Hazara people previously constituted around 67 % of the total population of Afghanistan. However, during the late-1800s, 60 % of the Hazara population were wiped out and suffered extreme discrimination. Although attempts were made during mid-1990s to unite Hazara and give them a voice at the United Nations, the situation got worse with the Taliban seizing power and declaring war on Shia( MRG 2015).
• Sustainable development must take into consideration peace building as a key component of the process.
• Sustainable development management must focus on three principles: Participation and inclusion rather than centralized planning, meeting short term requirements without compromising long-term strategies, and the inclusion of a feedback loop for all development plans rather than having fixed ones to ensure flexibility and give room for constant improvements.
• Establishment of a body responsible for collecting and analyzing data that feeds the policy making process must be considered a priority.
• Ensure information sharing between different institutions and organizations by creating incentives to encourage cooperation and increase the cost of non-cooperative processes.
• Aid management. The overflow of aid can trigger unjust distribution of resources and might encourage corruption and create tension between different social sectors.
• It is critical to propose a gradual recovery plan that takes into consideration both the immediate needs of the city and the critical humanitarian cases and long term planning. Neglecting one of the two will cause the development plan to fail. This point will be clearly demonstrated in the specific development strategies by suggesting gradual reform.
Specific Strategies
Environmental Sustainable Development Strategies This section focuses on solving the problem of pollution, deforestation, accessibility to clean water, energy efficiency in buildings and clean energy production.
a. Energy One of the biggest challenges that is standing in the way of the Bamiyan population to extract itself from extreme poverty is the lack of a reliable source of power. Bamiyan is one of the areas in Afghanistan that still lives off the grid, and something as simple as lighting houses at night is still a dream for Bamiyan. The following strategies can be adopted to tackle the energy problem in the short term:
• Establishment of a retrofitting program that aims at using local skills and local materials to enhance the energy efficiency of existing buildings and therefore reduce the demand for energy. Simple and low-cost measures can be applied on residential and public buildings to enhance passive heating and cooling such as adding a south facing veranda that will act as a solar collector reducing the need for burning fossil fuel to heat houses. Consequently, Indoor Air Pollution( IAP) will be reduced. A successful implementation of a similar program was carried out by GERES( 2015).
• Encourage the use of Solar Water Heating( SWH) for domestic uses since Bamiyan enjoys a lot of sunny days during the year and the use of solar power is already being successfully implemented in some areas. It is argued that SWH has a great potential in enhancing the quality of life in poor rural areas, eliminating the need for burning fossil fuel for heating water, and offering employment opportunities( GNESD 2006).
• Establish a micro-credit approach that enables villagers to form an organization and take a loan from the banks to invest in renewable technologies and sell the energy to pay back the loan( Biswas et al. 2001).
354 ZEMCH 2015 | International Conference | Bari- Lecce, Italy