COVID-19 itself is related to some of the same disorders as man-made climate change. The human epidemic of any zoonotic virus, such as SARS-CoV-2, is targeting the poisonous way humans interact with the herbal world: habitat loss brings wild animals closer to human settlements, remote mining, and the road structure that leads more people to what were once wilderness areas, the production of industrialized meat that introduces viruses into the food source matrix Etc.
Some of the worst peaks in the pandemic would not have occurred in the south, but in the north, in rich societies that were more prepared for a pandemic, but are not used to dealing with crises and therefore have difficulty dealing with them. the humanitarian consequences of climate change will dominate the lives of all countries, in all regions of the world.
We’re all together.
Although the global impact on the pandemic, any ghost facing a non-unusual viral enemy can bring us closer to a brief second. As with all crises, the number of instances and mortality rates in COVID-19 followed the cracks of racism, elegance and gender.
For example, black Americans die from COVID-19 at more than double the rate of white Americans, as do Brazil’s indigenous peoples. The effects of climate change show similar inequality in which emerging crises disproportionately become vulnerable over a long time. permanent and unresolved disadvantages.
COVID-19 found that multilateralism is unable to fulfill its promise of inter-state cooperation to triumph over global threats beyond the management capacity of a single state country. Three examples among many: the Trump administration’s resolve to withdraw from the World Health Organization, rushing through non-public protective teams, adding export restrictions and even accusations of state piracy, and the political race to offste COVID-19 vaccines.
Similar topics apply to foreign cooperation on climate change. In the short term, the next-level climate negotiations (COP26) were delayed for one year, as were negotiations abroad, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the High Seas Treaty. In time, hotels for polluting industry lobbies and allied states will rise to the demanding situations of foreign negotiations.
The instinctive reaction of states to the pandemic has been against cooperation: the tightening of border regimes. In early July 2020, 91% of the world’s population lived in countries where border restrictions were increasing. And refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, have been stigmatized and attacked, adding in Greece, Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico and many other countries. A repressive instinct, or even the general closure of external borders, is a truth for others fleeing the effects of climate change.
Extractivism – the immune thing?
Mining is an industry that appears to be affected by closures. Extractive industries have turned the pandemic into a boom, proceeding to its operations by obtaining “essential” status, effectively pushing for weak environmental regulations, and partnering with police and armed actors to quell environmental and indigenous protests.
Canada has consistently used the COVID-19 crisis to reduce environmental protections for communities and ecosystems in Canada and elsewhere. It is not that extractive industries and support governments are the main antagonists in the prevention of actions that oppose climate replacement and the trampling of indigenous rights. peoples and other marginalized communities.
Trust, denial, elite panic and lifeboats
Some of the worst outbreaks have occurred in countries where political leaders have tried to minimize and deny the COVID-19 pandemic, highest in Brazil and the United States, but also in others such as Nicaragua, Turkmenistan and Tanzania.
The denial of COVID-19 is based on the same techniques, amplifiers and funders, and the same intention as climate replaces denial. Instead of saving the sinking ship completely, a panicked elite seeks to sell to those it doesn’t like. the policy of the armed lifeboat “:
<< There is a genuine threat that strong states with evolved economies will succumb to a policy of xenophobia, racism, police repression, surveillance and militarism, and therefore castle societies like the rest of the global collapses. In this way, evolved economies would change into neo-trade islands of relative stability in an ocean of chaos . . . [But] A global weather collapse, marked by hunger, disease, crime, bigotry and violent social rupture, will overwhelm the armed lifeboat. , everything will sink into the same jam. "
Armed lifeboat disassembly
Providing important assistance and coverage to those suffering and survivors of emergencies and crises has its own value, but humanitarian workers want to do much more than sell violence rooted in pandemics and climate change.
Crossing borders to escape the effects of an emergency should be understood as more than just an act of survival, but as a vital step in decolonization, and so must protests by those who oppose discriminatory, exclusionary and violent policies.
COVID-19 and the effects of climate adequacy are strongly connected with centuries of colonialism, extractive capitalism and racism, so a humanitarian reaction will only make sense as a human fact, when and if stories of prejudice and similar acts of protest. they listen, learn and pave the way.