Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dudley L. Poston Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University

Once the world’s most populous nation, China is now among the many Asian countries struggling with anemic fertility rates. In an attempt to double the country’s rate of 1.0 children per woman, Beijing is reaching for a new tool: taxes on condoms, birth control pills and other contraceptives.

As of Jan. 1, such items were subject to a 13% value-added tax. Meanwhile, services such as child care and matchmaking remain duty-free.

The move comes after China last year allocated 90 billion yuan (US$12.7 billion) for a national child care program giving families a one-off payment of around 3,600 yuan (over $500) for every child age three or under.

I have studied China’s demography for almost 40 years and know that past attempts by the country’s communist government to reverse slumping fertility rates through policies encouraging couples to have more children have not worked. I do not expect these new moves to have much, if any, effect on reversing the fertility rate decline to one of the world’s lowest and far below the 2.1 “replacement rate” needed to maintain a stable population.

In many ways, the 13% tax on contraceptives is symbolic. A packet of condoms costs about 50 yuan (about $7), and a month supply of birth control pills averages around 130 yuan ($19). The new tax is not at all a major expense, adding just a few dollars a month.

Compare that to the average cost of raising a child in China – estimated at around 538,000 yuan (over $77,000) to age 18, with the cost in urban areas much higher. One 36-year-old father told the BBC he is not concerned over the price hike. “A box of condoms might cost an extra five yuan, maybe 10, at most 20. Over a year, that’s just a few hundred yuan, completely affordable,” he said.

Pronatalist failings

China is one of many countries to adopt pronatalist policies to address low fertility. But they are rarely effective.

The Singapore government has been concerned about the country’s very low fertility rate for a couple of decades. It tried to devise ways to boost it through programs such as paid maternity leave, child care subsidies, tax relief and one-time cash gifts. Yet, Singapore’s fertility rate – currently at 1.2 – remains one of the lowest in the world.

The government there even started limiting the construction of small, one-bedroom apartments in a bid to encourage more “family-friendly” homes of two bedrooms or more – anyone with children will appreciate the need for more space, right? Yet even that failed to budge the low fertility rate.

The Singaporean government got a helping hand in 2012 from candymaker Mentos. In a viral ad campaign, the brand called on citizens to celebrate “National Night” with some marital boom-boom as they “let their patriotism explode” – with a hoped-for corresponding burst in births in nine months’ time. Even with the assistance from the private sector, it appears, reversing declining fertility rates is a tricky thing.

South Korea, the country with the world’s lowest fertility rate – 0.7 – has been providing financial incentives to couples for at least 20 years to encourage them to have more children.

It boosted the monthly allowance already in place for married couples to become parents. In fact, since 2006 the South Korean government has spent well over $200 billion on programs to increase the Korean birth rate.

But South Korea’s fertility rate has continued to drop from 1.1 in 2006 to 1.0 in 2017, to 0.9 in 2019, to 0.7 in 2024.

Unfavorable headwinds

The plight of China is partly of its own doing. For a couple of decades the country’s one-child policy pushed to get fertility rates down. It worked, going from over 7.0 in the early 1960s to 1.5 in 2015.

That is when the government again stepped in, abandoning the one-child policy and permitting all couples to have two children. In May 2021, the two-child policy was abandoned in favor of a three-child policy.

The hope was that these changes would lead to a baby boom, resulting in sizable increases in the national fertility rate. However, the fertility rate continued to decline – to 1.2 in 2021 and 1.0 in 2024.

While China’s historic programs to push down fertility rates were successful, they were aided by wider societal changes: The policies were in force while China was modernizing and moving toward becoming an industrial and urbanized society.

It’s policies aimed at increasing the birth rate now find unfavorable societal headwinds. Modernization has led to better educational and work opportunities for women – a factor pushing many to put off having children.

In fact, most of China’s fertility reduction, especially since the 1990s, has been voluntary – more a result of modernization than fertility-control policies. Chinese couples are having fewer children due to higher living costs and educational expenses involved in having more than one child.

Plus, China is one of the world’s most expensive countries in which to raise a child, when compared to average income. School fees at all levels are higher than in many other countries.

The ‘low-fertility’ trap

Another factor to take into consideration is what demographers refer to as the “low-fertility trap.” This hypothesis, advanced by demographers in the 2000s, holds that once a country’s fertility rate drops below 1.5 or 1.4 – far higher than China’s now stands – it is very difficult to increase it by 0.3 or more.

The argument goes that fertility declines to these low levels are largely the result of changes in living standards and increasing opportunities for women.

Accordingly, it is most unlikely that China’s three-child policy will have any influence at all on raising the fertility rate. And all my years of studying China’s demographic trends lead me to believe that making contraceptives marginally more expensive will also have very little effect.

Dudley L. Poston Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. China’s new condom tax will prove no effective barrier to country’s declining fertility rate – https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-condom-tax-will-prove-no-effective-barrier-to-countrys-declining-fertility-rate-273333

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ali Mamouri, Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

Since the outbreak of the current wave of protests in Iran, two sharply competing narratives have emerged to explain what is unfolding in the streets.

For the ruling establishment, the unrest is portrayed as a foreign-engineered plot. They argue it is an externally-driven attempt to destabilise the state through manipulation, infiltration, and psychological operations.

For the opposition, the same events are framed as a nationwide uprising rooted in long-standing grievances. They argue the protests signal a rupture between society and the political system.

How the “story” of a conflict is told is a key component in warfare. The Iran protest are offering two very different stories.

Narrative crafting as psychological warfare

In the digital age, psychological warfare has moved beyond conventional propaganda into the realm of what academics Ihsan Yilmaz and Shahram Akbarzadeh calls Strategic Digital Information Operations (SDIOs).

Psychological operations function as central instruments of power, designed not only to suppress dissent but reshape how individuals perceive reality, legitimacy, and political possibility. Their objective is cognitive and emotional:

• to induce fear, uncertainty, and helplessness
• to discredit opponents
• to construct a sense of inevitability around a certain political scenario.

These techniques are employed not only by states, but increasingly by non-state actors as well.

Social media platforms have become the primary theatres of this psychological struggle. Hashtags, memes, manipulated images, and coordinated commenting – often amplified by automated accounts – are used to frame events, assign blame, and shape emotional responses at scale.

Crucially, audiences are not passive recipients of these narratives. Individuals sympathetic to a particular framing actively reproduce, reinforce, and police it within digital echo chambers. In this way, confirmation bias flourishes and alternative interpretations are dismissed or attacked.

Because of this, narrative control is not a secondary dimension of conflict but a central battleground. How an uprising is framed can shape its trajectory. It can determine whether it remains peaceful or turns violent, and whether domestic repression or foreign intervention comes to be seen as justified or inevitable.

The Iranian regime’s narrative

The Iranian regime has consistently framed the current uprising as a foreign-engineered plot, orchestrated by Israel, the United States and allied intelligence services. In this narrative, the protests are not an expression of domestic grievance but a continuation of Israel’s recent confrontation with Iran. This, it argues, is part of a broader campaign to overthrow the regime and turn the country into chaos.

Two weeks after the protests began, the state organised large pro-regime demonstrations. Shortly afterward, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared these rallies had “thwarted the plan of foreign enemies that was meant to be carried out by domestic mercenaries”.

The message was clear: dissent was not only illegitimate but treasonous. Those participating in it were portrayed as instruments of external powers rather than citizens with political demands.

Demonising dissent serves a dual purpose. It is not only a method of silencing opposition, but also a tool for engineering perception and shaping emotional responses.

By portraying protesters as foreign agents, the regime seeks to manufacture compliance, discourage wavering supporters, and project an image of widespread popularity. The objective is not simply to punish critics, but to signal that public dissent will carry heavy costs.

To reinforce this narrative, pro-regime social media accounts have circulated content that blends ideological framing with selective factual material. Analyses arguing that events in Iran follow a familiar “regime change playbook” – have been widely shared, as have Israeli statements suggesting intelligence operations inside Iran. Cherry-picking expert commentary or isolated data points to justify repression is a common feature of this approach.

The timing and amplification of such content are also significant. Social media networks are deployed via “algorithmic manipulation” to make the regime’s framing go viral and marginalise counter views.

As this digital campaign unfolds, it is reinforced by more traditional forms of control. Internet restrictions and shutdowns limit access to alternative sources of information. This allows state media to dominate communications and thwart challenges to the official narrative.

In this environment, the regime’s story functions not merely as propaganda, but as a strategic instrument. It aims to redefine the uprising, delegitimise dissent, and preserving authority by controlling how events are understood.

The opposition narrative

Though the opposition is divided, but two main groups have appeared active in framing the opposition narrative: those who support an Iranian monarchy, and dissenting armed group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Despite their differences, the two have contributed to the same story.

They have crafted a persuasive narrative, framing the uprising as a moral emergency requiring external intervention, particularly by the United States and Israel. This narrative does not represent all opposition voices, but it has gained visibility through social media, exile media outlets, and activist networks. Its core objective is to bring international attention to the conflict and put the case for, then bring about, regime change in Iran.

One central technique has been the legitimisation and encouragement of violence. Calls for armed protest and direct confrontation with security forces mark a clear shift away from demand-based, civilian mobilisation toward a violent uprising.

A high number of state forces casualties – reportedly more than 114 by January 11 – is an example of the effectiveness of this technique. This escalation is often justified as necessary to “keep the movement alive” and generate a level of bloodshed that would compel international intervention.

According to external conflict-monitoring assessments, clashes between armed protesters and state forces have in fact resulted in significant casualties on both sides.

A second technique involves the strategic inflation of casualty figures. Opposition platforms have claimed the death toll to be far higher than figures cited by independent estimates.

Such exaggeration serves a clear psychological and political purpose. It is intended to shock and sway international opinion, frame the situation as genocidal or exceptional, and increase pressure on foreign governments to act militarily.

A third element has been the use of intimidation and rhetorical coercion. In some high-profile media appearances, opposition figures have openly threatened pro-regime commentators, warning of retribution once power changes hands.

This language serves multiple functions. It seeks to silence alternative viewpoints, project confidence and inevitability, and present the situation as one of good versus evil. At the same time, such rhetoric risks alienating undecided audiences and reinforcing regime claims the uprising will lead to chaos or revenge politics.

These practices reveal how parts of the opposition have also embraced narrative warfare as a strategic tool. This narrative is used to amplify violence, inflate harm, and suppress competing interpretations. It aims to redefine the uprising not merely as a domestic revolt, but as a humanitarian and security crisis that demands foreign intervention.

In doing so, it mirrors the regime’s own effort to weaponise storytelling in a conflict where perception is as consequential as power.

In different ways, both narratives ultimately sideline the protesters themselves. They reduce a diverse, grassroots movement into an instrument of power struggle, either to legitimise repression at home or justify intervention from abroad.

Ali Mamouri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. One uprising, two stories: how each side is trying frame the uprising in Iran – https://theconversation.com/one-uprising-two-stories-how-each-side-is-trying-frame-the-uprising-in-iran-273573

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kerry E. Ratigan, Associate Professor of Political Science, Amherst College

China’s public response to the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro played out in a fairly predictable way, with condemnation of a “brazen” act of force against a sovereign nation and accusation of Washington acting like a “world judge.”

But behind closed doors, Beijing’s leaders are likely weighing the more nuanced implications of the raid: How will it affect China policy in Latin America? Can Beijing use the incident to burnish its image as an alternative global power? And what does the United States’ apparent disregard of international laws mean should China wish to make similar assertive moves in its own backyard?

As a scholar focusing on China’s global presence, I believe that these questions fit into a wider dilemma that President Xi Jinping faces in balancing two core Chinese tenets: the country’s long-standing commitment to noninterference in the domestic politics of other countries and its desire to strengthen strategic alliances and increase its presence in countries that, like Venezuela, provide it with crucial resources.

China’s LatAm ambitions

In recent years, China has become a more active and assertive player in international relations. And nowhere is this more true than in Latin America, where it has established deeper ties with countries like Venezuela.

China and Latin American countries have a mutually beneficial economic relationship. China needs natural resources, such as copper and lithium, that are abundant in Latin America, while China has been a ready source of infrastructure development.

For example, China has a strong presence in Peruvian mining, and the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO recently opened the high-tech Port of Chancay in Peru.

And Chinese companies have been instrumental in upgrading public transportation to electric and hybrid systems across the region, such as the new metro line in Bogotá, Colombia.

China has become the second-largest trading partner across Latin America, behind the United States. For South America, it is the largest.

China’s relationship with Venezuela, as with other Latin American countries, took shape in the early 2000s. By 2013, China had lent Venezuela more energy finance than anywhere else in the world.

Even as mismanagement of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and the country’s increasing slide into autocracy became apparent, China doubled down on lending. Throughout this process, China become the recipient of the vast majority of Venezuelan oil.

Accordingly, ties to the now-ousted Maduro remained strong to the end. Indeed, the last public act of Maduro before being snatched away from his bedroom by U.S. Delta Force commandos was reportedly a post on social media about his country’s strong bond with China.

But other than rhetoric and condemnations at the United Nations and elsewhere, Beijing can do little to directly counter the U.S. action.

Most likely, China will continue to condemn such policies, while quickly building up ties with Maduro’s successor and negotiating with Washington. China’s foreign ministry was at pains to stress commitment to Venezuela “no matter how the political situation may evolve,” following a Jan. 9 meeting between Beijing’s ambassador to Venezuela and Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodriguez.

More than anything, China will likely seek continued economic engagement with Venezuela. In 2024, Venezuela exported 642,000 barrels of oil per day to China — about three-quarters of the country’s production.

How the U.S. will now address Venezuelan oil — and by extension China’s ties to it — is not yet clear. President Donald Trump has pushed to redirect Venezuelan oil exports away from China and to the U.S, but he might not want to further escalate U.S.-China tensions.“

Broader than Venezuela

Even if Trump were to deprive China of Venezuelan oil, it is unlikely to change the trajectory of Beijing’s Latin America policy. After all, Venezuelan oil still only makes up 4% to 5% of China’s imported crude.

Indeed, China’s Latin America policy has not been discriminatory with regard to the political leanings of nations, even if Venezuela were to change course. China has well-established economic relations with almost every country in Latin America. For example, Argentina’s MAGA-aligned leader Javier Milei has courted China while in office and confirmed no intention to break ties now.

Nonetheless, Beijing is mindful of Trump’s reassertion of an aggressive Monroe Doctrine approach to the United States’ southern neighbors.

Unlike its own assertive military actions in its near waters, China has not meaningfully engaged in overt military or political influence in Latin America nations, in line with its noninterference stance.

And aside from China’s limited military support to allied nations through arms sales and joint-training exercises, some observers have been quick to note that China’s inaction following the U.S. attack on Venezuela exposes the hollowness of any security arrangement with Beijing.

Some may caution that Chinese projects like the Port of Chancay in Peru could be used for military purposes, or that Chinese control of utilities like electricity, as in Peru and Chile, presents a security threat to the host country and possibly to U.S. interests.

But for all of the Trump administration’s talk about how a country like China wants to intervene in Latin America, it is not Beijing that has suddenly renewed active military interventions in Latin America. And when push comes to shove, China likely has no wish to be involved militarily in Latin American affairs.

China as an alternative global power

If anything, U.S. intervention of the kind seen in Venezuela risks pushing Latin America further into China’s orbit.

The Maduro operation has been met with staunch criticism from countries including Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. It plays into a growing sense of disillusionment with the U.S.-dominated global order.

And here, China might see an opportunity.

In recent decades, China has gone from a being a “rule taker” to a “rule maker” in international politics, meaning that Beijing increasingly sees geopolitics as the U.S once did: something ripe for remaking in its own image.

In addition to assuming leadership roles in major U.N. agencies, China under Xi has increasingly positioned itself as a leader of the Global South. It has developed international organizations that seem to offer an alternative to the institutions tied to the existing U.S.-led global order.

For example, Beijing created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as an alternative lender to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. China also offers development finance through the New Development Bank and its two “policy banks” — the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China.

In international governance, China has emphasized multilateralism and dialogue as the basis for new global initiatives, pledging adherence to the principles of the U.N. charter and respecting sovereignty.

Skeptics may claim this as window dressing for strategic global ambitions. But if the intention is for China to remold international governance under its guidance, then the actions of the current U.S. administration pave the way for Beijing to promote its vision.

Under Trump, the U.S. has undermined global governance bodies, pulling out of a series of bodies and commitments, including the Paris climate accord, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The Chinese government’s condemnations of the U.S. actions in Venezuela have highlighted the impact it had on certain international norms, notably law. But it has left it to sympathetic voices outside government to make the logical next jump.

Writing for the state-run China Global Television Network, Renmin University Professor Wang Yiwei argued that the international system suffers from American imperialism and that the “only nation capable of dismantling these three pillars [of imperialism, colonialism and hegemony] is undoubtedly China.” The article was published in Chinese and English on CGTN — a clear nod that it is intended for both a domestic and international audience.

Carving up the world?

While China has been quick to condemn the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, some observers have speculated that it could provide China a blueprint for potential action in Taiwan.

Regardless of China’s intentions toward Taiwan, Washington’s apparent pushing of a “spheres of influence” doctrine won’t automatically find unfavorable ears in Beijing.

At some level, China may actually accept U.S. dominance in Latin America — even as it protests such action — should this advance a longtime goal for Beijing in having its own “Monroe Doctrine” in its near waters.

Kerry E. Ratigan receives funding from the Wilson Center and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.

– ref. How is China viewing US actions in Venezuela – an affront, an opportunity or a blueprint? – https://theconversation.com/how-is-china-viewing-us-actions-in-venezuela-an-affront-an-opportunity-or-a-blueprint-273076

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton

It is late, the ward is crowded, and the clock is moving faster than everyone would like. A doctor has stabilised the patient as best they can, but one thing is missing – blood.

A relative is asked to “try somewhere else”, and within minutes, the family is on the phone, calling friends, contacting church groups, posting in WhatsApp chats, hoping that someone nearby is eligible, willing and able to reach the hospital in time.

In that moment, healthcare stops being only about medicine. It becomes about networks, trust and whether a lifesaving resource can be found quickly enough.

This is not an unusual drama in Ghana. It is a recurring reality, quietly shaping outcomes in emergencies, childbirth, surgery and severe illness. Ghana has made progress, but the gap between what is needed and what is available remains wide.

In 2024, Ghana’s National Blood Service collected 187,280 units of blood. This falls far short of the World Health Organization recommended annual stock requirement of 308,000 units. The consequences are tangible, including delays to surgery, difficult clinical decisions, and families carrying the burden of searching for blood at the worst possible time.

One way to gauge the scale is the “blood collection index”, defined as donations per 1,000 people. Ghana’s index increased from 5.9 in 2023 to 6.1 in 2024, but it remains well below the ten per 1,000 level that is often cited as a basic benchmark by the WHO.

The contrast is stark. The WHO’s global figures show an average (median) donation rate of 31.5 per 1,000 in high-income countries, compared with 6.6 per 1,000 in lower- and middle-income countries and 5.0 per 1,000 in low-income countries. Ghana is a low-income country, yet its donation level remains below average for this group of countries, underscoring a persistent gap between demand and supply.

Why does this matter so much? Because blood availability is not a niche issue. It underpins everyday healthcare and becomes decisive in emergencies.

Few examples are more urgent than childbirth. Postpartum haemorrhage (severe bleeding after delivery) can escalate rapidly, and survival often depends on timely transfusion.

In 2025, the WHO highlighted that bleeding following childbirth causes nearly 45,000 deaths globally each year. When anaemia is common, the danger increases further: women have less physiological “buffer” against blood loss.

Women who enter labour with severe anaemia have around seven times higher odds of dying or becoming critically ill from heavy bleeding after childbirth, compared to those with moderate anaemia. In plain terms, they start with less room for error, and without fast access to transfusion, things can spiral quickly.

So why is Ghana’s blood supply so difficult to secure? Part of the answer is structural. Blood services require investment in collection, testing, transport at the right temperature and distribution networks.

These systems must work reliably every day, not only during crises. Yet the demand is rising with population growth and expanding clinical services, while resources remain constrained. The result is a system that is often stretched, especially outside major urban centres.

Another part of the story is how donations are sourced. In many settings, a stable supply depends on a large base of regular voluntary donors. Ghana is still working towards that goal.

In 2024, voluntary donations nationwide decreased from 40% to 29%, even as regional blood centres saw some improvement. That matters because heavy reliance on replacement donors (family members or friends recruited at the point of need) creates unpredictability. Emergencies do not wait for someone to finish work, travel across town and pass eligibility screening.

Then there is trust. People don’t donate in a vacuum; they donate into a system they believe in.

In our ongoing national survey in Ghana on people’s blood donation experiences, trust is clearly concentrated in familiar and formal sources. Around nine in ten respondents report trust in requests coming from a family member or close friend, and similarly high trust in requests issued by an official hospital or clinic.

Trust drops as the source becomes more distant or less verifiable, with markedly higher scepticism towards non-hospital community donation groups and, most of all, unknown people.

Yet high trust in hospitals does not automatically translate into action. When people are unsure how blood is used, whether it reaches patients fairly, or whether it might be diverted or sold, willingness can stall.

Even when people want to help, uncertainty can lead to hesitation: “Will this really go where they say it will?” In a high-stakes context, doubt is costly.

This gap points to a transparency problem, where confidence depends not only on who makes the request, but also on whether the system can credibly show where the blood goes.

Finally, communication channels shape outcomes. When a hospital lacks a rapid, reliable way to reach suitable donors, it falls back on what is available: phone calls, personal networks and social media posts.

But social feeds are noisy, messages get buried, and not everyone has the same connectivity or social reach. The ability to mobilise donors becomes uneven, depending on who you know, where you live, and how quickly information travels.

None of this means Ghana lacks goodwill. In fact, the opposite is often true: communities respond generously when they understand a need and feel confident their help will make a difference. The challenge is that goodwill alone cannot compensate for gaps in infrastructure, coordination and trust.

Telling people to “donate more” is not a strategy if the system cannot consistently reach donors, support them and show them that their contribution mattered.

The solution?

What would meaningful progress look like? It starts with stronger hospital services and blood-bank capacity, so that safe collection, testing and storage can happen consistently.

Alongside that, Ghana needs a more organised digital way to mobilise donors: a channel that can reach the right people quickly, rather than relying on broad social media appeals that get buried, skimmed past, or spread too widely without finding eligible donors nearby.

A well-run system could also keep clear, traceable records for each donation and request, making it easier to show where blood goes and to coordinate fast, accountable responses when an emergency hits.

That is exactly the gap our research is tackling. We’re developing a hospital-linked digital platform designed for Ghana’s realities. Here, urgent requests can be sent quickly to nearby eligible donors through a trusted channel, with location-aware matching and follow-up rather than blanket posts. It also builds in transparent, auditable donation-to-use tracking, helping hospitals coordinate emergencies more efficiently while giving donors clearer reassurance about where their blood goes.

Because, in the end, the story of blood in Ghana is not only about shortages. It is about a simple question with life-or-death consequences: when someone is bleeding, will help arrive in time?

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.

Michael Head has previously received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Research England and the UK Department for International Development, and currently receives funding from the UK Medical Research Foundation, and UK Research and Innovation

Honghui Shen receives funding from the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre.

Markus Brede receives funding from UK Research and Innovation and has previously received funding from the Royal Society and the Alan Turing Institute.

– ref. Ghana collects half the blood it needs – digital approaches can improve that – https://theconversation.com/ghana-collects-half-the-blood-it-needs-digital-approaches-can-improve-that-271436

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Georgios Tzoumas, Senior Research Associate, School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, University of Bristol

Growing up in Greece, wildfires were a constant presence each summer. In 2007, I remember watching TV footage of fires ravaging the Peloponnese peninsula and island of Evia, destroying forests and homes, taking lives. The sight of helicopters and firefighting aircraft crossing the smoky skies was both terrifying and awe-inspiring.

Then when I was 17, flames crept dangerously close to my home in Kavala, northern Greece. I recall standing outside with water-hose in hand, scanning the horizon and hoping our nearby treeless street would stop the fire’s advance. Thankfully, firefighting aircraft reached the area just in time – but the feeling of vulnerability at seeing how easily entire landscapes could be consumed stayed with me.

Those experiences shaped my curiosity about how people could better respond to such disasters. Wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent and harder to manage worldwide as fire seasons become longer, affecting communities from California to Australia.

According to the UN environment programme, longer droughts, heatwaves, and erratic winds are pushing ecosystems past their natural limits, endangering both human lives and biodiversity. Nasa reports that extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled worldwide over the past two decades.

In 2018, Greece suffered the deadliest wildfires in its modern history when fires in the southern seaside town of Mati and in the general Attica region claimed over 100 lives. The devastation renewed my determination to find better ways to combat fires.

The following year, while doing a master’s degree in robotics at the University of Bristol, I joined a hackathon event, organised by the UK government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, about using “swarm intelligence”, AI and drones to improve wildfire detection and response.

Swarm intelligence describes the exchange of information by decentralised, self-organised systems in order to solve complex problems. It is inspired by such collective behaviour in nature, for example by flocks of birds or swarms of insects. The competition sparked my interest to investigate how these tools could be used in such potentially catastrophic events.

After the hackathon, my supervisor Sabine Hauert, a professor of swarm engineering, and I were approached by Windracers, a UK company specialising in heavy-lift drones capable of carrying hundreds of kilograms of payloads including water to remote areas.

Transforming my childhood wildfire experiences into tangible technology through a PhD project was irresistible. The challenge was how to develop these drones into a swarm that could be used for quicker and more effective detection of, and response to, potentially catastrophic wildfires.

XPrize challenge

Today, I lead the Aura team (short for Autonomous Ubiquitous Response with Aware Robots), one of 15 semi-finalists in the wildfire section of XPrize – the series of competitions seeking technological solutions for the world’s “most urgent and complex challenges”. We were also chosen to be one of the Prototypes for Humanity exhibiting in Dubai in 2025.

Aura comprises experts from the universities of Bristol and Sheffield plus members of Lancashire Fire and Rescue. The challenge set by XPrize was simple to describe, but technologically demanding: monitor 1,000 square kilometres of land for a full day and, upon detecting a fire, extinguish it within ten minutes.

Aura’s technology stems in part from my PhD research during the pandemic lockdowns. Unable to work in the lab, I reached out to firefighters, foresters and emergency professionals worldwide for insights. Through interviews and focus groups including extensive collaboration with the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, who frequently use drones when responding to wildfires, we shaped the swarm system based on real operational needs.

Our approach uses commercially available drones, such as quadcopters, equipped with custom software that transforms them into a coordinated swarm. Like a flock of birds, they operate without a central leader, relying on interactions with one another about their location and other information to continuously adapt to their environment.

This allows a single operator to control multiple drones simultaneously, because the drones perform some tasks safely without any need for human intervention. This is an essential capability for large-scale, rapid responses.

The firefighters guided us on what truly matters in the field: reliability, usability and speed. They emphasised the human challenges of wildfire response: long shifts under extreme heat, difficult terrain, with a constant risk to their as well as other people’s lives.

Eradication is not always the answer

By offering firefighters an aerial support team that can scout, map and even deploy extinguishing material autonomously, Aura aims to extend their reach and safety rather than replace their expertise.

The fire practitioners we work with, in the UK and other countries such as Greece and Canada, often remind us their goal is not to eradicate every wildfire. Fire is a natural and necessary element of many ecosystems, so the challenge lies in managing it, preventing small fires from becoming catastrophic ones while allowing controlled burns that sustain biodiversity.

By reducing the amount of vegetation, controlled burns can reduce the intensity of future wildfires. These are practices that people have been using throughout human history, including Indigenous people in North America and Australia.

Our swarming drones system supports that balance by acting as an intelligent tool to help firefighters and land managers make faster, more informed decisions. Our vision is to see drones not only fighting fires but also assisting in disaster logistics: delivering supplies, monitoring hotspots, and supporting crews in the field.

Despite the rapid pace of innovation, however, drone regulation still lags behind technology. In most countries, operating drones “beyond visual line of sight” (BVLOS) requires special authorisation. Dropping payloads of even small amounts of water on a wildfire also involves lengthy safety assessments. These restrictions make testing swarm systems such as Aura challenging.

But progress is on the horizon. Regulators are beginning to approve limited BVLOS operations for certified operators in the US, Australia, Canada and the UK. But a more flexible, data-driven approval process, one that builds cumulative safety cases from successful missions, could unlock greater potential for autonomous systems like ours.

We still have a long way to go to make these technologies a reality, but the ambition that drives me is the one that began when those flames threatened my childhood home. To protect lives and landscapes from preventable loss, while enabling people to live in balance with nature.

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.
Georgios Tzoumas has received funding from Innovate UK, including the Future Flight challenges.

– ref. Growing up alongside deadly fires inspired me to study them – and fight flames with swarms of drones – https://theconversation.com/growing-up-alongside-deadly-fires-inspired-me-to-study-them-and-fight-flames-with-swarms-of-drones-273270

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By John Hawkins, Head, Canberra School of Government, University of Canberra

Central bankers from around the world have issued a joint statement of support for US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, as he faces a criminal probe on top of mounting pressure from US President Donald Trump to resign early.

It is very unusual for the world’s central bank governors to issue such a statement. But these are very unusual times.

The reason so many senior central bankers – from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom and other countries, as well as the central banks’ club the Bank for International Settlements – have spoken up is simple. US interest rate decisions have an impact around the world. They don’t want a dangerous precedent set.

Over the course of my career as an economist, much of it at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Bank for International Settlements, I have seen independent central banks become the global norm in recent decades.

Allowing central banks to set interest rates to achieve inflation targets has avoided a repeat of the sustained high inflation which broke out in the 1970s.

Returning the setting of monetary policy to a politician, especially one as unpredictable as Trump, is an unwelcome prospect.

What’s happened

Trump has repeatedly attacked the US Federal Reserve (known as the Fed) over many years. He has expressed his desire to remove Powell before his term as chair runs out in May. But legislation says the president can only fire the Fed chair “for cause”, not on a whim. This is generally taken to mean some illegal act.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case about whether the president has the power to remove another Fed board member, Lisa Cook.

And this week, Powell revealed he had been served with a subpoena by the US Department of Justice, threatening a criminal indictment relating to his testimony to the Senate banking committee about the US$2.5 billion renovations to the Fed’s historic office buildings.

Trump has denied any involvement in the investigation.

But Powell released a strong statement in defence of himself. He said the reference to the building works was a “pretext” and that the real issue was:

whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions – or whether monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

On Tuesday, more than a dozen of the world’s leading central bankers put out a statement of support:

We stand in full solidarity with the Federal Reserve System and its Chair Jerome H Powell. The independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability.

Another statement of support came from leading US economists – including all the living past chairs of the Fed. This included the legendary central bank “maestro” Alan Greenspan, appointed by Ronald Reagan and reappointed by George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

This statement warned undermining the independence of the Fed could have “highly negative consequences” for inflation and the functioning of the economy.

Why it matters for global inflation

Trump has said he wants the Fed to lower interest rates dramatically, from the current target range of 3.5–3.75% down to 1%. Most economists think this would lead to a large increase in inflation.

At 2.8% in the US, inflation is already above the Fed’s 2% target. The Fed’s interest rate would normally only drop to 1% during a serious recession.

A clear example of the dangers of politicised central banks was when the Fed lowered interest rates before the 1972 presidential election. Many commentators attribute this to pressure from then president Richard Nixon to improve his chances of re-election. This easing of monetary policy contributed to the high inflation of the mid-1970s.

A more recent example comes from Turkey. In the early 2020s, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan leaned on the country’s central bank to cut interest rates. The result was very high inflation, eventually followed by very high interest rates to try to get inflation back under control.

Trump should be careful what he wishes for

What will happen if Trump is able to appoint a compliant Fed chair, and other board members, and if they actually lower the short-term interest rates they control to 1%? Expected inflation and then actual inflation would rise.

This would lead to higher long-term interest rates.

If Trump gets his way, US voters may face a greater affordability problem in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November. This could then be followed by a recession, as interest rates need to rise markedly to get inflation back down.

And as over a dozen global central bank leaders have just warned us, what happens in the US matters worldwide.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Bank for International Settlements.

– ref. Why the world’s central bankers had to speak up against Trump’s attacks on the Fed – https://theconversation.com/why-the-worlds-central-bankers-had-to-speak-up-against-trumps-attacks-on-the-fed-273450

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dara Conduit, ARC DECRA Fellow, The University of Melbourne

As citizens around the world prepared to welcome the new year, Iranians began taking to the streets to protest their country’s deepening economic crisis. Spurred by the continued devaluation of the Iranian currency against the US dollar, as well as crippling inflation, the unrest is the latest in years of economic pain and protest.

The Iranian regime initially acknowledged the legitimacy of the protesters’ concerns, distributing hopelessly inadequate cash vouchers worth only US$7 to help with the cost of living.

But it’s since taken a much heavier hand. According to the regime’s own figures, as of today, at least 2,000 people have been killed. Protesters bravely continue to take to the streets.

Like clockwork last Thursday, the regime rolled out one of its most potent tools of population control: internet shutdowns. In the six days since, Iranians have been almost entirely cut off from the internet, with alternative means of access, such as smuggled Starlink terminals, proving unreliable because of satellite jamming.

As the world waits to see if US President Donald Trump follows through on his threats of “very strong action” if Iran hangs protesters, the truth is that even without international action, the regime can’t afford to keep Iran’s internet offline indefinitely.

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Read more:
The use of military force in Iran could backfire for Washington

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Why the regime blocks the internet

The Iranian regime has used internet shutdowns since the Green Movement protests following the disputed 2009 presidential election. They’re a powerful tool that stops citizens from communicating with the outside world and each another.

This limits opposition organising, because people can’t join protests if they don’t know where they are. It also isolates individuals, preventing them from seeing violent crackdowns outside their neighbourhood. Internet shutdowns also obscure the international gaze, allowing the regime to crack down on protesters in the dark.

Shutdowns have become so synonymous with political unrest that the non-government digital rights organisation Article 19 declared in 2020 “protests beget Internet shutdowns in Iran”.

Internet shutdowns are costly

But it would be a mistake to think the Iranian regime has an endless capacity to shut down the internet. Each shutdown comes at a high economic and political cost.

As well as blocking instant messengers and social media sites, internet shutdowns in Iran have often blocked work applications such as Slack, Skype, Google Meet and Jira. These are central to ordinary businesses’ operations.

Similarly, the regime’s efforts to block virtual private networks (VPNs) and secure HTTPS connections can wreak havoc on corporate payment systems, multi-factor authentication and even corporate email.

Global internet monitor Netblocks estimates internet shutdowns cost the Iranian economy more than US$37 million a day. That’s more than US$224 million in the past six days alone.

As I wrote in a recent journal article, we’ve already seen how bad the economic impacts of internet shutdowns can be in Iran.

During the 2022-23 protests following the death-in-custody of the Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa “Jina” Amini, internet shutdowns had far-reaching implications.

One source claimed the volume of online payments inside Iran halved in the first two weeks of the protests alone.

Iran has a vibrant e-commerce sector. An estimated 83% of its online businesses use social media platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram to generate sales. All three were blocked during the 2022-23 unrest. A report later found Instagram blocking and periodic internet disruptions in the 17 months after the protests cost the Iranian economy US$1.6 billion.

The regime has been working hard for decades to build a domestic internet that could alleviate some of this damage, but so far it has failed.

The regime’s enormous technology needs – for surveillance, but also to power a modern economy for around 92 million people – has led to the emergence of a large semi-private information and communications (ICT) sector in Iran. This includes internet service providers, cell network operators and a large IT sector.

Just six weeks into the 2022 protests, the cellphone operator RighTel’s chief executive penned an open letter to the ICT minister, Issa Zarepour, complaining the digital crackdown was crippling his business. He noted RighTel had upheld the regime’s “security priorities and requirements” during the shutdowns, and demanded compensation or RighTel may be forced to withdraw from the market.

These demands were echoed in letters privately written (but later leaked) by other communications providers.

These were not natural regime critics. Indeed, internet shutdowns were creating a dangerous dynamic in which even those close to the regime were being alienated, generating a new class of potential protesters who could one day join those marching in the streets.

Why the current shutdown can’t last forever

This is why the current internet shutdown is a risky strategy. While the regime is succeeding in concealing the worst of its bloody crackdown, it risks further provoking the country’s already struggling economic class.

In 2022-23, the shutdowns were implemented in a targeted manner, taking place for the most part in certain cities, or at specific times of day when protests were expected. In contrast, the current shutdown is countrywide.

Only 1% of internet connections in Iran are online today (which is how the supreme leader is still able to freely use X to spout propaganda). This means the economic and political impacts of this current shutdown, if it continues, could easily dwarf those of 2022-23.

Given Iran’s economic woes are the driving force of the current unrest, a sustained internet blackout could motivate more people to take to the streets. The regime is only too aware of this risk.

Dara Conduit receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Why Iran can’t afford to shut down the internet forever – even if the world doesn’t act – https://theconversation.com/why-iran-cant-afford-to-shut-down-the-internet-forever-even-if-the-world-doesnt-act-273454

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jane Kelsey, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

The United States has now withdrawn from 66 international organisations, conventions and treaties, illegally invaded Venezuela, and promoted an “America First” agenda in its new National Security Strategy.

This all signals the collapse of a global system that has operated for the past 60 years. The old world order – driven by hyper-globalisation and US hegemonic power – is in its death throes, but a new era is yet to be born.

We now face a deepening ideological, strategic and military conflict over what shape it will take. The global “free trade” regime, overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO), is one such battleground.

Largely designed to serve its strategic and corporate interests, the US now sees the WTO as a liability because of the economic ascendancy of China and a domestic populist backlash against globalisation and free trade.

But US antipathy to the current multilateral trade regime is not exclusive to the Trump administration. America has long resisted binding itself to the trade rules it demands other countries obey.

Congress reserved the power to review US membership when it authorised joining the WTO in 1994. Since then, both Republican and Democrat administrations have undermined its operation by:

• calling for an end to the Doha Round of negotiations launched in 2001

• breaking the WTO dispute mechanism by defying rulings that go against it, and refusing to appoint judges to the WTO Appellate Body so it is now moribund (effectively allowing rules to be breached)

• and starving the WTO’s budget during the latest US review of international organisation memberships.

To date, Trump has not withdrawn the US from the WTO. But his administration seeks instead to reinvent it in a form it believes will restore US geostrategic and economic ascendancy.

Rewriting the rulebook

In December 2025, the newly-arrived US Ambassador to the WTO warned its General Council:

If the WTO does not reform by making tangible improvements in those areas that are central to its mission, it will continue its path toward irrelevancy.

“Reform” in this context means abandoning the cornerstone most-favoured-nation rule that requires all WTO members to be treated equally well, which is the bedrock of multilateralism.

The US wants to reinterpret the WTO’s “security exceptions” (which apply to arms trade, war and United Nations obligations to maintain peace and security) to allow countries absolute sovereignty to decide when the exception applies – effectively neutralising the rules at will.

The WTO would also cease to address issues of “oversupply” and “overcapacity”, “economic security” and “supply chain resilience”, which the US believes have enabled China’s growing economic dominance, leaving the way open for unilateral action outside the WTO.

In the stripped-down WTO, decision-making by consensus would be abandoned and multilateral negotiations replaced by deals that are driven by more powerful players on cherry-picked topics.

Unilateral action is not an idle threat. Trump has imposed arbitrary and erratic tariffs on more than 90 countries for a variety of “national and economic security” reasons, demanding concessions for reducing (not removing) them.

Those demands extend way beyond matters of trade, and impinge deeply on those countries’ own sovereignty. There is nothing the WTO can do.

Weaponising tariffs is also not a new strategy. President Joe Biden maintained the tariffs imposed on China during the first Trump presidency, triggering WTO disputes which remain unresolved.

But Trump’s embrace of raw coercive power strips away any chimera of commitment to multilateralism and the model that has prevailed since the 1980s, or to the development of Third World countries that have been rule-takers in that regime.

Where now for the WTO?

Some more powerful countries have bargained with Trump to reduce the new tariffs. China’s retaliation generated an uneasy one-year truce. Brazil held firm against Trump’s politically-motivated tariffs at considerable economic cost. Australia made a side-deal on critical minerals.

The European Union remains in a standoff over pharmaceutical patents and regulating big tech. India has diversified to survive relatively unscathed, ironically forging closer ties with China.

Less powerful countries are much more vulnerable. Among other obligations, the full texts of “reciprocal trade agreements” with Malaysia and Cambodia, signed in October, require them to:

• replicate US foreign policy and sanctions on other countries

• consult the US before negotiating a new free trade agreement with a country that “jeopardises US essential security interests”

• promise to make potentially crippling investments in and purchases from the US

• involve the US in regulating inward investment and development of Malaysia’s rare earth elements and critical minerals (Malaysia has large unmined repositories, an alternative to China)

• and not tax US tech giants, regulate their monopolies or restrict data flows.

If implemented, these agreements risk creating economic, fiscal, social and political chaos in targeted countries, disrupting their deeply integrated supply chains, and requiring they make impossible choices between the US and China.

In return, the 2025 tariffs will be reduced, not reversed, and the US can terminate the deals pretty much at will.

This poses an existential question for WTO members, including New Zealand and Australia, at the 14th ministerial conference in Cameroon in late March: will members submit to US demands in an attempt to keep the WTO on life support?

Or can they use this interregnum to explore alternatives to the hyper-globalisation model whose era has passed?

Jane Kelsey is affiliated with a number of international NGOs that monitor and advise on developments in international trade law and the WTO.

– ref. The World Trade Organization is on life support. Will Trump’s new rules finish it off? – https://theconversation.com/the-world-trade-organization-is-on-life-support-will-trumps-new-rules-finish-it-off-273216

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Shukriya Bradost, Ph.D. Researcher, International Security and Foreign Policy, Virginia Tech

When Iran’s ongoing protests began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar on Dec. 28 2025, the government initially treated them as manageable and temporary.

Bazaar merchants have historically been among the most conservative social groups in Iran, deeply embedded in the state’s economic structure and closely connected to political authority. Within the Iranian government itself, there was apparent confidence that their protests were not revolutionary in nature but transactional – a short-lived pressure campaign aimed at stabilizing the collapsing currency and curbing inflation that directly threatened merchants’ livelihoods.

This perception led to an unprecedented development. In his first public response, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei openly acknowledged the merchants’ protests – the first time he had ever accepted the legitimacy of any demonstration.

He characterized them as part of the traditional alliance between the state and the bazaar, indicating that the government still viewed the unrest as controllable.

But authorities did not anticipate what happened next: The protests spread to over 25 provinces and developed into a nationwide challenge to the government’s survival, met by a violent crackdown in which more than 6,000 protesters have reportedly been killed.

As an expert on Iran’s ethnic groups, I have watched as the unrest has expanded to include minority groups – despite skepticism among these communities over the possible outcome of the unrest and concerns over the plans of some central opposition figures.

As reports emerge of government forces killing thousands, the central question has now shifted from whether the state can suppress the protests to how different regions of Iran interpreted the concept of change – whether it is something achievable within the government or necessitates regime change itself.

Ethnic minorities join the protest

Iran is a country of about 93 million people whose modern state was built around a centralized national identity rather than ethnic pluralism.

But that masks a large and politically significant ethnic minority population. While 51% form the Persian majority, 24% of the country identify as Azeri. Kurds number some 7 million to 15 million, composing roughly 8% to 17% of the total population. And Arabs and Baluch minorities represent 3% and 2% of the population, respectively.

Since the Pahlavi monarchy’s nation-building project began in 1925, successive governments, both monarchical and then the Islamic Republic, have treated ethnic diversity as a security challenge and repeatedly suppressed demands for political inclusion, language rights and local governance.

The role of Iran’s ethnic minority groups in the current protests has evolved. Initially, minority regions were less prominent than in the last serious wave of protests: the 2022–23 “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising sparked by the death of a Kurdish-Iranian woman named Jina Mahsa Amini.

The Kurdish involvement in the current protests began in the small city of Malekshahi in Ilam province on Jan. 3. A subsequent violent raid by security forces on wounded protesters inside Ilam hospital provoked outrage beyond the local community and attracted international attention.

Protests continued in Ilam, while in nearby Kermanshah province, particularly the impoverished area of Daradrezh, they erupted over economic deprivation and political discrimination.

A strategic approach to protest

Shiite Kurdish communities in Ilam and Kermanshah continue to experience exclusion rooted in their Kurdish identity. That’s despite sharing a Shiite identity with Iran’s ruling establishment in Tehran – a factor that has historically afforded greater access to government than for the Sunni Kurdish population.

Following the killing of protesters in Ilam and Kermanshah, Kurdish political parties issued a joint statement calling for a region-wide strike.

Notably, Kurdish leaders did not call for protests but for strikes alone. During the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising, the government treated Kurdish cities as security zones – framing the protests as a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity and using that justification to carry out mass killings and executions.

By opting for strikes this time, Kurdish leaders sought to demonstrate solidarity while reducing the risk of large-scale violence and another massacre.

The result was decisive: Nearly all Kurdish cities shut down.

Baluchestan, in Iran’s southeast, followed Kurdistan a day after. Beginning with Friday prayers on Jan. 9, protests erupted, also driven by long-standing ethnic and religious marginalization there.

Iranian Azerbaijan, an area in the country’s northwest, joined later and more cautiously. This delayed, small protest reflects Azerbaijanis’ current favorable position within Iran’s political, military and economic institutions.

Historically, from the 16th century to 1925, Shiite Azari-Turks dominated the Iranian state, with Azerbaijani functioning as a court language.

The Pahlavi monarchy marked a rupture, banning the Azerbaijani language and curtailing local autonomy. But since 1979, the Islamic Republic has partially restored Azerbaijani influence, allowing clerics to address constituents in their native language and reintegrating Azerbaijan into central government in Tehran. The current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is of Azerbaijani descent.

A history of repression

Ethnically based political movements emerged across Iran immediately after the 1979 revolution, which many minority groups had supported in hopes of greater inclusion and rights.

But these movements were quickly suppressed as the Islamic Republic crushed uprisings across Iranian Azerbaijan, Baluchestan, Khuzestan and other peripheral regions.

Kurdistan was the exception, where resistance, military confrontation and state violence, including massacres, continued for several years.

This repression and the impact of the Iran–Iraq War, during which wartime mobilization overshadowed internal grievances, muted ethnic minority demands throughout the 1980s.

But these demands resurfaced in the 1990s, especially sparked by a sense of cultural revival and cross-border identity formation after the Soviet Union’s collapse. In Iranian Kurdistan, a large part of the armed struggle was transformed into a civil struggle, while Peshmerga forces maintained arms and military training across the border in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The Iranian government has increasingly viewed this awakening as a strategic threat and has responded by decentralizing security and military authority to enable rapid crackdowns on protests without awaiting approval from Tehran.

Diverging protest demands

This history of repression explains why the protests in Iran now were at least initially more centralized than previous uprisings. Ethnic minority regions are not indifferent to change; they are skeptical of its outcome.

Many Persian-majority urban protesters seek social freedoms, economic recovery and normalization with the West, particularly the United States. But ethnic communities carry additional demands: decentralization of power, recognition of linguistic and cultural rights, and genuine power-sharing within the state.

For over four decades, ethnic minority demands have been labeled as separatist or “terrorist” and met with arrests and executions by the Islamic Republic.

This rhetoric has also influenced major Persian-dominated opposition groups – spanning the ideological spectrum from left to right and operating largely in exile – that perceive ethnic minority demands as a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity.

Fears of the shah’s return

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran, is positioning himself as the leader of the opposition and a transitional figure. But ethnic communities have reason for concern.

Pahlavi’s office has published a road map for a transitional government that sharply contrasts with his public claims of not seeking to monopolize power. The document envisions Pahlavi as a leader with extraordinary authority. In practice, the concentration of power he proposes under his leadership closely resembles the authority currently exercised by Iran’s supreme leader.

For ethnic communities, these implications are particularly troubling. The road map characterizes ethnic-based demands and parties as threats to national security, reinforcing long-standing state narratives rather than departing from them. This explicit stance has deepened skepticism in peripheral regions.

In contrast to Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, whose revolutionary vision was deliberately vague regarding the future status of ethnic groups, the current opposition leadership project articulates a centralized political order that excludes ethnic inclusion and power-sharing.

For communities whose languages were banned and whose regions were systematically underdeveloped during the Pahlavi monarchy, the resurgence of monarchist slogans in central cities only reinforces fears that any transition driven by centralized narratives will again marginalize Iran’s peripheral regions.

The risk of ignoring provinces

Iran’s protests, therefore, reveal more than resistance to authoritarian rule. They expose a fundamental divide over what political change means – and for whom.

In a country as ethnically diverse as Iran, where millions belong to non-Persian ethnic communities, a durable political order cannot, I believe, be built on centralized power dominated by a single ethnic identity.

Any future transition, whether through reform within the current system or through regime change, will have a better chance of success if it incorporates a political framework that acknowledges and incorporates the demands of all regions and communities. Without such inclusion, trust in the process of change will remain elusive – and hopes for a better future dimmed.

Shukriya Bradost is affiliated with the Middle East Institute.

– ref. Iran’s protests have spread across provinces, despite skepticism and concern among ethnic groups – https://theconversation.com/irans-protests-have-spread-across-provinces-despite-skepticism-and-concern-among-ethnic-groups-273276

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Gary W. Yohe, Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University

On Jan. 7, 2026, President Donald Trump declared that he would officially pull the United States out of the world’s most important global treaty for combating climate change. He said it was because the treaty ran “contrary to the interests of the United States.”

His order didn’t say which U.S. interests he had in mind.

Americans had just seen a year of widespread flooding from extreme weather across the U.S. Deadly wildfires had burned thousands of homes in the nation’s second-largest metro area, and 2025 had been the second- or third-hottest year globally on record. Insurers are no longer willing to insure homes in many areas of the country because of the rising risks, and they are raising prices in many others.

For decades, evidence has shown that increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, largely from burning fossil fuels, are raising global temperatures and influencing sea level rise, storms and wildfires.

The climate treaty – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – was created to bring the world together to find ways to lower those risks.

Trump’s order to now pull the U.S. out of that treaty adds to a growing list of moves by the admnistration to dismantle U.S. efforts to combat climate change, despite the risks. Many of those moves, and there have been dozens, have flown under the public radar.

Why this climate treaty matters

A year into the second Trump administration, you might wonder: What’s the big deal with the U.S. leaving the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change now?

After all, the Trump administration has been ignoring the UNFCCC since taking office in January. The administration moved to stop collecting and reporting corporate greenhouse gas emissions data required under the treaty. It canceled U.S. scientists’ involvement in international research. One of Trump’s first acts of his second term was to start the process of pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. Trump made similar moves in his first term, but the U.S. returned to the Paris agreement after he left office.

This action is different. It vacates an actual treaty that was ratified by the U.S. Senate in October 1992 and signed by President George H.W. Bush.

America’s ratification that year broke a logjam of inaction by nations that had signed the agreement but were wary about actually ratifying it as a legal document. Once the U.S. ratified it, other countries followed, and the treaty entered into force on March 21, 1994.

The U.S. was a global leader on climate change for years. Not anymore.

Chipping away at climate policy

With the flurry of headlines about the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, renewed threats to seize Greenland, persistent high prices, immigration arrests, ICE and Border Patrol shootings, the Epstein files and the fight over ending health care subsidies, important news from other critical areas that affect public welfare has been overlooked for months.

Two climate-related decisions did dominate a few news cycles in 2025. The Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to rescind its 2009 Endangerment Finding, a legal determination that certain greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare that became the foundation of federal climate laws. There are indications that the move to rescind the finding could be finalized soon – the EPA sent its final draft rule to the White House for review in early January 2026. And the Department of Energy released a misinformed climate assessment authored by five handpicked climate skeptics.

Both moves drew condemnation from scientists, but that news was quickly overwhelmed by concern about a government shutdown and continuing science funding cuts and layoffs.

This chipping away at climate policy continued to accelerate at the end of 2025 with six more significant actions that went largely unnoticed.

Three could harm efforts to slow climate change:

• The Trump administration moved to weaken vehicle emissions standards on Dec. 3. Instead of raising the industry average for cars and light trucks vehicles to 50 miles per gallon by 2031, as planned, the standard would rise to about 34.5 miles per gallon by 2031.

• On Dec. 11, the U.S. joined Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia to block part of a U.N. environment report that would have called for phasing out fossil fuels.

• Eleven days later, the U.S. Department of the Interior jeopardized billions of dollars of U.S. investment in clean energy by pausing the leases of five East Coast offshore wind farms.

Three other moves by the administration shot arrows at the heart of climate science:

• The EPA rewrote its webpage about the causes of climate change to remove human influences, including burning fossil fuels – the primary cause of global warming. That occurred on Dec. 5.

• On Dec. 17, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, announced plans to shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a world-recognized leader in earth system science.

• A week later, the administration invited the authors of the discredited Department of Energy climate report to write the next U.S. National Climate Assessment, the latest in a widely used series of reports mandated by Congress to assess the nation’s climate risks.

Fossil fuels at any cost

In early January 2025, the United States had reestablished itself as a world leader in climate science and was still working domestically and internationally to combat climate risks.

A year later, the U.S. government has abdicated both roles and is taking actions that will increase the likelihood of catastrophic climate-driven disasters and magnify their consequences by dismantling certain forecasting and warning systems and tearing apart programs that helped Americans recover from disasters, including targeting the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

To my mind, as a scholar of both environmental studies and economics, the administration’s moves enunciated clearly its strategy to discredit concerns about climate change, at the same time it promotes greater production of fossil fuels. It’s “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” with little consideration for what’s at risk.

Trump’s repudiation of the UNFCCC could give countries around the world cover to pull back their own efforts to fight a global problem if they decide it is not in their myopic “best interest.” So far, the other countries have stayed in both that treaty and the Paris climate agreement. However, many countries’ promises to protect the planet for future generations were weaker in 2025 than hoped.

The U.S. pullout may also leave the Trump administration at a disadvantage: The U.S. will no longer have a formal voice in the global forum where climate policies are debated, one where China has been gaining influence since Trump returned to the presidency.

Gary W. Yohe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Damn the torpedoes! Trump ditches a crucial climate treaty in latest move to dismantle America’s climate protections – https://theconversation.com/damn-the-torpedoes-trump-ditches-a-crucial-climate-treaty-in-latest-move-to-dismantle-americas-climate-protections-273148