Environmental Intervention in Afghanistan

Joshua Beard, Jackie Cope, Joshua Greenberg, Cameron Marsh, and Joseph Riesterer

Afghanistan is a nation of many environments. While the desert landscape depicted within most media accounts of the country is present, Afghanistan has several incredibly distinct biomes present within its relatively small borders. Facing nearly constant violent external intervention, internal conflict, or political upheaval, Afghanistan's infrastructure and natural resources have been gravely imperiled. However, within the greater scope of this turmoil, it can be difficult to ascertain the actual importance of the preservation and prioritization of the Afghan environment. But the environmental is inherently the political; it is the economic, the social, the cultural. There is no extricating the health and wellbeing of a people and of a nation from the health and wellbeing of the land itself. Thus, understanding some of the current issues within the Afghan environmental space, as well as the effectiveness of previous measures undertaken to rectify these issues, is imperative to understanding Afghanistan itself.