Giant Russian gas plant suspends intake from Kazakhstan after Ukrainian drone strike
The Orenburg gas processing plant, the world's largest facility of its kind, has been forced to halt its intake of gas from Kazakhstan following a Ukr...
Climate change has become a critical destabilizing factor in Afghanistan, worsening the country's already severe economic and social instability.
A recent study by the Afghanistan Analysts Network shows that Afghanistan loses around 550 million dollars each year under normal rainfall conditions, with losses jumping to as much as 3 billion dollars in years of extreme drought.
Despite contributing almost nothing to global carbon emissions, Afghanistan remains one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
The economic damage from climate-related disasters is staggering. The World Bank estimates that floods alone cause about 54 million dollars in annual losses, with catastrophic flooding in some years exceeding 500 million dollars in damages. Droughts are even more devastating, costing Afghanistan 280 million dollars per year on average, and up to 3 billion dollars in the worst cases. Beyond floods and droughts, Afghanistan faces frequent avalanches in the Hindu Kush mountains, which destroy lives and infrastructure, particularly in winter.
According to the World Bank’s 2017 Disaster Risk Profile, around 2 million people and over 4 billion dollars in assets, including 10,000 kilometers of roads, are at risk from such disasters. Landslides, worsened by heavy rain, deforestation, and earthquakes, threaten more than 3 million people and 6 billion dollars in infrastructure, including hundreds of schools and health centers.
Other climate-related threats, though harder to measure, still take a heavy toll. Extreme heat, vanishing wetlands, sandstorms, hailstorms, and shrinking water supplies all contribute to Afghanistan’s growing instability. Forest fires, brutal cold waves, and disruptions to hydropower add millions more in damages each year.
International climate agreements like the Paris Accord emphasize that wealthy nations, responsible for most global emissions, should help poorer countries like Afghanistan cope with climate change. However, since the Taliban took power, donors have frozen 28 climate adaptation projects worth 826 million dollars due to sanctions. Only humanitarian aid has continued, while long-term climate resilience programs remain stalled.
Although Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities were excluded from the COP28 climate summit in the UAE, they attended COP29 as observers after an invitation from Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a new climate strategy, seeking 3.48 billion dollars in funding from 2025 to 2030. But without formal international recognition, securing this money seems unlikely.
In the absence of foreign support, Afghanistan is turning to green energy projects. The country’s national power company recently met with a Turkish firm to discuss solar, wind, and other renewable energy initiatives. Yet these efforts are small compared to the scale of the crisis. Afghanistan has received almost none of the climate adaptation funds promised to the world’s poorest nations, leaving it increasingly exposed to environmental disasters.
As temperatures rise and extreme weather becomes more frequent, Afghanistan’s situation grows more dire. Without urgent action and international cooperation, climate change will continue to fuel instability, pushing an already fragile nation deeper into crisis.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
A tsunami threat was issued in Chile after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Drake Passage on Friday. The epicenter was located 135 miles south of Puerto Williams on the north coast of Navarino Island.
The war in Ukraine has reached a strategic impasse, and it seems that the conflict will not be solved by military means. This creates a path toward one of two alternatives: either a “frozen” phase that can last indefinitely or a quest for a durable political regulation.
A shooting in Nice, southeastern France, left two people dead and five injured on Friday, authorities said.
The Orenburg gas processing plant, the world's largest facility of its kind, has been forced to halt its intake of gas from Kazakhstan following a Ukrainian drone strike, according to Kazakhstan's energy ministry.
The Louvre Museum in Paris was closed on Sunday after thieves broke in and stole “priceless” jewellery from the Napoleon collection, the French government said.
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he is not afraid of going to prison, days before beginning a five-year sentence over his 2007 campaign financing case linked to Libya.
Millions of Americans took to the streets for “No Kings” rallies across all 50 states, denouncing what they called the corruption and authoritarianism of President Donald Trump.
Türkiye is ready to assume a de facto guarantor role if a two-state solution in Palestine is implemented, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday.
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