Osama bin Laden viewed global climate change through a religious lens, and was concerned about its impacts on poor and vulnerable Muslims worldwide, according to a document released by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on Wednesday.

The document, which is a letter addressed to "My Islamic Nation," was one of about 100 documents the office of the DNI says were recovered during the 2011 Special Forces raid in Pakistan, during which the Al Queda leader was killed.

See also: Global groundwater crisis may get worse as the world warms

Bin Laden spoke of the obligation of Western countries and Muslims alike to come to the aid of poor populations affected by climate impacts, with a specific focus of victims of widespread flooding in Pakistan. The references to Pakistan suggest the document was written in 2010, when deadly flooding swelled rivers and affected more than 20 million while killing at least 2,000.

Pakistani villagers cross a flooded area in Dadu district, southern Pakistan on Thursday Sept. 30, 2010. Image: AP Photo/Aaron Favila/Associated Press

"Indeed, what our Ummah is experiencing, of effects associated with the enormous climate changes and the great suffering the natural disasters are leaving behind that now become prevalent throughout the Muslim countries, renders the traditional relief efforts insufficient," bin Laden wrote. "Relief work is mentioned as the only solution for these disasters, without warning that it is a plague or suffering from Allah Almighty, and the first solution is faith and correct deeds. One of the correct deeds is assisting Muslims."

Bin Laden recognized that the aid requirements associated with climate change-related disasters, such as floods and droughts, would dwarf the relief capabilities of most nations at the time. Speaking of the Pakistan floods, he wrote:

... What we are experiencing today (drought growth, particularly in Africa, and flooding in other regions, which in days left behind thousands dead and millions of victims forced to be displaced in Pakistan alone) imposes a moral duty upon the good-hearted and determined among the men, to move earnestly and rapidly in rescue of their Pakistani Muslim brothers. For the calamity is considerable and beyond description, whilst requiring massive means.

Bin Laden proposed the establishment of a "permanent relief organization" to respond to the growing needs for climate change-disaster aid efforts that would deal "with such more frequent, diverse and massive consequences of climate changes."

The terrorist held responsible for murdering more than 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as directing other deadly terrorist acts around the world, was peculiarly prescient about the risks of depleting precious stores of groundwater in the water-constrained Muslim world.

"We need to raise Muslim awareness about the dangers associated with depleting the underground water used for agriculture that is not renewable, while it is crucial to establish a network of pipes that joins the agricultural wells with the main network of drinking-water, in order to be used in times of necessity," he wrote.

The civil war in Syria, for example, has been linked in part to a record drought and the government's bungled response to it. Satellite observations have shown that groundwater depletion is accelerating in conflict-prone areas of the Middle East, including Syria and the Fertile Crescent, as well as much of Pakistan and India.

NASA satellite shows significant groundwater depletion in parts of India and Pakistan. Image: NASA GRACE

Bin Laden's family was a prominent player in the Saudi construction business, and bin Laden appears to have taken an interest in public works projects to better prepare the Muslim world for the impacts of global warming. He discusses building water diversions or canals in Sudan, Chad, Somalia and Yemen to improve irrigation. He also wrote about the need to boost food security.

If a calamity befalls any major wheat exporting country and causes a cease in exports, many countries worldwide, and in our region particularly, shall experience deadly famine in the full sense of the word. At that point, the money would not stave off the deadly hunger as long as the bread, the main nourishment, is lacking. Whereas Sudan is endowed with rain-irrigated agricultural land of an area estimated at two hundred million acres, only little of that area has been cultivated. So, it is essential to raise peoples' awareness about such dangers and to encourage the merchants and their families to entirely devote some of their sons to relief and agricultural work; the merchants today are the field knights who may rescue their nation from the predictable horrible famines.

The trove of documents released on Wednesday by the DNI may be an effort to push back against a prominent story by the investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, which alleged that the Pentagon has been lying about numerous aspects of the raid that killed bin Laden.