The COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a “stress test” for global society, with far-reaching consequences in the education, economy, health, agriculture, shipping, and other sectors. Experts from the University of Zurich (Switzerland), a UNAI member establishment that serves as the SDG platform for Goal 13: Climate Action, studied those effects from an attitude of sustainability to what kinds we can learn from the pandemic and how they can be applied in the face of climate change.
Jan R. Baiker, Nadia Castro, Veruska Muccione, Christian Huggel, Simon Allen and Fabian Drenkhan, from the Environment and Climate Research Group of the Department of Geography, summarized the effects of the pandemic on the 3 pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic.
The pandemic has contributed to a relief in government environmental monitoring, leading to an increase in illegal deforestation and poaching, as well as knowledge gaps due to the disruption of environmental monitoring projects. In addition, the development, assessment, and review of policies similar to the ongoing multilateral negotiations on climate update and drafts for reporting by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been postponed. On the other hand, there has also been a reduction in vehicle traffic at the local level, a relief in greenhouse gas emissions. , improved air quality, and a recovery of species and ecosystems in other parts of the world due to the global slowdown caused by the pandemic.
Regarding the social pillar, the experts pointed out as a highlight the awareness of the measures needed to combat the pandemic, indicating that communication and awareness campaigns can be effective in educating others about the necessary measures to prevent the pandemic, and a vital lesson to also combat climate change. At the same time, the pandemic has led to a significant increase in unemployment rates, a change in internal migration patterns with the movement of people from urban to rural spaces, and a change in living conditions, and has had a massive impact. have an effect on the global economy across all sectors, aggregating travel and origin chains. The pandemic is affecting everyone, although in different ways, at different rates and magnitudes, and governments have been forced to impose top-down and unpopular, although accepted, measures that offer lessons in the fight against climate change.
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis and the basic risk it poses to humanity, it has not been fought with the same power as the pandemic. Broadly speaking, we can describe the interactions between the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis as compound impacts. . The worst-case scenario would be one in which the impacts, climate change and the pandemic, expanded at the same time. Human populations with limited resources and capabilities tend to be more vulnerable to such an exceptional crisis, and as a result, COVID-19 exacerbates existing inequalities. Belief in and enjoyment of increased vulnerabilities in urban spaces could cause migration to rural spaces and lead to more powerful pressures and accelerated land-use replacement dynamics, which would likely exacerbate the climate crisis. .
There is also the threat of an intensification of mining or commercial extractive activities due to a remnant of environmental regulations following the payment of the debt burden that some countries have had to assume. New demands for budget cuts may simply lead to the postponement of sustainable and sustainable projects. climate-friendly projects and actions. Many of these threats can be turned into opportunities, especially in countries with long-term, evidence-based strategic plans for climate adaptation and mitigation.
These opportunities are accompanied by further reflection on nature-based responses to increase ecosystem resilience, the conversion of operating conditions, the use of virtual responses to the need to travel, the scaling up of sustainability in the tourism sector, and policies in favour of more sustainable responses such as the need for sustainable tourism. Progress was made in the supply chains of food and energy-intensive fabrics, and in agroecological production.
There are lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 crisis that can be implemented to replace the climate, adding the interconnectedness of social, environmental and economic systems that need to be addressed through a holistic socio-ecological approach. The post-pandemic recovery plans, under the slogan “Build Back Better”, are an opportunity to rethink those systems as a whole, with the aim of achieving a transformative replacement as a component of a globally coordinated effort based on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement.
You can read more about the University of Zurich’s paintings as UNAI’s SDG hub for Goal thirteen here, and you can check out the full list of UNAI SDG hubs here.