A Land in Crisis

Afghan refugees are returning home to a war-ravaged country and finding their villages destroyed. They urgently need the support of the world community to sustain their new democracy and rebuild their economy and their lives.

• Some 80% of Afghans traditionally worked the land. Today, disheartened farmers are migrating to crowded cities to find housing and work, threatening to create an urban crisis.


• Afghanistan was once the orchard of Central Asia; over the past two decades, an estimated 60-80% of orchard trees and vineyards have been destroyed.


• In the 1970s, the country was self-sufficient in food production. Since then, drought and deforestation have caused widespread dependency on food aid, and Afghanistan ranks as one of the world's poorest countries.


• Not long ago, abundant and delicious fruits and nuts were sold locally and exported. Since the 1990s, poppies cultivated for heroin have become Afghanistan’s #1 cash crop.


• Cedars, pines and oaks covered more than 3% of the country before the Soviet invasion. Forests now comprise less than 0.5% of the land. As poverty pushes Afghans to use firewood for cooking and fuel, farmers are selling off their wood to meet these basic needs. If deforestation continues, environmentalists fear that all the nation’s natural woods will vanish by 2005.


• Check out our current project summary (226K PDF)


• Learn about Afghanistan through a photographic tour: Low Bandwidth Version (1.1MB PDF)     High Bandwidth Version (4.1MB PDF)