Page 12 - IRANRptOct20

Disasters in the making
countries to have been shaken by anti-government protests in recent days. There was a drop-off in unrest in emerging and frontier markets in March, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), after the widespread introduction of lockdowns. But with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasting that growth in emerging markets and developing economies will contract by 1% this year, certain simmering pots of tension may come to the boil.
Hribernik used five factors to determine the ability of 142 countries to bounce back from the pandemic. That was combined with data from past protests to 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
12​ IRAN Country Report October 2020 www.intellinews.com