Afghanistan: Taliban Tries Reconciling Science and Religion in Facing Climate Change
Jul 12, 2024
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Rick Noack, The Washington Post
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Afghanistan remains a global pariah in large part because of the Taliban’s restrictions on female education, and that isolation has deprived the country of foreign funding for urgently needed measures to adapt to climate change.
So, for now, the Afghan government is largely confronting the impacts of global warming on its own and putting the blame for floods and sluggish governmental aid on foreigners. Some former Taliban commanders view global carbon emissions as a new invisible enemy.“Just like they invaded our country, they’ve invaded our climate,” Lutfullah Khairkhwa, the Taliban’s deputy higher education minister, said in his opening speech at the Jalalabad conference. “We must defend our climate, our water, our soil to the same extent we defend ourselves against invasions.”With parched deserts and deforested, flood-prone valleys, Afghanistan is deemed by researchers to be among the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change. Hundreds of people died, for instance, during recent flash floods that officials blamed on ominous changes in the climate.