Decades of war have ravaged Afghanistan's natural environment. But even after the recent round of fighting comes to an end, the country will continue to face a bleak future without water, forests, wildlife and clean air.
By the time American-led forces toppled the Taliban, Afghanistan had already lost 70 per cent of its forests since 1985, soil fertility and water tables had fallen dramatically and the country's agricultural productivity had dropped by 50 per cent, according to a landmark United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report released in 2003.
While "over 80 per cent of Afghan people live in rural areas, they have seen many of their basic resources-water for irrigation, trees for food and fuel- lost in just a generation," the report said.
In May, countries will meet in Nairobi for UNEA 2 – the world's de facto "Parliament for the Environment" – to discuss the linkages between natural resources management, environment and conflicts. Better understanding of the role of environment in conflicts and finding ways to use it for peace-building will be key to promoting peaceful and inclusive societies – a key goal of the 2030 Agenda.
One of the main stumbling blocks to reversing Afghanistan's slide into environmental tragedy stems from the failure to look at the links between land and people, according to a UNEP-backed research.
The research, published in a book entitled Land and Post-conflict Peacebuilding, says that little headway has been made in untangling the impacts of tribalism, communism, Islamic theocracy and the more recent lure of free-market economics on land and property in Afghanistan.
"Aid workers in the country, exhausted by ever-urgent humanitarian needs, are loath to begin long-term development projects in the face of dwindling donor support and escalating violence," states the research paper written by the US Department of Defence's Douglas E. Batson.
Refugee resettlement, the country's population explosion and environmental damage have all intensified competition over land and other natural resources.
Afghans returning home after years abroad often find their land infertile and arid, forcing many to move to polluted and congested cities in search of jobs.
"There, with no home or means of support, they will be predisposed to recruitment by the purveyors of instability: crime bosses, drug traffickers, and the Taliban," said Mr Batson in his chapter entitled Snow leopards and Cadastres: Rare sightings in Post-conflict Afghanistan.
Forced eviction is also a major concern for many Afghans. Without security of land tenure, which Batson believes is the most pressing post-conflict land issue in Afghanistan, long-term stability in the country will be elusive.
But there are growing signs that a solution is possible. For example, when the government delineated the country's first national park, local communities worked together to establish the protected area, which hosts a rare species of wild sheep - the Siberian ibex - and the Afghan snowfinch believed to be endemic to the country.
Building on these grassroots success stories, the research argues that a comprehensive database of land information will make decisions about tenure and environmental conservation more efficient and fair.
Land and property registries, known as cadastres could be the "deciding factor between success and failure for the international community's investment in post-conflict Afghanistan".
"By recording the restrictions on environmentally harmful practices, and by assigning to a person or organization the responsibility for environmental stewardship, a cadastral system can visibly link environmental needs to human ones," says the paper.
Even without regional and national land policies in place, cadastres at the local level can strengthen governance, economic development and the rule of law.
The researcher points to an invention of Dutch academics known as the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) that he believes should be used to record land and property information because it reduces the complex database models that are traditionally used.
NATO, the UN and the US departments of state and defense, as well as other organizations working in post-conflict and post-disaster areas, should examine this model in more detail, according to the researcher.
About UNEA In May, hundreds of key decision makers, businesses and representatives of intergovernmental organizations and civil society will gather in Nairobi for UNEA-2 at the United Nations Environment Programme headquarters in Nairobi. The assembly will be one of the first major meetings since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement. The resolutions passed at UNEA-2 will set the stage for early action on implementing the 2030 Agenda, and drive the world towards a better, more just future.
