Hamza Boltaev, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Afghanistan and South Asian Studies at IAIS, took part in the Brussels expert discussion “Afghanistan and the Climate Crisis: Local Realities, Regional Pathways, Global Stakes”, held on 10 November and organized jointly by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Multinational Policy Dialogue, the European External Action Service, and the Delegation of the EU to Afghanistan. The event brought together international stakeholders to examine how climate stress is reshaping Afghanistan’s humanitarian outlook, political constraints, and regional security environment, with an explicit emphasis on solutions that extend beyond national borders.
The programme highlighted that Afghanistan is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries while remaining poorly equipped to adapt. It noted a sharp warming trend alongside recurrent droughts, flash floods, desertification, glacier loss and shrinking water resources. These shocks were presented not merely as environmental disruptions but as drivers of livelihood collapse and food insecurity in a country where a large share of households depends on agriculture for income.
The agenda also underscored the gendered dimension of vulnerability, noting that women are disproportionately affected due to their central roles in agricultural work and water management. A major thread of the discussion concerned climate-linked displacement and its spillover effects. The programme cited that between 2021 and 2024 almost three million Afghans were displaced, including nearly one million in 2024 due to climate- and disaster-related events, alongside additional pressures associated with large-scale returns from Iran and Pakistan since September 2023. Importantly, the event positioned Afghanistan’s climate emergency as a regional challenge: Afghanistan’s rivers feed into Central Asia, making water security a shared concern with direct cross-border implications.
Within this broader framework, Hamza Boltaev’s participation was concentrated in Panel 2: “Beyond Borders – Regional pathways for Climate Resilience and EU engagement”, the segment of the programme explicitly designed to move from diagnosis to regional cooperation and policy options. Panel examined how regional cooperation, particularly with Central Asia, could support climate change mitigation and resilience efforts with indirect stabilising benefits for Afghanistan.
The panel further explored how the European Union could engage more strategically with neighbouring countries in order to maximise climate impact in a context where Afghanistan’s internal governance constraints and international “red lines” can limit conventional forms of engagement. A distinctive feature of Panel 2 was its focus on the political usability of climate action. As framed in the agenda, participants debated whether climate action, especially support to community resilience, might serve as a practical entry point for dialogue with the de facto authorities, while also creating space to address wider EU priorities and concerns, including human rights and inclusivity.
The dialogue also stressed that more effective climate mitigation and adaptation would require stronger coordination among actors and some form of technical dialogue on climate-related issues, while identifying water management as an urgent area where coping strategies risk further environmental harm. Hamza Boltaev’s participation reinforced the event’s central message: Afghanistan’s climate crisis cannot be meaningfully addressed through isolated, country-only instruments; rather, effective resilience pathways depend on cross-border cooperation, especially on water and mobility pressures, and on carefully calibrated EU engagement with the wider region.
