This regenerative agriculture project, supported by HALO Trust, focused on practical, locally owned responses to the crisis in one of the most difficult places in Afghanistan, the Helmand River Basin, and was completed on March 23, 2025.
Environmental cooperation through regenerative agriculture offers a path to peace for the Jira watershed and poverty.

Landscape Conservation and Habitat Protection
ECO-A together with the Afghan and Kandahar Authorities, Department of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and local citizens are setting up a Micro-Irrigation demonstration, in two poor villages in the Helmand River Basin, Kandahar sub-catchments.
The Helmand River rises in the Hindu Kush Mountains, (the Central Highlands) of Afghanistan-Our project aims at conserving land and water for current and future generations by safeguarding and restoring priority landscapes here. Important species are found here too, including natural shorelands along lakes and ponds above our project site. Small remaining shrubs, bushes, and woodlands, wetlands, grasslands exist. In terms of birds, despite last 40 years of conflict, this is still a very rich area for migratory bird species and may provide essential stopovers for the global survival of some migratory species.

Explaining and demonstrating benefits of Micro
Irrigation, and Regenerative Agriculture- is important also since they are not very familiar terminology to local communities here in Zheray Watershed. Traditional practices here have been sustainable – so learning locally is also key.

Protect, Connect, Support