Water Security of the Zahedan Metropolis in the Context of Climate Change and Tran’s boundary Hydro politics of the Helmand Basin

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD Graduate in Political Geography,‌Department of Geography,‌Faculty of Humanities,‌Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,‌Mashhad, Iran

2 Professor in Political Geography, Department of Geography, Faculty of Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

3 Assistant Professor in Climatology, Department of Geography, Faculty of Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

Water security, as one of the fundamental dimensions of human security, has become a strategic and multidimensional issue in recent decades, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Zahedan metropolis, due to its location in an arid climate, rapid population growth, expansion of informal settlements, and dependence of urban water supply sources on cross-border sources (water transfer from semi-wells in Zabol to Zahedan), faces a high level of water vulnerability. The present study, with the aim of comprehensively assessing the water security of Zahedan metropolis, examines the simultaneous effects of climate change and hydropolitical relations of the transboundary Hirmand watershed on the sustainability of the city's water resources.
The research method is applied and based on a mixed approach (quantitative-qualitative). In the climate section, CRU database data and the Standard Precipitation-Evaporation-Transpiration Index (SPEI) were used to analyze temperature, precipitation, and drought trends in Helmand Basin for the period 1991–2022. In the hydropolitical section, qualitative content analysis was used to review the 1972 treaty, documents and reports on Afghanistan's infrastructure policies and measures as an upstream country, and spatial-geopolitical analysis of the relations between the two countries. The climate findings show that Helmand Basin has faced a significant increase in temperature, a gradual decrease in precipitation, and an intensification of the frequency and severity of droughts over the past three decades, such that precipitation in the Zahedan metropolis has decreased by 7.94 mm per decade; a trend that has severely weakened the basin's natural capacity for sustainable water supply and increased the dependence of downstream areas, especially Zahedan, on unstable river flows. On the other hand, hydropolitical analysis indicates the dominance of the competition and hydrohegemony model in Iran-Afghanistan relations. The development of dams and diversion projects such as the Kamal Khan Dam, along with the weakness of the implementation mechanisms of the 1972 Hirmand Treaty, has put additional pressure on Zahedan's water security. The results of the study show that Zahedan's water insecurity is the result of a complex interaction of natural (climate change) and human-political (hydropolitics) factors, and its continuation can have widespread consequences for food, social, economic, and national security.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Geography and Territorial Spatial Arrangement
Volume 16, Issue 59
June 2026
Pages 29-56

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History

  • Receive Date: 29 December 2025
  • Revise Date: 30 January 2026
  • Accept Date: 07 February 2026

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