Roza Otunbayeva, head of UNAMA, said in a meeting with officials of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency that UNAMA will try to make useful decisions about Afghanistan at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference. 

The conference is scheduled to start on Monday and will be held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

She also said the conference will provide the basis for the participation of an Afghan delegation at similar international conferences in the future.

 According to Otunbayeva, UNAMA is trying to attract international aid for Afghanistan.

Mutiul Haq Khals, the Director General of the National Environmental Protection Agency, said at the meeting that people are suffering from the negative effects of climate change and the issue should be looked at from a human point of view and not politicized. 

He said if joint steps are taken in this field, the grounds for practical measures will be provided.

Climate change is having a significant impact on Afghanistan, resulting in a range of serious challenges.

One of the most immediate and pressing consequences of the climate crisis in Afghanistan is its impact on food security across the country. 

With the country's economy reliant on agricultural production, particularly rain-fed agriculture, changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather events have an extremely detrimental effect to the health of soil, crops and livestock.

Climate change has made erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts, unseasonal frosts and flash floods increasingly common in Afghanistan and Central Asia, wreaking havoc on food production. 

These deficits mean rural producers are unable to feed their families from their land - deficits that are also driving up market prices.

Humanitarian concerns have been raised repeatedly over Afghanistan being left out of United Nations climate negotiations and meetings. 

The country has been left out of such meetings since the Islamic Emirate regained power in 2021.

The deadliest flash floods in Spain's modern history have killed at least 214 people and dozens were still unaccounted for, four days after torrential rains swept the eastern region of Valencia, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday.

In a televised statement, Sanchez said the government was sending 5,000 more army troops to help with the searches and clean-up in addition to 2,500 soldiers already deployed, Reuters reported.

"It is the biggest operation by the Armed Forces in Spain in peacetime," Sanchez said. "The government is going to mobilize all the resources necessary as long as they are needed."

Valencian regional authorities said on Saturday night the total number of fatalities in the region was 211, plus two from Castilla La Mancha and one in Andalusia.

The tragedy is already Europe's worst flood-related disaster since 1967 when at least 500 people died in Portugal.

Hopes of finding survivors were raised when rescuers found a woman alive after three days trapped in a car park in Montcada, Valencia. Residents burst into applause when civil protection chief Martin Perez announced the news.

Volunteers flocked to Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences centre on Saturday for the first coordinated clean-up organised by regional authorities. The venue has been turned into the nerve centre for the operation, read the report.

In Valencia's Picanya suburb, shop-owner Emilia, 74, told Reuters on Saturday: "We feel abandoned, there are many people who need help. It is not only my house, it's all the houses and we are throwing away furniture, we are throwing away everything.

"When is the help going to come to have fridges and washing machines? Because we can't even wash our clothes and we can't even have a shower."

Nurse Maria Jose Gilabert, 52, who also lives in Picanya, said: "We are devastated because there is not much light to be seen here at the moment, not because they are not coming to help, they are coming from all over Spain, but because it will be a long time before this becomes a habitable area again."

The storm triggered a new weather alert in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, where rains are expected to continue during the weekend.

Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Europe, and elsewhere, due to climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe, Reuters reported.

At least 95 people have been killed in possibly the deadliest flooding to hit Spain in its modern history after torrential rain battered the eastern region of Valencia, sweeping away bridges and buildings, local authorities said on Wednesday.

Meteorologists said a year's worth of rain had fallen in eight hours in parts of Valencia on Tuesday, causing pile-ups on highways and submerging farmland in a region that produces two-thirds of the citrus fruit grown in Spain, a leading global exporter.

Residents in the worst-hit places described seeing people clambering onto the roofs of their cars as a churning tide of brown water gushed through the streets, uprooting trees and dragging away chunks of masonry from buildings.

"It's a river that came through," said Denis Hlavaty, who waited for rescue on a ledge in the petrol station where he works in the regional capital. "The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 2 metres (6.5-feet) deep."

Footage shot by emergency services from a helicopter showed bridges that had collapsed and cars and trucks piled on top of each other on highways between flooded fields outside the city of Valencia.

Trains to the cities of Madrid and Barcelona were cancelled due to the flooding, and schools and other essential services were suspended in the worst-hit areas, officials said.

Power company i-DE, owned by Europe's biggest utility, Iberdrola, said about 150,000 clients in Valencia had no electricity.

Emergency services in the region urged citizens to avoid all road travel and to follow further official advice.

Some parts of Valencia area such as the towns of Turis, Chiva or Bunol recorded more than 400 mm (15-3/4 inches) of rainfall, leading the state weather agency AEMET to declare a red alert on Tuesday. It was lowered to amber on Wednesday as the rain eased.

There was also flooding in other parts of the country, including the southern region of Andalusia, and forecasters warned of more bad weather ahead as the storm moved in a northeasterly direction.

"(The floodwaters) took away lots of dogs, lots of horses, they took away everything," said Antonio Carmona, a construction worker and resident of Alora in Andalusia.

The death toll, which includes three people in other regions, appeared to be the worst in Europe from flooding since 2021 when at least 185 people died in Germany. It is possibly Spain's worst in its modern history as the number of victims surpassed 87 people killed in a 1996 flood near the town of Biescas in the Pyrenees mountains.

In 1957, dozens of people died in floods in the city of Valencia which led to the construction of a new course of the Turia river to prevent floods in the city centre.

Andalusia's regional leader, Juanma Moreno, said a 71-year-old British man had died in hospital of heart failure after being rescued from his flooded home in Malaga while suffering from hypothermia.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X that Europe was ready to help. "What we're seeing in Spain is devastating," she said on X.

ASAJA, one of Spain's largest farmer groups, said on Tuesday it expected significant damage to crops.

Spain is the world's largest exporter of fresh and dried oranges, according to trade data provider the Observatory of Economic Complexity, and Valencia accounts for about 60% of the country's citrus production, according to Valencian Institute of Agriculture Investigations.

Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent due to climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe.

"Events of this type, which used to occur many decades apart, are now becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity is greater," said Ernesto Rodriguez Camino, senior state meteorologist and a member of the Spanish Meteorological Association.