UN Environmental Agency to Help Afghanistan Combat Effects of Climate Change
New York, Oct 11 2012 6:10PM The United Nations is to help Afghanistan combat the effects of climate change, teaming up
with the country’s Government to implement a $6 million initiative that aims to operate in vulnerable communities and
shore up the ability of Afghan institutions to independently address risks posed by changes to the climate, the world
body’s environmental agency announced today.
The scheme is the first of its kind in the landlocked country, where four-fifths of the population is directly dependent
on natural resources for income and sustenance, but where disasters and extreme weather events – including drought,
sandstorms, and harsh winters – have affected more than 6.7 million people since 1998.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which will serve as the lead UN agency involved in the initiative, identified
Afghanistan as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change because of the potential impacts and the Afghan
Government’s current limited capacity to react to those impacts.
The initiative’s interventions will include improved water management and use efficiency; community-based watershed
management; improved terracing, agro-forestry and agro-silvo pastoral systems; climate-related research and early
warning systems; improved food security; and rangeland management.
Watershed management activities at village level will include tree-planting, the terracing of slopes or the gathering of
wild seeds to re-plant over-grazed mountainsides. Education and the development of vocational skills for the communities
will also play a key role in this project, according to UNEP.
The Afghan Government will serve as a partner through the country’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA),
UNEP said in a news release, with most of the funding coming from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a UN-backed
entity that unites 182 countries in partnership with international institutions, civil society organizations and the
private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives.
“The Government of Afghanistan is showing a remarkable commitment to working with communities for a landscape approach
to dealing with climate change in the country,” said the UN Afghanistan Resident Coordinator, Michael Keating, speaking
from Bamyan in Afghanistan’s Central Highlands, some 200 kilometres west of the capital, Kabul.
“We also welcome the opportunity to help Afghan institutions better deal with shocks and hazards, and increase
resilience at a decentralized level,” he added.
During severe droughts from 1998 to 2006, and again in 2008-2009, the country suffered significant losses of crops,
including wheat, rice, maize and potato. According to UNEP, climate change is predicted to cause an increase in mean
annual temperatures, a decrease in mean annual rainfall, and an increase in the intensity of rainfalls – despite an
overall decrease in precipitation.
“Many of the agricultural activities in Afghanistan are dependent on the flow of rivers that originate in the Central
Highlands area,” UNEP <"http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2697=9300=en">stated. “However, natural ecosystems throughout the country are very fragile, and the degrading effects of
increasing human activity in many areas are worsened by current climatic variability, mainly frequent droughts and
extreme weather-induced floods and erosion.”
The initiative will be implemented in four locations: Badakhshan in the northeast, Balkh in the north, through the Koh-e
Baba to Bamyan and Daikundi in the Central Highlands.
Climate change adaptation is especially important in developing nations, since those countries are “predicted to bear
the brunt of climate change effects,” UNEP said in the news release, noting that “the overarching goal is to reduce the
vulnerability of biological systems to these impacts.”
UNEP’s key partners on the ground in the Central Asian nation include the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and
the World Food Programme (WFP) supported by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), working together with the
USAID-funded Biodiversity Programme of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and local Afghan organizations and
communities.
Oct 11 2012 6:10PM