Global pandemic and resistant economies: The time is now

As I write this, it is late April.
And our lessons from the last few weeks in Corona lock down and the impact of the pandemic on our communities and societies, all over the world, have thrown an even harsher light onto some of the realities we either assumed as a given, or worked hard to change for years already.

And the lessons have been truly tough medicine, as can be seen in these few examples:

• The least well off are at best of cases caught between a rock and a hard place:
  poor and marginalised communities suffered the most from the impacts of the epidemic – economically and in terms of death rates – and have been the ones chiefly ignored by any of the rescue and bail out packages.
  And this will hold true for other crisis going forward, unless we manage to create change, be and recover in a different way entirely.
• Globalise supply chains work miracles in good times – but they are massively prone to disruptions:
  This is no new news actually. It is a scenario that plays out every single time a crisis hits somewhere: a war, an earth quake, a tsunami, an epidemic, wildfires, floods. Geographies in crisis are hard to access, harder still to connect to the world, harder still to supply with the bare necessities – and only very difficultly recovering. But usually it is ‘them’. This time it is ‘them’, ‘us’, ‘everyone’.
  Every country is struggling to get its hand on sufficient supply of masks, ventilators, medicines for example. Every country is desperate to figure out how to reanimate live after the imposed lock down – all the while trying to keep mortality rate as low as somehow possible.
• Human life may have a price:
  the social divide goes – of course! – beyond the class divide between those that have, and those that have not, in developed economies, which – it goes without saying – also is seen in developing countries also. Because it also replicates between the ‘having economies’ and ‘the not-so-much-having’ economies.
  For those latter countries – many driven by the informal economy of a day-labouringn work force – already caught in a perpetual catch up race, not only it is clear that they are lacking fundamental funds and health care infrastructure; but an economic lock down my well cause many more death then the virus may potentially.
  India’s migrant exodus, as well as the tragedies unfolding in many of the camps of refugees of war (e.g. Turkish-Greek border), will be a sad account to the reality.
  The value (and price) of a life may in those areas be so low – compared to the economic damaged caused by the lock down – that halting the economy will not always be the decision taken or executed properly.
• A Spanish saying says “En el pecado se lleva la penitencia“. In English: ‘In sin comes penance’.
  Our global society was aware, since decades, that there was a real chance of pandemics – not just epidemics – happening. In even just short 15 years we had several early warnings: SARS, bird flue, swine flue, Ebola.
  And yet: by and large every single country lacked preparation. Even though preparation is everything as the military preaches – and practices. Because most of very same countries regularly retain their ‘nuclear disaster’ or ‘enemy attack” drills. Preparation is everything after all.
  If we had been prepared, hundred-thousands of lives would have been saved. Large amounts of capital would have avoided destruction.
  Indeed: in sin comes penance.

And to follow up from the last point: Unless we realise that right now we’re going through a dress rehearsal for what the climate crisis might very well bring in a not so far away future – possibly towards the end of this current decade – Sin will be in Penance yet again.

Conversations have begun to ‘restart’ our economies. To give them every opportunity to ‘get back to business as usual’.
So here is me saying:

• There must not be a ‘going back to business as usual’ as it was ever! .
• There must not be dished out any public money to business that have not done their homework to be ‘future fit’ and deliver carbon savings in alignment with the Paris Agreement.
• There must NOW be the responsibility, accountability and authority to force the economic players to prepare for the Climate Crisis and take the necessary actions.