Blockchain exists for one precise reason: to remove the need to trust anyone. It’s not a philosophical detail. It is the whole point of the technology. For decades, our economic and administrative systems have relied on centralized trust : banks keep our balances, governments maintain property registries, notaries validate contracts. These institutions work — until they don’t. And when they fail, the entire system breaks along a single fault line: a single point of failure .
Iraq is rife with environmental woes, as Arwa points out in her survey. And some of the most endangered animals are migratory birds: the Basra Reed Warbler (found in the southern Marshlands) and the Egyptian Vulture (found in the Kurdistan-Iraq Mountains) are especially at risk.
To honor World Migratory Bird Day May 14-15 this year, the nature conservation group, Nature Iraq will be participating with the French Cultural Center in Erbil to highlight the migratory routes through Iraq and its marshlands, stressing the importance sites like the marshlands for migratory birds. See below for some of the activities planned.