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Essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Diplomat, restarting climate finance for Afghanistan will help Afghan people and will also help moderate the brutality of the Taliban.
Afghanistan Left out of Global Climate Change Conversation
Afghanistan under the Taliban was once again shunned from the COP28 climate change conference.
By Shanthie Mariet D’Souza
December 19, 2023On September 23, 2020, then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaking to the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, identified “five sources of unrest”’ in Afghanistan. Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, haphazard industrialization, rampant inequality, and the violence perpetrated by the Taliban, Ghani identified climate change as a source of violence and suffering in Afghanistan. Terming Afghanistan as the 17th worst-affected country, recurrently ravaged by seasonal floods and drought, Ghani called for “regional solutions based on international models” to address the problem of climate change.
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Before the Taliban takeover, the NEPA had prepared a national climate action plan and emissions inventory. No new agency has been set up to replace the NWARA, nor has the Taliban regime provided any indication about measures it will take for mitigating the impacts of climate change and enacting water governance. None of these, including the promotion of clean energy, is a priority for the Islamic Emirate, which hopes to rule the country under Shariah, or Islamic law. Worse still, media reports have indicated that cash-strapped and cut off from international aid, the Taliban-led government is tapping into the country’s coal mines to boost revenue.
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Afghanistan needs urgent help to deal with the growing climate threats and vulnerabilities. In simple terms, it translates to the international community providing financial assistance and engaging with the Taliban regime in a bid to enhance its capacity to help tackle the challenges of climate change impacting the conflict-ridden country. Such engagement does run the risk of the Taliban using it as a source of legitimization. However, an assessment of the international community’s approach to isolating the Taliban in the past two years isn’t studded with much success. A change of approach in the realm of climate change threats and action by restarting the stalled projects and greater civic engagement, to begin with, can save millions of lives and could also bring about a modicum of moderation within the ranks of the Taliban.
Read more: https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/afghanistan-left-out-of-global-climate-change-conversation/
There is no reason to assume giving money to the Taliban would help people in Afghanistan and moderate the brutality of the Taliban government. The Taliban appear to be a group who see common prosperity and human rights as corruption and apostasy. Giving them climate money would just help them buy more guns.
“Giving them climate money would just help them buy more guns.” Yeah, to add to the billions in weapons left to them by The Big Guy 10% Dementia Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon aka Robert L. Peters aka Robert Ware aka JRB Ware.
Send them some biofuel for their American helicopters.
Rumor has it NARA is going to release most of those ‘pseudonym’ VP emails soon, per Congressional demand. That will be interesting.
But not relevant to the now formal House impeachment inquiry. In the entire history of constitutional impeachment, has only ever been for acts while in office.
The Democrats “extended” impeachment to past the time it could have any effect, i.e. the removal of a sitting president.
Funny.
Rud, IIRC NARA has proposed a decades long process for releasing those VP pseudonym emails. Also, he used them as VP so their content could play in any impeachment inquiry.
They could very easily be a hard and logical tie-in to today.
Suppose they used the guns to fight climate change?
by using CO2-free and Nitrate-neutral ammo?
No they’ll shoot the CO2 out of the air with them, obviously.
You mean, just like the IPCC?
I had never heard of the Diplomat, so looked it up. Been around 21 years. Claims to be ‘the premier current affairs magazine for Asia-PAC”. Citing Ghani not a good look, as he fled with about $1billion in US cash as the Taliban took over. His climate comments were undoubtedly aimed at getting more. SOP.
Taliban knows the climate whine thing won’t work, so they don’t even try. Too busy preventing Afghani females from getting an education.
Dr. D’Souza’s US connection is as a non-resident scholar, Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. Looking at the Middle East, maybe one Institute is not enough.
Looks to me like the Taliban is well on their way to deindustrialization. They’ll have the peasants living in mud huts and cooking with dung long before any western country achieves net-zero.
Some people, especially the educated ones, can’t resist ‘meddling’ – Britain did it throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and it was an abject failure more often than not. STOP IT. Leave Afghanistan alone, let the Taliban try and rule it and fail, it’ll be tough on the Afghani’s in the short and medium term but, ultimately, may cause less hardship in the long term.
This delusion that all people, no matter how radical or extremist, will see sense and give up their violent ways if only they were given the same money and opportunities as others is bonkers and will lead to far more suffering for the people caught up in it.
Any population that is 97 to 100% one religion is really scarry. FEAR must be the driving force to reach such a high percentage.
Would any of the anti-religion posters here at this site care to comment?
I mean Kim in Korea can reach 100% of the vote.
But they’re not. The majority of the Afghani’s are Sunni muslim, a smaller number (maybe 7%) are Shia and there are a small number of Christians, Sikhs and Hindus (collectively about 0.3%). The Taliban (students) are a militant nationalist extremist sect from the Pashtun evolved from the Deobandi fundamentalist muslims.
More than anything it’s the fact that they’re from the Pashtun that is an issue – this lawless area was a huge problem for the British in the 19th century, the Soviets, Americans and whoever was in power in Afghanistan at the time. It was bad enough when they were hill bandits but, once they got into fundamentalist religion, they became a much more extensive problem.
So, no, not really ‘one religion’ at all – they consider themselves very different indeed.
If it weren’t for the minority in Israel, I assume it would be a very non-scary place to visit. Scarry is Afghanistan. Scarrry is Iran.
Biden already gifted them far more wealth than the US has placed in the UN Climate Graft Box. Billions in Military hardware. If they want Money, they should sell it to the US. Biden will surely pay them more billions and transfer the military hardware to Ukraine
$81 billion worth, not counting the cost of Bahgram Airbase.
Stop giving The Diplomat money. The tallybanders and hamas can rely on “allah” for their needs…if Afghanistan needs urgent help for their growing climate threats and vulnerabilities………..tell ’em to see “allah” for help…..urgent even.
Good catch, Eric. While we (almost) all wish the Taliban a Climate Change Burning Hell On Earth, the reality is that only an uprising by the “good” people of Afghanistan can solve the problem. Don’t wait for it.
Maybe surplus weapons sales at the Terrorists World Bizarre can fund some climate change?
!s this a joke?
The author is a little clueless.
Well that’s an understatement of epic proportions.
Maybe….maybe King Charles could do more for climate….maybe auction off one of his many pinky rings…and give the money to the little children….who suffer daily from climate change…he’s a greedy old man …he don’t need all that money….give it up.
If you see King Charles’ photo’s that’s not actually a pinky ring – that’s a royal signet ring following a german tradition that Prince Albert and Queen Victoria introduced to the Royal Family. As such those rings don’t belong to him but to the nation as part of the Crown collection that he, as King, can wear.
So, antigtiff – get your hands off our crown jewels!
” Afghanistan as the 17th worst-affected country, “
It is a good thing 2023 is about over. These folks have made up so much schist this year that it is about to overflow my boots. Reset in 12 days.
<raising his left arm straight up over his head>..too late to save the boots but maybe I can save my watch.
Isn’t Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, already a basket case without having to mention “climate change”?
We can hope. They cut their major income crop from opium—something US did not dare—so major opium production has now shifted to lawless Myanmar.
Opium, a natural source of opioids, is just a product that is useful for anesthetics and recreational use. Growing it is not lawless.
The US no longer needs to import heroin, with all the fentanyl from China via Mexico, our oh so nice trading partners.
The timing of the advent of fentanyl about the time the opium production in Afghanistan disappeared IS quite the coincidence.
I hope Trump makes the Chicoms pay dearly for all the deaths of Americans they have caused through their shippihg of these killer drugs to the United States.
The Chicoms are mass murderers in several categories. And Joe Biden is allowing them to get away with it. I guess that’s one thing $30 million will buy you if you pay off a president of the United States.
It only took $30 million to buy off Brandon?
Thirty million dollars is what has been discovered so far.
The investigation is just beginning.
Fix the climate there first.
(Plant some trees, make it rain)
Somehow I think that then, hordes of sexually frustrated young men would no longer be inclined to ride around in open-top pick-up trucks playing with and showing off their surrogate dicks
“Sexually frustrated young men.”
What happened? Goats got skittish and ran away?
Right Peta. Whilst most of Afghanistan is quite arid, the area those ‘hordes of sexually frustrated young men’ come from is the only temperate region in the country. The Pashtun, home to the Taliban, has lots of grass, bushes, trees – the overwhelming colour is green, apart from the rocky mountains and hills. I don’t think that your theory really explains why those men from the temperate region are now riding around in pickup trucks carrying guns.
“Terming Afghanistan as the 17th worst-affected country, recurrently ravaged by seasonal floods and drought, Ghani called for “regional solutions based on international models” to address the problem of climate change.” So is it seasonal or is it climate change? /s
It’s not climate change.
The Taliban will not be affected or altered in the slightest by funding, the weather, or by favourable press coverage. They are working from their own 1,400 year-old playbook, the Qur’an. The Qur’an has full instructions on how the faithful Muslims are to deal with Idolators, Christians, and especially Jews, and these instructions are not pleasant to our ears. The Taliban is a group who are not focused on prosperity or human rights. For them, Apostasy is their major concern and their remedy is deadly to the Apostate. More money will only buy them more guns.
Why!?
Which one of the following looks heat distressed and hot sweaty and angry?
As if- like, as IF, anybody is going to help that nation with ANY of its problems! Ever!
Certainly Joe Biden is not going to help them. He’s the one that put the people of Afghanistan in the dire position they find themselves in today, and it has nothing to do with climate change. It has to do with a coward throwing innocent people to the wolves and never batting an eye doing so.
What a disaster Joe Biden has been for humanity. One destructive action after another, for decades, which has caused the death and/or displacement of literally millions of innocent people over the years. It’s almost unbelievable, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
COP29 for Kabul it is then.
Good idea.
Just needs a very large early deputation of the eminently qualified to pave the way with a preliminary discussion about gender fluidity and personal pronouns in the final COP communique to really ice it. Allah be praised.
Absolutely. Think how much Afghanistan could receive in ‘climate reparations’ just by the Taliban ransoming back the delegates to their respective countries!
You are assuming that the counties will want to fork out the ransoms for their delegates!
This helps me to see diplomats as defense lawyers where any trial balloon of nonsense will do in public.