Food and Waste in Urban Kabul, Afghanistan

Environmental justice (EJ) is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. ~United States Environmental Protection Agency

The people of Kabul city do not have access to proper municipal waste management infrastructure with there being a lack of source separation, composting, and standardized recycling, and. The city instead burns the waste or stores garbage in landfills present in the city. The informal sector bears the burden of waste management. This is a huge environmental justice issue that needs to be addressed and this project attempts to do that.

The food and waste systems in Kabul project explores food access points and garbage dump access points in Kabul to create environmentally sustainable and resilient systems such as implementing compost systems. The 54.2% of food waste and biodegradable materials in Kabul’s solid waste management system could be prevented from ending up in landfills through composting (Ahmad Rashid Khoshbeen, Integrated Solid-Waste Management for Kabul City, Afghanistan 2019). 

Solid waste management has been a prominent problem because the Kabul municipality is dependent on landfilling and open burning methods for garbage treatment. The city utilizes these methods because they are simple and versatile but they result in various environmental and social consequences. The untreated garbage produces methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) which are the two largest greenhouse gasses (GHG) that contribute greatly to global warming and climate change (Climate Reports 2022, the United Nations). The landfilling and open burning methods also pollutes the air that people breath as it happens so close to residential areas. 32 percent of air pollution is due to the open burning of the waste in Kabul.

In order to create policy proposals which solve the problems that exist within the food system, one must first understand the system itself. This includes the production, transportation, and storage of food waste. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a powerful tool that I used to map the food supply and garbage dump access points in the main streets of central Kabul.

The goal of the project is to understand the food and waste systems in the central part of Kabul city using GIS to run an analysis that can help us better understand the relationship between food and waste systems. I identify locations for localized compost systems to mitigate the problem of food waste in Kabul city. Localized compost systems support remediation of environmental issues in the city. Composting food waste in Kabul will significantly decrease the amount of food waste ending up in the waste system, and therefore decreases the amount garbage in piles, bins, and landfills.

The main aspiration for this project was to create data I wished to see in the world. Due to more than 40 years of war in Afghanistan, there have not been many opportunities to conduct complex academic research projects. Therefore, it was necessary to create the data I needed for my project. As I was not able to travel to Afghanistan due to safety problems, I was able to secure funding for primary data collection as well as manage a data collection team in Kabul. 5,000 observations were collected during the months of October and November of 2022. 

Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, is located in the heart of Asia and has an area of 397 mi². Currently Kabul city’s population is around 5 million people, which is 12,000 residents per square mile, highly dense for a city geographically as small as Kabul. Kabul is a city with numerous political, economical, social, and environmental problems. This project looks at the fragmented food supply and waste system and its relationship with the informal sector in urban Kabul. There is a substantial lack of infrastructure concerning the food and waste system in Kabul due to decades of war, limited resources as well as government negligence. For these reasons, little to no research has been conducted on the food or waste system in Kabul to address food and waste system challenges.

Kabul has little to no social and physical infrastructure to support waste prevention such as source separation, a proper incineration system, municipal or community compost systems, and municipal recycling factories. There are also no legal enforcement nor incentivized policies that could help create a better solid waste system for the city.

Kabul is the fifth fastest-growing city in the world. This demands the expansion of dumpsites, landfills as well as open burnings. Kabul’s reliance on unmanaged landfills poses major health risks and a threat to water resources. For instance, the Kampani dumpsite is upstream and extremely close in proximity to the primary drinking water well in Kabul.

This policy brief focuses on how the solid waste management system in Kabul could be improved with the involvement of important food waste treatment methods and the informal sector. Given that 54.2% of waste is food and biodegradable materials in Kabul, food waste contributes greatly to the generation of GHG emissions (Ahmad Rashid Khoshbeen, 2019). If global food waste was a country it would be the third-largest GHG emitter after China and the United States. It accounts for 6% of total GHG emissions. About 6-8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced if we all stopped wasting food. To shift these statistics, composting is one of the most important and promising solutions where food waste can undergo either an aerobic or anaerobic decomposition process and be composted.

The 54.2% of food waste and biodegradable materials in Kabul’s solid waste management system could be prevented from ending up in landfills through composting. Compost bins can be placed in between food and garbage locations to mitigate the problem of food waste ending in garbage dumps. This is also a great step towards source separation practices. In order to propose a better and accurate policy regarding the waste management system, one must understand the food system because a great percentage of Kabul’s waste is food waste. By understanding the food system, one can understand better where the most food waste is produced and where compost bins can be placed to remediate the problem.

Food system cannot wait, and neither can action on mitigating climate change, in which the food system has an ever important part to play. ~Monica Zurek

On the first day of my GIS class, the first thing I typed in the search section in ArcGIS online was Kabul, Afghanistan. I knew there was not going to be a lot of data on Kabul, specifically when it came to the food system. With the assistance of professor Jordan Ayala, I was able to source select data for my maps through Google Maps. The data from Google was not sufficient because it was not fully inclusive of the data I needed to conduct my project such as food categories. Professor Ayala and I talked about next steps for me, which included me being responsible for collecting my own data for the project. This was difficult because I cannot return to Afghanistan due to political instability. I was able to connect to local people and hire them to collect data for me. I also was able to secure funding through Bard’s Environmental & Urban Studies department and the Open Society Engaged Research Grant.

There were shapefiles of Kabul city available so I started working on creating a boundary map of Kabul city and the 22 districts that the collaborator could use to guide their survey work. In ArcGIS online, I created a layer where all the points would be stored and added it to the boundary map of Kabul and published it on GIS Field Maps.

The initial idea was to map out everything related to food and waste in the 22 districts of Kabul but quickly I realized that it was too large of a project area/survey area so I narrowed down our food type categories into 13 items:

1. Restaurants
2. Groceries
3. Bakeries
4. Butcheries
5. Coffee shops
6. Tea shops
7. Dairy Product
8. Food Carts
9. Vegetable/fruit Carts
10. Farms/food gardens
11. Food production
12. Juice shops
13. Others

I also realized that the boundaries of the 22 districts were not realistic due to lack of time and safety problems under the reign of the Taliban. I narrowed down the food location points survey area to 13 districts and the garbage dump locations to 18 districts. I chose these districts as they were central districts and I knew there would be a lot of data to collect. Districts 14, 13, 20, 18, 19, 21,12, 22 were avoided during the food location points surveying and districts 18, 21, 20, and some of 22 were avoided during the garbage dump location points surveying. The last thing worth mentioning in regards to data collection is that most of the data were collected from the main streets of the designated districts in Kabul city. It would require a lot more funding and time to go to each district in Kabul and collect data. Also the main streets are where the most traffic is located as well as most economic activities take place.  

This section focuses on the different types of data analysis. The first section focuses on heat maps of different food locations with descriptive text and pictures. The heat map explores the density concentration in central districts of Kabul. The density in most food locations are concentrated primarily in the first district around the old city where there are numerous shopping centers, warehouses, and big markets. It is also concentrated around the second and third districts around the new city. The new city, or Shahr-e-naw, is the better developed and wealthier part of the city with various upscale restaurants, coffee shops, and big sweet bakeries. Based on the heat maps and the comparative heat map analysis of the food and garbage locations, it would be sensible to implement compost systems in the first district around the old city and second and third districts around the new city since that is where the most dense food locations are located. 

The last three analyses include Anselin Local Moran’s I Cluster and Outlier Analysis, the Gi* Hot Spot Analysis, and the Local Bivariate Relationship Analysis. These analyses were possible with the generated tessellation tool that created a grid of regularly equally distanced hexagons. 

The first one is an Anselin Local Moran's I Cluster and Outlier Analysis that helps identify the high or low value of clusters spatially using the input feature class and input field. The second analysis was conducted using the Gi* Hot Spot Analysis tool. This tool looks at the one feature in the context of the features around it. In order for a feature to be a hot spot, it must have a high value and be surrounded by features with high values. The third and last analysis was conducted using the Local Bivariate Relationship which allows one to make a comparison of two variables such as food and waste locations. This tool helps determine if the value of one variable is dependent or explanatory of the other variables and their variation in geographic spaces. In this instance, it helped identify the relationship between food and waste locations on one map. These different analyses helped identify potential locations where compost systems can be implemented based on the available financial and infrastructural resources. 

The different analyses helped identify where compost bins should be located as well as the compost facility/facilities. Exploring the intersection between the food supply locations and the garbage dump locations helped me identify sites where compost bins can be placed to prevent and reduce the 54.2% of food waste entering Kabul's garbage dumps. The final maps from each analysis are helpful in which each hexagon in each map determines where the compost bins can be located. Given the financial and infrastructural resources, the compost bins can be placed in the places of the hexagons at any of the given maps. The Bivariate Relationship final map requires more compost bins; it is better since it is more localized. The picture below shows a map of where the compost bins and facility could potentially go using the final map of the bivariate relationship analysis. The compost facility is located in district 17 as it is not in the center of the city. It is next to a farm shown in the imagery picture below as the farm will be able to use the compost and the location is also close to the directorate of sanitation located in district 4. The reason it is not next to the directorate of sanitation is due to lack of space based on the imagery maps.

This possible compost locations map was designed based on the final local bivariate relationship map. The map only showed the intersection between food and garbage positive linear relationships. Implementing the compost project in Kabul City based on this map will require more financial resources as there are more compost bin locations. However, this is also the most comprehensive compost project to undertake due to the presence of more compost bins in most districts.

This possible compost locations map was designed based on the final Gi* Hot Spot map. The map only showed the intersection between food and garbage hot spots with 99% confidence. Implementing the compost project in Kabul City based on this map will not require as many resources as the first map given that the compost bins will be located in the few central districts and will be closer to the compost facility. Even though it is not as comprehensive as the first map it will still create an opportunity for composting to become a part of the culture in the waste management system in Kabul.

To conclude the project and overcome the major problem of food waste in Kabul, one can explore the intersection between food locations and garbage locations providing an opportunity for implementing potential compost systems. 54.2% of garbage consists of food waste and analyses and the results of this project aim to mitigate that problem at a municipal level. The next step worth exploring is to calculate the route from compost bin collection locations to the compost facility based on the two potential compost bins and facility maps. It will also be worth exploring the role residents play in the process of mitigating food waste and how much implementing each of these projects costs. Finally, this is a project that I hope to seek funding for and implement in the near future.

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