Climate Change in Afghanistan: Shared Crisis, Unequal Impacts

On 7th January 2025, a coalition of British Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in Afghanistan organised an event hosted by Sarah Champion MP titled "Climate Change in Afghanistan: Shared Crisis, Unequal Impacts" to draw attention to the escalating climate crisis in Afghanistan and its disproportionate effects on vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls.

The event, held at Westminster, brought together Members of Parliament, Peers, policymakers, Afghan climate and development advocates and professionals working in Afghanistan to discuss urgent actions needed to address the intersecting challenges of climate change, gender inequality, and child poverty in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is ranked as the 7th most vulnerable country to climate change globally, despite being one of the lowest per capita contributors to global emissions. Increasingly frequent disasters, including droughts, floods, and land degradation, are devastating agricultural livelihoods and driving chronic food insecurity and displacement - with Afghanistan becoming a hunger hotspot. Women and girls, whose livelihoods often depend on fragile natural resources, are particularly at risk, with climate change-related poverty driving child labour, barriers to primary education, and child marriage particularly impacting girls. The exclusion of women and girls from secondary and higher education, formal decision-making and participation in the public sphere compounds the impacts of climate crises, limits the effectiveness of adaptation, and undermines community resilience.

As a coalition of NGOs, we called for urgent action to address these intersecting crises, issuing the following recommendations to the UK government:

1. Pursue intersectoral, inclusive and holistic interventions that promote systemic food security, climate resilient agriculture, open education and long-term recovery;
2. Develop principled, nuanced and contextualised rights-based strategy for humanitarian engagement including with the de-facto authorities of Afghanistan, essential to sustainably address the needs of the Afghan population;
3. Collaborate closely with international organisations including feminist funds to ensure Afghan formal and informal civil society, especially women-led and women’s and girls’ rights organisations, are resourced and an Afghan civic sphere can continue to exist;
4. Proactively resource and promote the participation of Afghan civil society representatives in international climate negotiations which properly represents the diversity of Afghan society, including women and minority communities;
5. Advocate for NGOs and UN agencies to access climate financing funds, especially those that seek to bolster local expertise and build climate-resilient ecosystems that enable sustainable livelihoods.

The UK has a critical role to play. As a developed nation under the Paris Agreement, and with a historical commitment to Afghanistan, the UK must ensure its strategies uphold obligations to support the most climate-vulnerable, low-income countries. This includes meeting commitments under the Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan to allocate aid that directly benefits Afghan women and girls.

There must be a ‘people-first’ approach to engagement with Afghanistan that ensures children, women, and men on the frontlines of the climate crisis are not collateral damage in the ongoing divisions between the de facto authorities and the international community. In particular, women and girls risk being punished twice over if much needed funding should be withheld. A principled and nuanced strategy for engagement with Afghanistan is critical, and assistance to climate-vulnerable Afghans can be facilitated through the independent but coordinated work of NGOs and UN agencies that directly engage the population. Afghans are themselves agents of climate action: speakers noted the important roles women and girls, especially older women, continue to play in their communities. Right now is the time for the United Kingdom to support such work at ambition and scale - this must mean sufficient and long-term resourcing for Afghanistan.

Minister for the Middle East and North Africa Hamish Falconer MP, in opening remarks at the event, highlighted the extreme vulnerability of many Afghans to climate change impacts. Minister Falconer noted interactions between climate change and increasing restrictions upon women and girls, which compounds the challenges they face. He reiterated the UK’s commitment to support the Afghan people, highlighting UK funding which will scale up livelihoods, agriculture, and climate adaptation programming in the coming months.

Now is the time for systemic and sustained action. The voices of Afghan communities - especially women - must be amplified, their expertise recognised and resourced, and their resilience supported in the fight against climate change.

The panel of speakers agreed that now is the time for systemic and sustained action. The voices of Afghan communities - especially women - must be amplified, their expertise recognised and resourced, and their resilience supported in the fight against climate change.

Signed,

Afghanaid, ActionAid UK, Action Against Hunger UK, Christian Aid, Gender Action for Peace and Security, World Vision UK

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Notes

Reuter’s special report on Afghanistan.

Minister Hamish Falconer is the current Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan).

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