In this talk, Onno Rühl, General Manager, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat, discusses the climate crisis in the world’s Third Pole and the agency's work helping communities living in these regions build resilient habitats and adapt to an ever-riskier climate.
Tajikistan continues to be highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with a World Bank publication - Adapting to Climate Change in Europe and Central Asia - indicating that Tajikistan is the most vulnerable country in Central Asia.
All too often small towns and marginalised communities are overlooked and lack the resources or capacity for effective urban and rural planning. To address this gap, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) developed a Habitat Planning Framework, which uses participatory urban and rural planning approaches to provide long-term design solutions to improve quality of life in the communities it serves – from a neighbourhood through to the village and district scale. Building on this Framework, AKAH, together with Harvard University’s Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute and Graduate School of Design is testing an innovative virtual design studio approach to remote planning in Ishkashim, Afghanistan.
The Aga Khan University, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat and the University of Central Asia launch a documentary film series about the climate crisis on the Roof of the World. Echoing the call to action of the newly launched Earthshot Prize, Voices from the Roof of the World will tell the stories of the millions of people and endangered wildlife living amongst these fast-melting glaciers and the billions more across Asia dependent on the rivers that flow from them.
In a bid to spotlight the dire consequences of climate change in Central and South Asia, the Aga Khan University, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat and the University of Central Asia launched a film series focusing on the catastrophic impact of the rapid melting of the world’s largest repository of ice outside the polar regions. Echoing the call to action of the #EarthshotPrize, Voices from the Roof of the World (VRW) will help local filmmakers produce impactful documentaries about the consequences of global warming for the wildlife and the 240 million people living among the world’s highest mountains and the almost two billion people dependent on the great rivers that all begin here.
AKAH’s Habitat Planning framework is a process that spans community-centred participatory design, government engagement, socio-economic and land-use Geographic Information System (GIS) data analysis, planning, design, and construction, to help communities plan for opportunity.
The Resilient Khorog Steering Committee had its first meeting in mid-September 2020, bringing together Government planning and investments with initiatives by the community, the private sector, AKDN institutions and international partners. The programme is designed to set up the structures, systems and capacity to transform Khorog into a model resilient city that is a place for sustainable economic growth and investment and that has a dynamic urban planning environment.
Due to snowfall in winter and landslides and floods in summer, the villages around the Wakhan corridor (some of which lie at an altitude of over 3,000 metres) remain cut off for up to four months every year. Many villages along the Afghan-Pakistan border lack access to safe water supplies. In response, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH), with the support of the PATRIP Foundation, is constructing 15 climate resilient drinking water schemes.
With World Water Week 2020 focusing attention on the connection between climate crises and water, the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat’s (AKAH) efforts in Tajikistan in combatting both natural disasters and inaccessibility to safe drinking water present some useful insights into how tailored local initiatives can result in sustainable community-led water schemes.