It is techinally no longer allowed to post inat obs of animals in Afganstan because of this new law. Plants are still ok because they do hot have a soul according to the government.
Citation:
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-taliban-ban-photos-videos-islam/33163962.html
https://theweek.com/law/why-has-the-taliban-banned-pictures-of-living-things
THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL FORUM. Please do NOT talk about politics. This post is not the place to be talking about politics.
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Its impossible to separate this from politics. Laws are inherently political, politics creates them.
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Of course this has to do with politics, OP just means to not turn this thread into anything Political.
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Well not politics really, religion?
I mean there is a grand total of 937 observations in the entirety of Afghanistan so far, so this is not a massive issue. The observers seem to be a mix of locally sounding names and clear foreigners - for foreigners that are not planning to come back, this is a non-issue, because they can simply post it after leaving the country and I don’t think any government is gonna impose Taliban law on their citizens … For the locals it clearly sucks but I think many of them have now much more pressing issues.
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Some general notes to give some background on biodiversity in Afghanistan: It seems that there are very few people using iNaturalist in Afghanistan, there are only observations from a little more than 100 people, but I think most of them were just visiting the country. The biogeographical location is very interesting, so it has a comparatively high plant diversity] (link in German) and probably also animal diversity…
Here is an open letter regarding the future of biodiversity research in Afghanistan from 2021 and another letter, a bit more recent, stressing similar points
As the international community, we must not give up on Afghanistan, but call on the Taliban government to guarantee the safety of Afghan conservationists, to restore the rule of law, including environmental and protected area laws, and to respect sustainable community-based management of natural resources. We must also demand a safe environment for ecological studies to be carried out in cooperation with national and international scientific organisations in order to generate credible information to safeguard the ecological integrity of Afghanistan.
(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357890821_Biodiversity_conservation_in_Afghanistan_under_the_returned_Taliban)
As Afghanistan is also a party to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, they also publish NBSAPs (National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans): here the one for the country.
As Afghanistan is not part of regional water and environmental agreements and actions, some of the research and actions are focused on neighbouring countries, see also this document on [Challenges and opportunities for transboundary biodiversity monitoring and conservation in Central Asian regions bordering Afghanistan] (https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/4/1/575389.pdf).
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Weird.
Not true. iNat would like to add obs to the ‘blank spots’ on the world map. If the ‘local’ is a biologist or conservationist - yes this is an issue.
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That’s understandable. I suppose i was just a little confused how to engage in this discussion without talking about politics at all.
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This seems mostly true. Though I do just want to mention this law is very strange. No other country has anything quite like it, and the current rulers of Afghanistan have used countless images and videos depicting people in the past for spreading their messages. So this law is somewhat contradictory because the law makers group have done this before on a regular basis for decades.
It’s saddening and I can only hope that things get better for the people of Afghanistan.
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Personally, I’d say do nothing. In all actually, this is political move that the rulers of the country do not actually care too much about. Images of animals in Afghanistan will be getting on the internet regardless of what iNat does and the Taliban will probably not come after iNat for allowing them on the platform. I say re-asses on the extreme off-chance the Taliban starts threatening iNat, but otherwise this is a non-issue and allow things to proceed as they have.
Everybody knows that those on top are exempt from their own rules.
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I’m not sure what anyone here or anyone at iNaturalist can realisitically do about the actions of the Taliban government, or how much anyone here has real insight into the country (it would be great if someone did!).
That being said, I was invited to give an iNaturalist presentation via video call to biologists in Afghanistan a few months ago, by an Afghan computer vision reseacher. I think there was definitely interest, but a lot of barriers like translation and I imagine limited resources and time and many other pressing needs and interests, stood in the way of broader adoption of iNat, even before this law was passed.
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