How a Young Woman Becomes an Environmental Activist in a War-Torn Country

When Zohra Sansa, 21, returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, after nine years in Iran as a refugee, she witnessed some of climate change’s catastrophic effects in crowded internally displaced persons (IDP) camps filled with homeless, rural families. The melting ice of Himalayan glaciers in the country’s Hindu Kush — crucial for crop irrigation — has been increasing dramatically for the past 40 years. The World Meteorological Organization reports that between 1980 and 2015, nearly 15,000 people died because of weather, climate, and water-related events. More than 4,500 of these deaths were due to flash floods.

Devastating torrents have swept away farms, killing people and leaving thousands of others homeless. At the other extreme, years of severe droughts have ravaged crops, and animals have starved from a lack of pastures.

During Sansa’s time in an IDP camp in Kabul, she met families who had been displaced by climate-related catastrophes. They make up the majority of people in the city’s camps; only a minority of them have fled from the country’s never-ending conflict.

“I am sad to see what is happening,” Sansa said as she spoke about her hopes and fears for the future.

She described how displaced families in Afghanistan live in squalid conditions, scavenging for rubbish to use as fuel for warmth in winter, and for cooking their meagre food supplies. Climate change directly reduces formerly self-sufficient farmers to poverty through the destruction of their homes and livelihoods. To survive in the city, people resort to burning plastic and other toxic materials, adding to the smoggy air that has already been polluted from decades of car exhaust fumes. Afghanistan’s Ministry of Health estimates that around 5,000 people died of respiratory illness and cancers in 2020 alone.

Sansa’s discovery of the homelessness, food insecurity, and mass migration that comes with global warming changed her career path. Instead of studying to become a doctor, she now wants to attend Kabul University to study environmental science.

As part of her journey toward becoming a climate activist, she came across an environmental organization called Oxygen Afghanistan, in which young people volunteer to teach other young people about climate change’s catastrophic effects on the world.

“After hearing of Greta [Thunberg] and her campaigns, my dream was to protect the environment,” she said. “So I joined Oxygen.”

But this work in a war-torn country like Afghanistan comes with great danger, especially for a young woman like Sansa.

The Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace ranked the country as the most dangerous in the world in 2019 and 2020. Between the misogyny of the Taliban and the government’s unreliability when it comes to women’s rights, the public demonstrations held by Oxygen put their members at great risk.

Women who are seen in public and speak out are often victims of targeted attacks by extremists who think they should be silent, and covered by burqas.

At the beginning of March, three women media workers were shot dead in Nangahar Province, in the country’s east. And in Kabul in May 2020, 24 women, children, and babies were shot dead in a terrorist attack on a maternity hospital. Random violence occurs regularly in Kabul. So why are the volunteers at Oxygen prepared to take such undeniable risks?

Sansa explained that “attacks kill one person or groups, but climate change will kill us all.”

This attitude allows the Oxygen members to put their fears aside, and teach classes to young people eager to learn and to find potential solutions to environmental problems. They aim to educate the public with their programs. Two of their most recent and successful have been tree and shoe campaigns.

For the tree campaigns, members walk Kabul’s streets in groups of 10 at a time — minimizing the risk of violence — dressed as trees, carrying banners with a message that trees are needed for clean air. For Oxygen’s shoe campaigns, members collect footwear in order to powerfully demonstrate the number of people determined to have their voices heard on climate change, even when they cannot march in person. The group piles the shoes into high mounds in the street to catch public attention. After these efforts, they distribute 3,000 small bushes for planting to help re-oxygenate Kabul’s air, and they give the donated shoes to the poor.

Oxygen and Sansa are well aware of the challenges of their mission. But they are undaunted, epitomizing the spirit of Afghans, who are used to adverse, dangerous circumstances.

“I love my work with Oxygen, and when I graduate from university my dream is to work to protect the environment,” Sansa said. When asked what developed countries can do to help her country’s environmental efforts, she proudly answered, “Nothing!”

“Every single person should take responsibility for their own actions,” she said.