Climate change parches region, worsens poverty
SANG-E-ATASH, Afghanistan — Fed by rain and snowmelt from mountains, this valley nestled among northwestern Afghanistan’s jagged peaks was once fertile. But the climate has changed in the past few decades, locals say, leaving the earth barren and its people struggling to survive.
Many have fled, heading to neighboring Iran or living in abject poverty in camps for the displaced within Afghanistan as repeated droughts parch the land and shrivel pastures.
“I remember from my childhood … there was a lot of snow in the winters, in spring we had a lot of rain,“said 53-year-old Abdul Ghani, a local community leader in the village of Sang-e-Atash, in the hard-struck province of Badghis.
“But since a few years ago there has been drought, there is no snow, there is much less rain. It is not even possible to get one bowl of water from drainpipes to use,” he said, as he observed the Red Crescent Society handing out emergency winter food supplies to farmers whose crops have completely failed.
The severe drought, now in its second year, has dramatically worsened the already desperate situation in the country. Battered by four decades of war, Afghans also have had to contend with the coronavirus pandemic and an economy in free fall following the freezing of international funding after the Taliban seized power in mid-August amid a chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops. Millions can’t feed themselves, and aid groups warn of rising malnutrition and a humanitarian catastrophe.
For many families in the Sang-e-Atash area, the Red Crescent aid is their only lifeline for the harsh winter. The organization’s regional head for western Afghanistan, Mustafa Nabikhil, said 558 families had received the food over three days: flour, rice, beans, cooking oil, sugar, salt, tea and highcalorie, vitamin-fortified biscuits.
Badghis’s farmers are particularly vulnerable as the region lacks an irrigation system, leaving them dependent on the weather, Nabikhil said.
If it rains, they will eat. If it doesn’t, they won’t. Their desperation is palpable.
“There is no solution, we are just destroyed,” said Ghani. “We can’t go anywhere, to a foreign country, we have no money, we have nothing. In the end we must dig our graves and die.”
Necephor Mghendi, head of Afghanistan Delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said drought is leading to “worrying food shortages, with around 22.8 million people — more than 55% of Afghanistan’s population — experiencing high levels of acute food shortages.”
Severe drought has affected more than 60% of the country’s provinces, he said, “but there is no single province not affected since some are facing serious or moderate drought.”
“If urgent measures are not taken, there will be a catastrophic humanitarian situation,” he said. “It is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world at the moment, and the saddest part is that early action and prompt action could have prevented it from escalating.”
Experts predict climate change will make droughts even more frequent and severe. They have been ringing the alarm bell over Afghanistan for years.
“Climate change in Afghanistan is not an uncertain, ‘potential’ future risk but a very real, present threat — whose impacts have already been felt by millions of farmers and pastoralists across the country,” said a 2016 report by the World Food Program, United Nations Environment Program and Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency.
The current drought is the worst in decades.