‘Business as Usual’ or Bolder and Better?

A truly green world where living sustainably is the priority, or a quick return to “business as usual” and a squandered opportunity?

The world is struggling on many levels to cope with the shocking onset of Covid-19. Not only are we trying to come to grips with the realisation the virus is here for good, and that there are now various mutations of it, but also that it is still not known when a successful vaccine will be available and how often we might need to be vaccinated to ensure protection.

The scarier picture – if there could be one – is that Covid-19 may be just one of a number of new viruses to emerge in the coming decades, making the leap from animal species to humans and causing even graver pandemics.

When you look back and consider what has happened in 2020 so far, it becomes clear we are now living through much more than a pandemic, as monumentally significant as that is.

In actual fact, the coronavirus has unleashed a massive wave of change on to our societal, environmental and economic systems, the repercussions of which will echo back down the centuries and mark a major turning point for the world.

While many of the impacts of Covid-19 are negative, we have already seen how, during lockdown, there were some positives. Nature returned to our neighbourhoods, peace reigned on the streets, families exercised together and we had to become accepting of living in a smaller, slower world.

The present predicament offers us an opportunity to reappraise things and strike off in a new direction, rather than hastily try to recreate how everything was before the virus struck.

A World after Covid-19 (free access) is a sobering, wise and succinct commentary on the challenges which Homo sapiens is obliged to face in the post-pandemic world, one in which population deceleration, the environment, and sustainable production and consumption must take precedence if people are to live in harmony.

While the choice is ours, there is no room for complacency or ignorance.

Covid-19 has brought scientific and political collaboration together in an unprecedented way.

It provides a blueprint for the importance of informed, evidence-based decisions of the future. As is rightly observed, the future is not “business as usual” - it must be transformational, based on agreed principles for sustainability of production and consumption, as well as finding solutions to climate change and reversing biodiversity loss.

While Covid-19 has been hogging most of the headlines this year, other global crises, particularly environmental ones, are still unfolding at pace. The need to do something about these remains as urgent as ever.

The impact of the pandemic and the resultant world slowdown have been clearly revealed in a recent article in The Guardian.

An international research organisation, the Global Footprint Network, has calculated that coronavirus-induced lockdowns resulted in a 9.3% reduction in the world’s ecological footprint compared with the same period in 2019.

The network also worked out that “Earth Overshoot Day”, the day on which humankind’s consumption exceeds the amount nature can regenerate in a year, shifted back more than three weeks from July 29 last year to August 22 this year.

The group also says for humanity to be able to continue consuming ecological resources at the current rate, “we would still need the equivalent of 1.6 Earths”, The Guardian reports.

The level of care we need to put back into improving and protecting our planet is almost beyond our reach.

Maintaining the quality of life across the globe will require bold vision by nations and the United Nations. Covid-19 is a wakeup call for all of us - a turning point in determining our future.

Walter Erdelen and Jacques Richardson have provided the scenario and the challenges which must lead to the best possible evidence-based decisions for a transformed world.

Margaret Elizabeth Austin is a former New Zealand politician. She was an MP from 1984 to 1996, representing first the Labour Party and then briefly United New Zealand. From the late 1990s until about 2011, she worked for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). From 2000 to 2007, she was president of the chairs of UNESCO national commissions worldwide.

Photo by cosmindoro from Pexels