WHAT SHOULD OUR PRIORITIES BE FOR POST-COVID RECOVERY?
Last month, we celebrated the 50th Earth Day. A day to celebrate our planet and appreciate it in an effort to further the pursuit of conserving the flora and fauna that call this planet their home too and preserving the fragile ecosystems that operate like cogs in a larger biological-system.
Earth Day remained forgotten, yet there has never been a better time to re-think humanity’s relationship with the world around us, including the bonds we share with each other.
Our fast-paced societies and economies have finally stood still to take a rest, or rather to survive, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the world.
So too had nature pivoted back to its ‘natural state’, unburdened by the constant human activity we were able to see nature as it would be without our presence.
Nonetheless, this isn’t a phenomena that’s to be celebrated.
The cost to humanity is too high. Hundreds and thousands of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters across the world are suffering through the disease. With hundreds of thousands ultimately losing their life, community fabrics and intergenerational relationships.
What we can do is appreciate what is happening and reconsider our relationship with the natural world around us.
As cities and states came to standstill, we saw just how much of an impact humans have on Mother Nature.
Without the constant traffic of gondolas and tourists flocking to see the floating city, sediments in the canals of Venice began resting on the canal floors. The canals returned to a vivid blue, so clear schools of fishes were seen swimming and the sea grasses were at peace.
As India came to a halt, stubble burnings were paused and cross-country traffic declined to a bare minimum. As the sky cleared, the Himalayas were revealed from northern India, a landscape that residents hadn’t seen for over 30 years.
Across the world, animals that had retreated as urbanisation expanded cities had begun to return, claiming suburban streets and parks as their own.
And as we all stay home, we limited travel via cars, as countries shut their borders and planes stopped flying, power-plant stacks stopped emitting pollutants as industries went into hibernation. The International Energy Agency suggested that global greenhouse gas emissions could drop by 8% this year.
However, history has shown that after this kind of respite has ended, economies will try springing back harder than ever, trying every tool to escape another quarter of recession and regain the growth prior to the pandemic.
Countries will attempt to recover all lost productivity, such was the case after the 2008 global financial crisis. During 2008, global greenhouse gas emissions fell by 3%, after the global recovery, the emissions returned to normal and every year since then they have risen consistently.
As countries plan their recovery, trying to get people back into work, opening businesses, kickstarting closed industries and boosting global trade, we must ask how much of business-as-usual should we keep business-as-usual.
Recovery packages, especially for industrialised countries, should aim to prioritise sustainability and shared prosperity, with a renewed perspective on the relationships between communities and the environment around them.
We should not just be satisfied by the wonder of photos of a cleaner environment, we should strive to rebuild our economies so they foster greater harmony between the built world and the natural world.
After recessions, like the one we are projected to head into, it is unlikely every person who lost their job would be re-employed at the same workplace. Some might not ever find a job again. The case often is that the unemployment rate after recovery is higher than it was before the crisis, and young people will experience this for the longest period post-coronavirus.
To address this, countries should build climate mitigation and adaptation programs using investment or through direct intervention, employing unemployed citizens to play a role in expanding the production of renewable energy, cleaning our waterways and caring for land, and to carbon farm so as to draw down carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere.
This strategy addresses long-term unemployment that is inevitable after the pandemic, and also starts making inroads for reducing the environmental footprint of humanity.
Alongside re-thinking our relationship with nature, we should re-think how our societies operate.
As those who had the luxury of working from home worked from home, the office was stripped bare and shown to be redundant. More businesses and workplaces should explore working from home as the default option, freeing up congested highways and freeing up peak hour train services.
Meetings between co-workers, between managers, and even between Premiers, Prime Ministers, and Presidents, all shifted online. This should really be the norm.
Physical meetings are appreciated, the spontaneous creativity and problem-solving in the corners of rooms, and networking in corridors are irreplaceable, but surely where we can replace a car ride or a flight with a conference call we should, offsetting potential emissions.
This would, of course, mean a greater focus on education and early-childhood education so that parents don’t have to be stressed out by managing work from home while their young children demand a hundred per cent of their attention. Education and early childhood education are among the most feminised workplaces, a renewed focus in this area would expand female participation in the workforce and deliver better working conditions, especially for early-childhood educators.
Another facet of our society that has been revealed during the pandemic is that the essential workers we have all been thanking are under-appreciated and under-valued.
We have learnt who truly keeps our communities running: the healthcare workers, the grocery store workers, delivery drivers, cleaners, teachers and educators, public transport workers. Rather than continue looking down at these workers like many of us have done in the past, their work should be recognised and rewarded accordingly.
Any opportunity we have to rebuild society to be more sustainable, more inclusive, and kinder to nature should not be wasted.
We saw the photos and watched the video of revitalised wildlife, vibrant landscapes, and clean skies as we were locked indoors.
Let’s not leave them as just viral media but instead let them inspire us to create greater harmony between ourselves and with the natural world around us.
