Building Afghanistan's resilience: Natural hazards, climate change, and humanitarian needs

This position paper of the Afghanistan Resilience Consortium prepared for the 2016 Brussels Conference on Afghanistan calls on the country and its partners to allocate greater political, technical, and financial resources to building the country’s resilience to natural hazards and climate change. Afghanistan is facing one of the world’s most serious crises, with millions of people in need of assistance and an even greater number at risk from natural hazards and climate change.

The recommendations to the Government of Afghanistan and its international partners include:

• developing a national resilience framework that integrates ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation across all levels of national planning;
• building community-based resilience through local-level environmental initiatives across the country;
• strengthening the institutions and coordination mechanisms for planning and responding to shocks when they occur;
• investing in programmes to promote linkages between development assistance and humanitarian response, with an emphasis on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.