurity, collapse of the river flow monitoring network in the Afghan part of the basin in 1980, inefficient operation and maintenance of existing water infrastructure, many drought years since 1999, reduced upstream water storage due to siltation of reservoirs, and a possible future reduction in snow storage as a result of a predicted temperature rise. The paper presents: (1) an overview of water resources and water management in the Helmand River Basin, where data are scarce and difficult to access; (2) a description of innovative methods used to generate simulated flow data for the basin, including the use of globally gridded data sets; (3) a discussion of how the reservoirs could be operated in light of irrigation and hydropower demand; and (4) a discussion on strengthening the transboundary cooperation between Afghanistan and Iran.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07900627.2015.1012661 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cijwxx:v:32:y:2016:i:1:p:3-25

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cijw20

DOI: 10.1080/07900627.2015.1012661

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Water Resources Development is currently edited by Cecilia Tortajada

More articles in International Journal of Water Resources Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().