Attachments
Key highlights
- Rising national climate risk: In Round 3, 19 per cent of Afghanistan’s population lives in high‑risk communities, an increase from 16 per cent in Round 2, indicating a continued rise in overall climate vulnerability despite a slight reduction in the number of districts classified as very high risk.
- Shift in drivers of vulnerability: Unlike Round 2—where sensitivity was the dominant contributor—adaptive capacity emerged as the primary driver of climate risk in Round 3, underscoring persistent gaps in access to basic services and limited uptake of adaptive capacity measures.
- Persistent and emerging high‑risk areas: Provinces with the highest shares of populations living in high‑risk communities include Wardak, Nimroz, Daykundi, Bamyan, and Zabul, with particularly severe risk concentrations observed in districts such as Saghar (Ghor), Saydabad (Wardak), and Tarnak Wa Jaldak (Zabul).
- Centralised climate risk hotspots: Spatial hotspot analysis reveals a pronounced corridor of elevated climate risk across central Afghanistan, extending from Daykundi and Bamyan through Ghazni and Wardak to Kabul and Logar, with increasing intensity compared to Round 2. While some risk clusters in the southwest have weakened, new or more localised hotspots have emerged in parts of the northeast and west.