Page 11 - IRANRptDec20

Disasters in the making
determine projections of civil unrest. “It’s a tinderbox” Hribernik said. “It doesn’t take as much as it did a year ago.”
Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are among 19 countries for which the inaugural edition of the Ecological Threat Register (ETR)​, ​lately released by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), brings particularly ominous news​. The trio are among 19 countries, of 157 assessed, deemed the most fragile with high exposure to ecological threats and the highest risk of future collapse in the decades ahead.
The ETR concludes that the three countries with the highest exposure to ecological shocks are Afghanistan, which is facing six ecological threats, and Mozambique and Namibia, which are each facing five. Another 16, including Iran and the two mentioned Central Asian nations, face four ecological threats.
As for Russia, the rest of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and Azerbaijan and Georgia in the South Caucasus, as well as Turkey and Mongolia, the picture is still rather bleak with medium exposure (two to three threats) to ecological dangers applying throughout this geography.
According to the Sydney-headquartered IEP, the register has determined that approximately one billion people live in countries that do not have the resilience to deal with the ecological changes they are expected to face between now and 2050. Not all of these people will be displaced, however it is likely that a large number of them will be.
“Pakistan, with 220 million people is the country with the largest number of people at risk, followed by Iran with 84 million people at risk. In such circumstances, even small events could spiral into instability and violence leading to mass population displacement, which in turn would have negative implications for regional and global security.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of five countries shown by the ETR with the
11​ IRAN Country Report December 2020 www.intellinews.com