CASE STUDY 14
Volunteer-Driven Community Organizing and Climate-Health Assessments
Afghanistan
Context
Afghanistan is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, facing recurring droughts, floods, heatwaves, and extreme weather events that have devastating effects on agriculture, food security, and health systems. Women, in particular, shoulder disproportionate burdens, such as experiencing reduced access to reproductive health services when infrastructure collapses.
Organization
The Environmental Protection Training and Development Organization (EPTDO) is a climate-focused NGO operating across Afghanistan. Founded in 2019 by a group of male and female experts, EPTDO is guided by a mission to build community resilience and protect the environment through climate adaptation, mitigation, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity conservation, and women’s inclusion.
Approach
EPTDO operates a network of 1,500 local volunteers (680 of whom are women), who lead climate resilience and women’s health awareness workshops across the country, including in remote provinces. These women serve as educators, community mobilizers, and frontline responders in climate resilience efforts. In a context where formal employment for women is highly restricted, EPTDO leverages existing community structures and relational models to enable women to continue leading on the ground without risking their safety.
They also use their vast volunteer network and climate change specialists to conduct localized climate-health assessments that deepen understanding of how climate change affects healthcare access (including SRH) for rural women. The results were used to identify barriers and propose targeted interventions to improve reproductive health services in vulnerable communities as part of a case study called “Climate Change Impacts on Rural Women’s Healthcare Access: A Case Study from Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan.” In Badakhshan Province, EPTDO facilitated a provincial consultation with government departments, the UN, and NGOs. They presented evidence of women’s suffering in districts like Yawan and Kohistan, where a lack of clinics forced pregnant women to travel long distances during floods and other disasters. Through these dissemination sessions, authorities acknowledged the urgency and committed to opening community clinics in those areas. In this way, EPTDO’s role was catalytic—elevating local voices and influencing decision-makers to address reproductive health access.
Results to Date
EPTDO is the only organization in Afghanistan accredited by the UNFCCC, UNEP, and UNCCD, which has created linkages to participate in international conferences and advocate for climate action, notably at COPs since 2022. They have used their global platform to warn of the harms that will occur if climate-resilient health infrastructure is not addressed, especially for women’s health issues, which are most at risk in the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
In Badakhshan, EPTDO’s case study and dissemination sessions led to government authorities committing to open community clinics in districts where women’s health access was most at risk. They provided an example of a successful local solution in Kohistan District, where the findings from the assessment led to the establishment of a clinic with a female doctor, significantly improving access to healthcare for pregnant women and reducing fatalities during travel for treatment.
Built a nationwide network of 1,500 trained volunteers, who have reached over 50,000 beneficiaries with climate-health awareness programs.
“Women should be given a chance to learn how they can stand against climate change and how they can protect themselves from natural disasters and the risks that come from climate change.”
ABDULHADI ACHAKZAI
Founder & CEO, Environmental Protection Trainings and Development Organization (EPTDO)
PDF Innovative Approaches to Addressing Climate Change Impacts on Sexual & Reproductive Health: Case Studies from Around the World