OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has recently announced that Afghanistan is among the top 10 most vulnerable countries to the climate crisis.
In a statement published on its X account, the organization wrote: “Although Afghanistan produces less than one percent of global greenhouse gases, it faces some of the highest costs resulting from climate change.”
The UN Development Programme had also stated that Afghanistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.
This comes as the 30th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) began on 19 Aqrab in Belém, Brazil, with the participation of more than 190 countries.
The COP30 agenda includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reforms in agriculture, and financing actions to combat global warming.
A few days earlier, UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, said that the impact of climate change on Afghanistan is a “silent emergency,” noting that more than half of the water sources in drought-prone provinces have dried up.
Tajuddin Oyewale, UNICEF’s representative in Afghanistan, had said that eight out of every ten people use contaminated water, and that Afghanistan is among the countries most affected by climate impacts, despite contributing almost nothing to the crisis.
