B1 · Intermediate
11 min
climatehumanitariangeopoliticssciencehistory
La Montaña que Llora: Afganistán y el Clima
The Mountain That Weeps: Afghanistan and the Climate
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So I want to start today with a number.
Seventy-seven people dead in ten days.
Not from a war, not from a missile strike.
From rain.
Bueno, mira, la cifra oficial es setenta y siete muertos y ciento treinta y siete heridos.
Well, look, the official figure is seventy-seven dead and one hundred and thirty-seven injured.
Y eso fue en solo diez días, por las inundaciones y los corrimientos de tierra en Afganistán.
And that was in just ten days, from flooding and landslides in Afghanistan.
And I think most people heard that and moved on, because there's so much else happening right now.
But I covered Afghanistan.
I was there multiple times.
And what strikes me is that this is not a surprise.
This is a pattern.
Es que Afganistán tiene este problema todos los años.
The thing is, Afghanistan has this problem every year.
En primavera, cuando la nieve de las montañas se derrite, el agua baja muy rápido.
In spring, when the snow melts in the mountains, the water comes down very fast.
Y cuando también llueve mucho, el resultado es desastroso.
And when there is also heavy rain, the result is catastrophic.
Right, but here's what gets me.
Climate change is making that worse.
The snowpack is changing, the rainfall patterns are shifting, and a country that was already on the edge is being pushed further over it.
Sí, y a ver, Afganistán es un país muy montañoso.
Yes, and look, Afghanistan is a very mountainous country.
El setenta por ciento del territorio son montañas.
Seventy percent of the territory is mountains.
Cuando hay mucha lluvia, el agua no tiene a dónde ir.
When there is heavy rain, the water has nowhere to go.
Destruye las casas, los campos, los caminos.
It destroys houses, fields, roads.
I remember driving through Bamyan province, and the infrastructure is just so fragile.
These roads that connect villages, a single flood can cut a community off entirely for weeks.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y la verdad es que las casas en muchas zonas rurales son de barro.
And the truth is that houses in many rural areas are made of mud.
No son construcciones modernas.
They are not modern constructions.
Cuando el agua llega, las paredes simplemente caen.
When the water comes, the walls simply collapse.
Mud brick construction.
Beautiful in its way, completely practical for a dry climate, and absolutely devastating when there's a flash flood.
I've seen the aftermath.
It looks like the buildings just dissolved.
Bueno, y aquí está el problema grande.
Well, and here is the big problem.
Afganistán casi no produce gases contaminantes.
Afghanistan barely produces any greenhouse gases.
No tiene muchas industrias, no tiene muchos coches.
It has few industries, few cars.
Pero sufre mucho por el cambio climático que otros países causaron.
But it suffers a great deal from the climate change that other countries caused.
The extraordinary thing is, you look at the numbers, Afghanistan contributes something like 0.06 percent of global carbon emissions.
Essentially nothing.
And yet it sits near the top of every climate vulnerability index.
Es una injusticia muy grande.
It is a very great injustice.
Los países ricos contaminaron el planeta durante cien años.
Rich countries polluted the planet for a hundred years.
Y ahora los países pobres, como Afganistán, pagan el precio.
And now poor countries, like Afghanistan, pay the price.
La gente muere por las inundaciones, pero ellos no causaron el problema.
People die in floods, but they did not cause the problem.
Look, I've heard that argument my entire career and I think it's true.
But I also think it gets repeated so often that it stops landing.
People nod and move on.
So let's try to make it concrete.
A ver, un ejemplo concreto.
Let's see, a concrete example.
En Afganistán, los glaciares del Hindu Kush perdieron mucha masa en los últimos cincuenta años.
In Afghanistan, the glaciers of the Hindu Kush lost a great deal of mass in the last fifty years.
Estos glaciares son como un depósito de agua natural para millones de personas.
These glaciers are like a natural water reservoir for millions of people.
The Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
Scientists call it the Third Pole because it holds more freshwater ice than anywhere on earth outside the Arctic and Antarctic.
And it's melting fast.
Sí, y cuando los glaciares se derriten más rápido, hay dos problemas.
Yes, and when the glaciers melt faster, there are two problems.
Primero, hay demasiada agua en primavera, y eso causa las inundaciones.
First, there is too much water in spring, and that causes the floods.
Segundo, en verano hay muy poca agua, y eso causa la sequía.
Second, in summer there is very little water, and that causes drought.
Feast and famine.
Too much water and then not enough.
And in between, you have a farming population that depends entirely on predictable seasonal patterns that no longer exist.
Mira, en Afganistán más del sesenta por ciento de la gente trabaja en la agricultura.
Look, in Afghanistan more than sixty percent of people work in agriculture.
No son agricultores industriales con tecnología moderna.
They are not industrial farmers with modern technology.
Son familias pequeñas que dependen de la lluvia y del agua de los ríos.
They are small families who depend on rain and river water.
And this is where the history matters.
Afghanistan had a sophisticated traditional water management system, the karez system.
Underground channels, centuries old, that brought water from the mountains to the villages.
Extraordinary engineering.
Sí, el sistema karez.
Yes, the karez system.
Es una tecnología muy antigua, casi dos mil años.
It is very ancient technology, almost two thousand years old.
Los afganos construyeron canales subterráneos para llevar el agua de las montañas hasta los campos.
Afghans built underground channels to carry water from the mountains to the fields.
Fue muy inteligente para ese clima.
It was very intelligent for that climate.
And forty years of war destroyed much of it.
The Soviet invasion, the civil war, the Taliban, the American occupation, and now back to the Taliban.
Every conflict damaged the infrastructure that people depended on to survive.
La verdad es que Afganistán tuvo cuarenta años de guerra.
The truth is that Afghanistan had forty years of war.
Y cuando hay guerra, nadie repara los canales, nadie mantiene los caminos, nadie construye sistemas de protección contra las inundaciones.
And when there is war, nobody repairs the channels, nobody maintains the roads, nobody builds flood protection systems.
So when the floods hit, there's nothing to buffer them.
No dams, no early warning systems, no evacuation infrastructure.
And then there's the other layer, the Taliban.
Bueno, los talibanes son el gobierno ahora.
Well, the Taliban are the government now.
Y hay un problema muy grande.
And there is a very big problem.
Muchos países y organizaciones internacionales no quieren trabajar directamente con ellos porque no reconocen su gobierno.
Many countries and international organizations do not want to work directly with them because they do not recognize their government.
Which puts aid organizations in an impossible position.
The people who need help are real.
The suffering is real.
But the political situation means that getting resources to those people is enormously complicated.
Es que los talibanes también tienen sus propias reglas.
The thing is, the Taliban also have their own rules.
Por ejemplo, en muchas provincias no permitieron que las mujeres trabajaran en las ONG, las organizaciones de ayuda.
For example, in many provinces they did not allow women to work in NGOs, the aid organizations.
Entonces las organizaciones internacionales tuvieron un dilema muy difícil.
So international organizations faced a very difficult dilemma.
I mean, that was a genuine crisis for the UN.
Some agencies pulled out entirely.
Others tried to negotiate.
And meanwhile, real people in real villages were losing their homes to floods while diplomats argued about conditions.
A ver, yo entiendo la posición de las organizaciones internacionales.
Look, I understand the position of international organizations.
No puedes aceptar las reglas de los talibanes.
You cannot accept the Taliban's rules.
Pero también es verdad que la gente necesita ayuda ahora.
But it is also true that people need help now.
No puede esperar una solución política.
They cannot wait for a political solution.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And this is a tension that doesn't resolve neatly.
I've seen it in other contexts, Haiti after the earthquake, Myanmar after the cyclone.
Humanitarian need and political principle pulling in opposite directions.
Y el cambio climático hace este problema más grande cada año.
And climate change makes this problem bigger every year.
Porque las inundaciones en Afganistán fueron peores en los últimos diez años que en los veinte años anteriores.
Because the floods in Afghanistan were worse in the last ten years than in the previous twenty.
Los científicos lo confirmaron.
Scientists confirmed this.
The data is stark.
In 2024, floods in Afghanistan killed over four hundred people.
In 2023, another bad year.
And the projections say it gets worse.
The IPCC models show Central Asia experiencing more extreme precipitation events as temperatures rise.
Mira, cuando hablo de esto con amigos en España, muchos no saben que Afganistán tiene este problema.
Look, when I talk about this with friends in Spain, many do not know that Afghanistan has this problem.
Piensan que Afganistán solo tiene problemas de guerra y terrorismo.
They think Afghanistan only has problems of war and terrorism.
Pero el clima es también una crisis muy seria.
But the climate is also a very serious crisis.
The thing is, war and climate are not separate stories in Afghanistan.
They feed each other.
Drought pushes farmers off their land, they lose their income, they become vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups.
Climate instability becomes political instability.
Es que esto pasó en Siria también, ¿no?
The thing is, this happened in Syria too, right?
Antes de la guerra civil, Siria tuvo una sequía muy grande entre 2006 y 2010.
Before the civil war, Syria had a very large drought between 2006 and 2010.
Muchos agricultores perdieron sus tierras y fueron a las ciudades.
Many farmers lost their land and went to the cities.
Y eso ayudó a crear las condiciones para la guerra.
And that helped create the conditions for the war.
Syria is the textbook case, yes.
Researchers are careful not to say climate caused the war, the political conditions were already there.
But climate stress was an accelerant.
It made everything more fragile, faster.
La verdad es que en Afganistán, cuando la gente pierde su casa por las inundaciones, muchos emigran.
The truth is that in Afghanistan, when people lose their home to floods, many emigrate.
Van a Kabul, van a Irán, van a Pakistán.
They go to Kabul, they go to Iran, they go to Pakistan.
Son refugiados del clima, aunque nadie los llama así oficialmente.
They are climate refugees, even though nobody officially calls them that.
And that's a legal gap with real consequences.
The 1951 Refugee Convention protects people fleeing persecution.
It does not clearly protect people fleeing unlivable climate conditions.
So these people fall through the cracks of international law.
Bueno, y esto va a ser el problema grande del futuro.
Well, and this is going to be the big problem of the future.
No solo en Afganistán.
Not only in Afghanistan.
En Bangladesh, en las islas del Pacífico, en partes de África.
In Bangladesh, in the Pacific islands, in parts of Africa.
El clima va a mover a cientos de millones de personas en los próximos cincuenta años.
The climate is going to displace hundreds of millions of people in the next fifty years.
Right, so.
Seventy-seven people dead in Afghanistan in ten days from rain.
That's the headline.
But underneath it is this whole architecture of vulnerability, history, politics, and a global system that created the problem and hasn't figured out how to take responsibility for it.
A ver, yo quiero terminar con algo importante.
Look, I want to finish with something important.
La gente que murió en Afganistán esta semana no tuvo culpa de nada.
The people who died in Afghanistan this week were not responsible for anything.
No contaminaron, no calentaron el planeta.
They did not pollute, they did not warm the planet.
Solo vivieron en un lugar muy vulnerable, en un país muy pobre, con un gobierno que el mundo no acepta.
They simply lived in a very vulnerable place, in a very poor country, with a government the world does not accept.
Y eso los hizo invisibles.
And that made them invisible.