KABUL, Jan 29: Decades of conflict in Afghanistan have left the country on the brink of a natural disaster which will spiral out of control unless urgent action is taken, a United Nations study released Wednesday said.

Overflowing rubbish dumps, poisonous medical waste facilities, fetid open sewers, fume-belching factories and leaking oil refineries are adding to the devastating affects of deforestation and desertification, the report said.

In the first full environmental assessment of the country since the 2001 collapse of the hardline Taliban regime ended 23 years of war, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) study called for international aid to prevent further destruction.

“Tragically the combined pressures of warfare, civil disorder, lack of governance and drought have taken a major toll on Afghanistan’s natural and human resources,” the report said.

“The significant lack of effective environmental management and the extensive environmental damage and degradation ... is increasing human vulnerability to natural disasters.”

Unless immediate steps are taken, both by Afghanistan’s new government and the global community, its population and precious wildlife will be poisoned and starved out, the internationally-funded study said.

“Transforming Afghanistan into a prosperous, democratic and self-sustaining country cannot be achieved without the assistance of the international community,” it said.

Years of fighting and drought have left the central Asian country heavily dependent on foreign help for reconstruction, a process which the UNEP said will flounder unless environmental concerns are addressed.

“Over 80 per cent of Afghan people live in rural areas, yet they have seen many of their basic resources — water for irrigation, trees for food and fuel — lost in just a generation,” said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer.

“In urban areas the most basic necessity for human wellbeing, safe water, may be reaching as few as 12 per cent of the people.”

The report said that four years of drought which has gripped most of the country had destroyed arable land, lowered water tables, desiccated wetlands and caused widespread erosion and loss of wildlife.

“These problems are compounded by the increasing numbers of people who are displaced due to insecurity arising from degraded environments and loss of livelihoods.” it said.

Afghanistan’s major population centres have been placed under immense pressure in recent months as people fleeing rural hardships join a large proportion of some 1.8 million refugees returning from exile.

“High levels of unemployment, a failing electricity supply network and assorted public health problems are having a profound effect on the quality of urban Afghanistan,” the survey added.

Of major concern in the cities is the pollution of the water table by disease-laden raw sewage and industrial waste. Some, 580,000 and rising, vehicles running on low-grade diesel are also choking an atmosphere already blighted by dust and toxic fires.

Arid rural areas have also been hit hard by deforestation and bad farming practices, devastating the landscape and threatening a wildlife population hit by extensive hunting.

The report singled out Pakistan as having a major role to play in cutting off smuggling routes for timber illegally harvested from eastern Afghanistan’s once rich conifer forests.

Over 50 per cent of forest cover has been lost over the past two decades in the eastern provinces of Nuristan, Kunar and Nangarhar, the study said, with similar losses predicted for southeastern Khost, Paktia and Paktika.

Afghan Environment Minister Yusuf Nooristani said deforestation caused by “Afghan and non-Afghan timber mafia and smugglers” was one of the main causes of the country’s ecological woes.—AFP