Environment & Peacebuilding in Afghanistan

Andrew ScanlonUNEP Afghanistan

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

1/. Land:-Communal, private

Natural Resources

2/. Renewable resources:-Water, forest/ timber, fisheries, drugs, wildlife

3/. Extractives:

-Minerals, gemstones, oil & gas

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

1. Which conflicts in Afghanistan have an environmental/ natural resource dimension?

2. Could better management of those natural resources support wider peacebuilding?

3. How can the international community ensure its development projects and interventions don’t make the situation worse?

Questions

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013People’s experience of conflict…

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Looks at 5 resources:

land, water, forests, drugs and extractives

Launched

- Phase 1: UN Country Team

-Phase 2: Guidance, training

-Phase 3: New development plans

Natural resources and conflict in Afghanistan?

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

High arid country: little land suitable for agriculture (7.4mn of 64.9mn hectares suitable for planted agriculture)

30mn hectares of rangelands

Land is emotive & highly contested

Years of conflict have up-ended the land system – legislation is complex and patchy; records lost; owners fled; overlapping claims; different interpretations of categories of land

Contradictions between customary and modern land tenure systems

Land: context

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

1. Limited ways to resolve disputes – courts overloaded and credibility challenges

2. Land grabbing (est. at 2km2 per day in 2007)

3. Allocating land to returnees and refugees

4. Expansion of mining areas

Land: key conflict risks

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

• 5 main water basins

• Agriculture uses 95% of water

• Water relatively abundant on a per capita basis but unevenly shared

• Afghanistan is the water tower of Central Asia (all but one rivers flow out of the country)

• Infrastructure v. weak from underinvestment and conflict (lowest per capita storage capacity in the world; irrigation reaches 60% of area in mid-1970s)

• Afghanistan not involved in regional planning for water

Water: context

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Water: context

Water: context

Khulm Dryland

Daikundi Peri Urban

Upper Kabul Valley

Koh-e Baba Mountain Area

Tagab-e Kishim Himalayan Valley

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013• Managing growing demand (per capita allocations down by

30% by 2025, 50% by 2050)

• Reducing risk of climate-related disasters and adapting to climate change

• Potentially violent disputes over regional water allocations. Rebuilding water infrastructure without exacerbating community and regional relationships

Water: key conflict risks

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

Source of firewood, fodder, forest products (nuts, fruit) and timber

Extensive deforestation over past 35 years – deforestation, increased flooding. Loss of source of fuel for heating and cooking

Valuable cedar forests in the east

Provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Nuristan could support a sustainable timber industry worth $40-$80 million per year

Forests: context

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Forests: key conflict risks

• Lucrative smuggling industry in east (worth millions of dollars incentivises on-going instability in eastern border region.

• Part of Afghanistan’s complex war economy

• Competition between groups over fuel wood

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

• 90-95% of the world’s opium and heroin

• 300-600 laboratories producing 380-400 tonnes of heroin per year

• 16% of GDP, 5% of the population

• More prevalent in most unstable areas

• Major drug using population (1 million?)

Drugs: context

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Drugs: key conflict risks

• Eradication programmes can be conflictual

• Incentives for continued instability – major part of the shadow, war economy

• Direct funding for insurgents – Taliban earned an estimated $155m, traffickers $2.2bn in 2009

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Extractives: context

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

• Rich variety of minerals, gemstones and hydrocarbons –valued at $1-3 trillion

• New investments (Aynak and Hagijak)

• Pressure to exploit minerals to generate domestic revenues

• Strategic location for transhipment of gas (TAPI)

• Huge practical challenges to export bulky minerals

Extractives: context

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Extractives: key conflict risks

• Land and water disputes around new concessions (e.g. water use of Aynak)

• Negative social and environmental impacts

• Disputes over revenue distribution and benefit sharing

• Smuggling of gem stones contributing to the war economy

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

1. Scarce livelihood resources (that people may fight over in the absence of systems to manage disputes)

2. Instruments of coercion and influence

3. Sources of illicit revenues

4. Incentives for peace spoilers (nationally or regionally)

5. Lack of resolution becomes a source of grievance against the government

Key finding 1: 5 links between natural resources and conflict

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013Key finding 2: The International community can make things worse

Road building projects

- Have changed local value of land and led to conflicts over land as well as illegal land seizures

Water infrastructure projects

- Can increase local/ regional tensions

UNEP’s Six Priority Areas 2010-2013

Effective NRM is a form of peacebuilding

- Improved governance and sustainability- New technologies to increase productivity of land,

reduce consumption of water etc. - Better accountability and transparency- Increased community participation in decisions. - Stronger mechanisms for dealing with disputes- Improved transboundary mechanisms for

transboundary resource management

Key finding 3: Effective NRM is peacebuilding