Ruchi Kumar is an Indian journalist based in Mumbai who covers South Asia.
Along Afghanistan’s western border with Iran, in the southwestern province of Nimruz, people have witnessed repeated rounds of cross-border violence in 2023. And locals, most of whom are simple farmers, will tell you that the fighting is over something fundamental: water.
Consecutive years of drought in Afghanistan have exacted a terrible toll on the Helmand River, which flows from Afghanistan into Iran. The diminished flow is hurting agrarian communities in both countries, and is causing Iran’s Hamun Wetlands to dry up. However, Iranian officials have accused Afghanistan’s Taliban regime of violating their water treaty, leading to clashes that resulted in the deaths of at least three people in May.
It’s not the only such conflict bubbling away in Afghanistan. Some 600 kilometres north, the Taliban are engaged in another water dispute that threatens to escalate with Uzbekistan over the construction of the Qosh Tepa canal. The project will be beneficial to Afghan farmers, but it will also divert large quantities of water away from the Amu Darya, a river that is vital to the region.
These conflicts have thrown Afghanistan’s current political purgatory into stark relief. Even though it is one of the world’s lowest contributors to greenhouse emissions, it remains one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change – fourth-most, according to the global Inform RISK Index, and eighth-most, according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Increasingly, the country has suffered from climate shocks such as droughts and flash floods, and experts warn that disputes and fighting arising from these events could quickly become the norm. Yet neither Afghanistan nor many of the dozen other conflict-affected, climate-change-affected countries were adequately represented at the COP28 climate summit, held in December in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Instead, Afghanistan was excluded, as it has been from other international co-operation platforms since the Taliban returned to power in August, 2021.
International agencies and donor governments have been reluctant to engage with the insurgent group. But the attempt to isolate the Taliban has resulted in the withdrawal of development aid and funds that were crucial to helping the country cope with climate change. Without the funding needed, integral projects have been suspended, including 32 climate adaptation programs worth more than US$800-million.
Incidentally, climate financing for adaptation and disaster response was one of the highlights of COP28. The Loss and Damage Fund, aimed at helping developing countries cope with the effect of climate-related disasters, was announced on the summit’s first day. Although the US$700-million raised represents less than 0.2 per cent of the funds required to truly address the problem, even this meagre pool of funds is out of reach for countries that, like Afghanistan, lack an internationally recognized government or representatives. Additionally, the fund is currently hosted by the World Bank, which halted all funding to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. A later attempt to restart development aid was waylaid after the Taliban prohibited girls from returning to school in 2022.
This reflects a gap that is widening amid the fight against climate change. A study by the Crisis Group found that countries affected by both climate change and conflict receive an average of US$5 per capita – three times less than the amount of climate financing received by conflict-free countries (US$15 per capita).
Many climate experts and activists from Afghanistan, many of whom now live in exile and attended COP28 in independent capacities, are calling for an urgent depoliticization of climate issues, warning of the grim consequences of ignoring the climate impact in their country. We are all connected when it comes to the fight against climate change, and the world needs to understand that if Afghanistan’s plight is ignored on account of its government, then the conflicts are likely to spill wider into the region, triggering mass migration, food insecurity, and even political instability. But while they appealed to prominent green financiers at COP28 to resume funding of key projects in their country, their efforts seemed to yield no results.
While any meaningful climate solutions will certainly require some measured and calculated engagement with hostile and fundamentalist groups like the Taliban, there are also several other stakeholders that international governments and agencies can work with to ensure that support goes to the most vulnerable, including civil-society members, grassroots communities, and religious elders. In Afghanistan, pathways for such non-political engagement already exist through international humanitarian agencies such as the UN, which is providing support to those affected by the current crisis.
Climate change doesn’t respect man-made borders. To truly tackle the problem as a global community, we need to try to work around the man-made constructs of politics, too.