The UK government has been accused of ignoring the plight of three environmental activists from Afghanistan who worked with British officials to mitigate the damaging impact of climate change on their country before the Taliban takeover. The campaigners, who have received credible threats to their lives, do not know the fate of one of their colleagues who was detained by the Taliban. The three were employed via Oxford Policy Management, an international development consulting firm, to carry out work for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on climate change. They are now in hiding. Repeated letters and emails to the FCDO have gone unanswered along with applications to the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy scheme (Arap). One of the climate activists, Mohammed, who spoke to the Guardian from his hiding place in Kabul, said he feared the Taliban were closing in. “Sometimes I think I’ll just go and surrender to the Taliban so they can kill me and it will all be over,” he said. “It is hard to explain to my young son why I cannot take him to the park. We have begged the UK government to rescue us but so far our pleas have been ignored.” Greta Thunberg tweeted an appeal to help environmental activists from Fridays for Future get out of Afghanistan. Abdul Qahar Balkhi, of the Taliban’s cultural commission, pledged to work with the global community to fight issues such as climate change in an interview with Newsweek. However, Mohammed said he did not believe the Taliban were committed to tackling the climate emergency. “So far the Taliban has not appointed a minister for the environment. They believe the climate crisis is all arranged by Allah and humans should not intervene,” he said. While the Taliban have previously made pro-environment statements such as one in 2017 urging people to go out and plant trees to beautify the planet, the group has also been implicated in illegal logging, planting landmines in pomegranate orchards and taxing opium poppy farmers. While Afghanistan is responsible for only 0.03% of global emissions, the country is severely affected by climate change. The economy is heavily dependent on farming with up to 85% of Afghans engaged in agriculture, growing crops such as wheat, potatoes and various fruits. The country has been badly affected by drought, flash floods and deforestation. Opium poppies are favoured by some farmers because they are drought-resistant and generate reliable income. Afghanistan has many minerals that could assist with tackling climate change. Along with copper, iron, gold and cobalt, it has lithium that is needed to manufacture batteries for use in electric cars and other technology that uses renewable energy. However, extracting these minerals is challenging and unlikely to happen imminently. The environmental activists say that as each hour passes the risk of the Taliban finding where they are hiding increases. “The Taliban are too brutal,” said Mohammed. “They are lying to the media when they say they have changed for the better. They are even more brutal than before. One of our colleagues was contacted by the Taliban before they took over Kabul. He was told: ‘We have a list of all your colleagues who worked with the infidels. We will look for you and we will find you.’ Then he started naming our colleagues.” In a letter dated 1 September to Dominic Raab, who was then foreign secretary, Oxford Policy Management wrote that the three climate change campaigners who had worked with the FCDO “are at imminent threat having already received several threats on their lives”. To date, no reply has been received. A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK’s evacuation operation helped over 15,000 people to safety including British nationals, Afghan interpreters and other vulnerable people. The Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme will provide protection for people at risk and identified as in need. It is one of the UK’s most ambitious resettlement schemes ever and will welcome 5,000 Afghans in the first year and 20,000 over the coming years.”