Building Afghanistan’s Resilience: Natural Hazards, Climate Change, and Humanitarian Needs

Afghanistan is facing one of the world’s most serious humanitarian and environmental crises, with millions of people in need of assistance and an even greater number at risk from natural hazards and climate change. As one of the world’s least developed countries, Afghanistan cannot face these challenges alone and needs support from the international community.

Unless urgent action is taken to build the resilience of Afghanistan’s households, communities, and environment, much of the country’s development gains over the past 15 years could be at risk. It is therefore crucial that Afghanistan and its international partners invest in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) to protect these gains, build meaningful resilience, and advance the country’s development priorities.

To ensure that Afghanistan can achieve meaningful resilience, the Government and international community should prioritize:

1. integrating environmental concerns into humanitarian response and decision-making,
2. developing a national resilience framework that integrates DRR and CCA across all levels of national development plans;
3. building community-based resilience through local-level DRR and CCA planning and programming, and
4. strengthening the institutions and coordination mechanism for planning and responding to shocks when they occur.