Climate change is ravaging Afghanistan. Women are suffering the most.
Gul Bibi lost her home to the recent flood in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan. “The flood washed away my entire mud house. All I could do was save my four children,” explains the 39-year-old widow in a phone interview with Zan Times. She was forced to move to Pul-i-Khumri, the provincial capital, where she and her children are living in a temporary shelter with a relative.
Bibi says after the flood destroyed the life she had built over a decade. She is now dependent on relief efforts, which have been hampered by Taliban incompetence and impassable roads caused by deadly floods that have killed more than 300 in Baghlan province. Since their home was destroyed, the only significant aid she and her four children have received is a single blanket.
The environmental and humanitarian crises that engulfed Afghanistan in recent years have created unique challenges for women like Gul Bibi. They are bearing the brunt of the natural disasters, intensified by climate change and worsened by the lack of effective response by the Taliban.
Before the flood, she cultivated her own food in her village, and was able to support her family by cleaning, mending clothes, and working in the fields for other villagers. But her temporary relocation to the provincial capital means she has to earn a living through urban employment, which, for the most part, is now non-existent for an illiterate woman like Gul Bibi.
She can’t figure out a way to rebuild her life and provide for her children. Even if she could find a job, she has to be accompanied by a mahram, a close male relative, to conform with a Taliban decree issued in May 2022. “I am a woman; I can’t do anything,” Bibi says, worrying about how she could feed her children amid rising food prices. The current price of wheat in Afghanistan is now 25 percent higher than the average of the past three years.
Kamela, a 33-year-old mother from Kang district in Nimroz province in western Afghanistan, is another example of how climate change particularly affects women and children. About two and a half years ago, the extreme drought forced her to move to Zaranj, the provincial capital. “In Kang district, there was a small well that eventually dried up due to the severe drought,” Kamela told Zan Times in a phone interview. Now, she struggles to afford water, which costs 30 afghani per yellow plastic jerry can. Her 12-year-old daughter, Asma, was responsible for fetching enough water for their family. “At night, my daughter would cry out in her sleep, ‘Mom, my feet are painful. I can’t sleep’” Kamela recounts, explaining the toll taken on her daughter, who must carry heavy baskets of water over the long trip to their home.
Dr. Najibullah Sadid, an environmental expert whose work focuses on water, says that climate change is disrupting Afghanistan’s water cycle, leading to either drought or floods. Those climatic extremes exacerbate people’s already poor access to water. “Climate change directly limits access to water, placing enormous pressure on women and children,” Sadid says, adding that women and children are often tasked with fetching water over long distances. Moreover, women and children are more likely to be exposed to waterborne diseases, he explains: “Floods contaminate rivers, wells, and karez systems, and women and children are the ones who suffer the most, working with and drinking polluted water.”
Climate-induced water scarcity is severely impacting children’s health, education, and their overall well-being. “Children spend school hours fetching water, and the long walks make them vulnerable to abuse,” he said, adding that girls are particularly at risk because they are often walking alone in remote areas. He also worries about the psychological burden of potentially returning home without water: “This injects enormous physical and psychological pressure at a very young age, affecting their physical and mental health permanently.”
Dr. Wali Mohammad Zahid, a child specialist warns that the dangers posed by drought and floods are making everyday survival a daunting challenge, especially for children. “Many families cannot afford to buy clean water every day. If they can’t feed their children, how can they buy clean water?” Zahid worries. He’s seen the impact of the lack of clean drinking water: “Kids in Nimroz are affected by diseases like diarrhoea due to using unclean water.”
If there is no help for those affected by severe drought in Nimroz, then people will have no choice but to leave, Zahid says. “There is a risk that, in the near future, residents of many districts will collectively move to other parts of the country. Women and children are the main targets of these severe droughts and climate change,” he tells Zan Times.
Experts tell Zan Times that the impact of a lack of water falls particularly hard on women, who cut back on their own water use to mitigate the effect of water scarcity on their families. This often means that women are dehydrated and suffer from poor hygiene, which makes them vulnerable to disease and chronic ill health.
Even though Afghan women and children are affected the most by climate change in Afghanistan, they are completely excluded from decision making or any discussion on the environmental crisis. In early March, Afghanistan hosted its first “International Climate Change Conference” at the University of Nangarhar. The conference, which included international climate change experts, was attended by only one woman. Her name is Akiko Nakamura, daughter of the late Tetsu Nakamura, a Japanese physician who headed Peace Japan Medical Services and who was killed in 2019.
While one of the speakers at the conference, Dr. Jonathan Neale, a climate change activist, seemed convinced that the Taliban are taking climate change seriously, the women in Afghanistan who are bearing the brunt of the disasters aren’t so sure.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. H Humayoon is a freelance journalist from Afghanistan.
