An Afghan delegation will attend the upcoming UN climate change summit COP29 in Azerbaijan scheduled to take place from Monday, November 11.
According to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) foreign ministry spokesman, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, said “delegation of the Afghan government will be in Baku”.
It was not immediately clear in what capacity the delegation would participate at COP29, but sources indicated it would have observer status.
Afghanistan is ranked as the country sixth most vulnerable to climate change and IEA authorities have pushed to participate in COP summits, saying their political isolation shouldn’t bar them from international climate talks.
Having tried and failed to attend UN climate change summits in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, this year an invitation from COP29 hosts Azerbaijan came through.
Officials from the country’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) have repeatedly said climate change should not be politicized and called for environment-related projects put on hold due to the IEA’s takeover to be reinstated.
“Climate change is a humanitarian subject,” deputy NEPA head Zainulabedin Abid said in a recent interview with AFP.
“We have called on the international community not to relate climate change matters with politics.”
Among the poorest countries in the world after decades of war, Afghanistan is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change, which scientists say is spurring extreme weather.
Drought, floods, land degradation and declining agricultural productivity are key threats, the UN development agency’s representative in Afghanistan, Stephen Rodriques, said in 2023.
Flash floods in May killed hundreds and swamped swaths of agricultural land in Afghanistan, where 80 percent of people depend on farming to survive.
