THOUGHTS ON
the Coronavirus Crisis
Is there a connection between our food system, agriculture and the Coronavirus? How does the Covid-19 pandemic relate to climate change or the rights of children and youth? Should we treat animals better to avoid a future pandemic? Could we have avoided the virus outbreak if we had shifted public funds from military to sustainable development?
The Coronavirus pandemic is more than a health crisis. It is rooted in how we treat our planet, how we prioritise our public spendings. And it will impact our lives for much longer than we expect. Find be below a compilation of interesting content by the WFC and inspiring thoughts of our Councillors and Honorary Councillors on the Covid-19 outbreak.
WFC-Statement
I) WFC-Statement: The world during and after Covid-19
Covid-19 and the Rights of Children and Youth
I) Article: What about us? Youth (Un)employment in times of Covid-19
II) Article: Covid-19 – From a health crisis to a child rights crisis
III) Opinion: Covid-19 and Youth – article series
Covid-19 and Climate and Energy
I) Policy Brief: Making Societies more resilient
II) Study: How Central Banks can trigger a massvie Reduction of global CO2 Emissions and Tackling the Pandemic Crisis by using new Tools of green Bonds and Guarantees
III) Press Release: Leading Renewable Players urge Governments to re-align recovery Measures with Paris Agreement
Covid-19 and Sustainable Ecosystems
I) Press Release: World Food Day – Scaling up Agroecology in times of a global hunger crisi
II) Call for immediate Action: UN Biodiversity Summit – Mainstream Biodiversity in all recovery plans and strategies for the Covid-19 Pandemic
Covid-19 and Peace and Disarmament
I) Appeal: 237 Women Leaders endorse appeal for human security for public health, peace and sustainable development
II) Handbook: Assuring our common future
Overview - Contributions of our Councillor
Dr. h.c. Maude Barlow
I) Article: COVID-19 puts the human right to water front and centre
Kehkashan Basu
I) Video: Statement on Covid-19
Rt Hon. Helen Clark
I) Panel: The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
Prof. Marie-Claire Cordonier-Segger
I) Blog-Post: Bridging the Capacity Chasm to Address Critical Global Challenges
II) Lecture: Online Leverhulme Lecture & Distinguished Experts Dialogue: Pandemic Recovery, the SDGs and the Law
Maria Fernanda Espinosa
I) Statement: Statement on COVID-19 and UHC
II) Article: The climate crisis should be at the heart of the global Covid recovery
Herbert Girardet
I) Article: A manifesto for the Coronacene
II) Article: Is nature taking revenge?
Jane Goodall, Ph.D., DBE
I) Video: A video message on Covid-19
Prof. Dr Maja Göpel
I) Article: A Social-Green Deal, with just transition—the European answer to the coronavirus crisis
Dr C. Otto Scharmer
I) Article: Eight Emerging Lessons: From Coronavirus to Climate Action
Prof. Dr Vandana Shiva
I) Article: Ecological Reflections on the Corona Crisis
Alyn Ware
I) Article: Shift resources from nukes to public health
II) Handbook: Assuring our common future
Open Letter to Global Leaders
I) Letter: Open Letter to Global Leaders – A Healthy Planet for Healthy People
The world during and after Covid-19
World Future Council
Covid-19: The World Future Council’s Call on Governments, Multilateral Organisations, Leaders and Policy-makers of the World to Take Action
COVID/19 has been a wakeup call for humanity. The pandemic has created unprecedented emergencies. To overcome the current catastrophic scenario we need to act now, not only to respond to the health crisis but to build a just and sustainable future. We urgently need a strong and efficient multilateral system, we need global leadership, collective action and shared responsibilities in support of current and future generations.
Covid-19
and the Rights of Children and Youth
What about us? Youth (Un)employment in times of Covid-19
The COVID-19 crisis has turned from a global health crisis into a severe economic crisis. The policy responses taken to fight the pandemic have resulted in economic shutdown, leaving millions out of work, with young people, women and less-skilled people worst affected.
Covid-19 – From a Health Crisis to a Child Rights Crisis
The Corona pandemic is not the first pandemic the world is facing, but it is the one that will have lasting effects on every nation, people, especially children and youth. Devastating pandemics have occurred in large outbreaks, the best known being the Black Death in the 14th century and the Spanish flu that swept the world in the aftermath of World War One, killing 50 to 100 million people; most of them between their 20s and 40s. In recent decades, the world has seen pandemics like HIV/Aids, SARS or Ebola.
Covid-19 and Youth
Our article series highlights how the young people from the WFC experience the pandemic and its consequences.
Covid-19
and Climate and Energy
Making Societies more resilient
The role of renewables in Covid-19 Recovery Packages – Policy Brief for the Global Renewable Congress
Facing the global COVID-19 crisis, humanity is dealing with an unprecedented challenge. Next to severe impacts on the health system, we are confronted with the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. The national and international recovery programs will be larger than those seen after the global financial crisis in 2008. They will determine our infrastructure for decades to come.
New Study: How central banks can trigger a massive reduction of global CO2 Emissions and tackling the pandemic crisis by using new tools of green bonds and guarantees
A new study by the World Future Council was released today that shows that central banks could achieve a massive reduction of global CO2 emissions whilst tackling the pandemic crisis by using new tools. This could be realised without increasing the money supply by reinvesting matured assets from previous purchase programmes.
Press Release: Leading renewable players urge governments to re-align recovery measures with Paris Agreement
In a renewed call to action, over 100 leading renewable energy players, including the World Future Council, as members of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Coalition for Action, urge governments to correct course. By placing a renewables-based energy transition at the heart of an economic recovery from COVID-19, governments can foster economic resilience and secure a climate-safe future.
Covid-19
and Sustainable Ecosystems
Press Release: World Food Day – Scaling up Agroecology in times of a Global Hunger Crisis
On World Food Day, the World Future Council warns governments that across the world, millions of people are threatened by hunger. The COVID-19 is the final straw to break the camel’s back: the pandemic is deepening existing hunger crises and increases inequalities. Over-production, waste, unequal distribution and lack of resilience sadly are the characteristics of our globalised food system. Experts of the World Future Council urge to scale up agroecology now to eradicate hunger and poverty, build resilience, and strengthen children, citizens and smallholders.
Call: UN Biodiversity Summit: Mainstream Biodiversity in all recovery plans and strategies for the Covid-19 pandemic
As governments convene for the UN Biodiversity Summit on 30 September 2020 in New York, the World Future Council calls for immediate action to protect and conserve biodiversity. Mainstreaming biodiversity in all COVID-19 recovery strategies are vital to safe all life on earth, including the survival and well-being of humankind. In the interest of current and future generations, we need to prevent future pandemics, to ensure life supporting systems and live in harmony with nature.
Covid-19
and Peace and Disarmament
237 Women Leaders endorse appeal for human security for public health, peace and sustainable development
The appeal, Human security for public health, peace and sustainable development, endorsed by 237 women legislators, religious leaders and civil society leaders from more than 40 countries* was released to coincide with International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament on May 24, 2020. It also supports, in particular, United Nations’ initiatives for peace and disarmament including the global ceasefire initiative and the UN Secretary-General’s Agenda for Disarmament.
Handbook: Assuring our Common Future
This handbook focuses on parliamentary action to implement the disarmament agenda. The chapter “Disarmament in a post COVID-19 pandemic world” is exploring connections between the COVID-19 pandemic and disarmament.
The chapter “Pandemics and disarmament, public health and economic sustainability” focuses on parliamentary action on disarmament to support public health, peace and economic sustainability in relation to pandemic prevention, management and mitigation.
Thoughts of our Councillors
Covid-19 and the right to a clean water
Dr. h.c. Maude Barlow
COVID-19 puts the human right to water front and centre
According to health experts, one of the most important things we can all do to stop the spread of the coronavirus is wash our hands often, and well, with soap and hot water and keep our surroundings clean. But more than half the global population lacks access to somewhere to wash with soap and warm water.
The Voice of Future Generation
Kehkashan Basu
A Video Message from our Councillor
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An Evidence-based Quest to Protect Human Health
Rt Hon. Helen Clark
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
The mission of the Independent Panel is to provide an evidence-based path for the future, grounded in lessons of the present and the past to ensure countries and global institutions, including specifically WHO, effectively address health threats. It will provide a fresh assessment of the challenges ahead, based on insights and lessons learned from the health response to COVID-19 as coordinated by WHO as well as previous health emergencies.
Post-Pandemic Measures
Prof. Marie-Claire Cordonier-Segger
Bridging the Capacity Chasm to Address Critical Global Challenges
In 2020, countries are facing critical global challenges which will define the next decades, perhaps centuries, of our civilizations on this Earth. Scientists and others in World Health Organization (WHO) circles underlined serious risks of a global pandemic – now a reality with the emergence of a novel coronavirus and the deadly COVID-19 outbreaks. The parallels to the climate catastrophe and the Paris Climate Agreement are striking.
Online Leverhulme Lecture & Distinguished Experts Dialogue: Pandemic Recovery, the SDGs and the Law
Complex, inter-linked ‘wicked problems’ of climate change, drought and hunger; terrestrial and marine ecosystem collapse and species extinction; and world health pandemics, among others, have been signaled by scientists and civil society, with increasing urgency, for decades. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a global agenda for the achievement of international treaty obligations but also economic recovery coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments are spending billions on pandemic recovery. How could this finance foster and not frustrate global sustainability?
Universal health coverage commitments and the Climate crisis during Covid-19
Maria Fernanda Espinosa
Statement on COVID-19 and UHC
Health is a fundamental human right and the foundation of economic prosperity and security. This global crisis is a sharp reminder that everyone, everywhere should have access to quality and affordable health services. These are the key asks and UN HLM commitments can help guide political leaders as they respond to COVID-19.
The climate crisis should be at the heart of the global Covid recovery
Governments are pouring resources into economic recovery. It’s an opportunity for visionary climate policies.
The economic development and Covid-19
Herbert Girardet
A manifesto for the Coronacene
The global impacts of Covid-19 have left humanity reeling. This virtually invisible virus has greatly amplified an ongoing planetary emergency and reminded us of the fragility of the human condition. A global health crisis is being superimposed on a global environmental crisis – defined by climate change, biodiversity loss, soil depletion and chemical pollution.
Is nature taking revenge?
People across the planet are asking whether the novel coronavirus pandemic represents nature taking revenge on a rampant humanity. But is this thesis relevant in the current context? Unprecedented human numbers, coupled with unprecedented demands for resources, may have unleashed an ecological tsunami of our own making.
Coronavirus, animal welfare and biodiversity
Jane Goodall, Ph.D., DBE
A Video Message on Covid-19
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Europe after the pandemic
Prof. Dr Maja Göpel
A Social-Green Deal, with just transition—the European answer to the coronavirus crisis
Taking a lot of formerly unthinkable social, political and economic measures is necessary to avoid massive disruption in the short term but without rolling back a transformation that was already in train. That transformation, towards a carbon-neutral European continent, regenerated soils, protected biodiversity and oceans and a circular economy, has been the subject of strategies designed to avoid crises of the magnitude we are witnessing today.
How does the Covid-19 pandemic relate to climate change?
Dr C. Otto Scharmer
Eight Emerging Lessons: From Coronavirus to Climate Action
Having returned to the US from Europe on the last plane before the travel ban kicked in two days ago, I feel as if I have traveled backwards in time. Which is exactly what people report when they arrive in Europe from East Asia now. You feel as if you’re moving backward in time, back into an earlier state of awareness, which the country of departure had already moved past. Here are my eight takeaways.
This article is also available in Spanish, French and German.
Corona Virus and Agriculture
Prof. Dr Vandana Shiva
Ecological Reflections on the Corona Virus
The health emergency that the corona virus is waking us up to is connected to the emergency of extinction and disappearance of species, and it is connected to the climate emergency. All emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric world view of humans as separate from, and superior to other beings who we can own, manipulate and control . It is also rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed which systematically violates planetary boundaries and ecosystem and species integrity.
The Covid-19 pandemic and sustainable development
Alyn Ware
Shift resources from nukes to public health!
In June 2019, before the corona virus had emerged, the Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group of former US Congressional and Pentagon budget officials and other experts, released a report ‘Sustainable Defence: More Security: Less Spending’ which noted “[T]he most urgent threats to U.S. security are non-military, and the proper national security tools ought to be non-military as well. [The threats] include climate change, which undermines frontiers, leads to unpredictable extreme weather, and fosters uncontrollable migration . . . global disease epidemics, which pose societal risks to all nations; and income and wealth gaps, which foster insecurity and conflict.” […] But their warnings and recommendations went unheeded by the US government, which increased military spending in 2019 to $738 billion while cutting the Centre for Disease Control budget by 20% to $11 billion.
Handbook: Assuring our Common Future
This handbook focuses on parliamentary action to implement the disarmament agenda. The chapter “Disarmament in a post COVID-19 pandemic world” is exploring connections between the COVID-19 pandemic and disarmament.
The chapter “Pandemics and disarmament, public health and economic sustainability” focuses on parliamentary action on disarmament to support public health, peace and economic sustainability in relation to pandemic prevention, management and mitigation.
Open Letter
Call to Action from the Planetary Emergency Partnership*: Emerging from the Planetary Emergency and partnering between People and Nature
“This is the moment for all of us to rise to the challenge of collaborative leadership and work together to find pathways to emerge from this emergency with a global economic reset. People and nature must be at the center of this deep transformation for redistribution, regeneration and restoration. Prosperity for people and the planet is possible only if we make bold decisions today so that future generations can survive and thrive in a better world.”
Among the First Signatories of the letter our Members:
- Prof. Dr Ernst von Weizsäcker, founding president of the Wuppertal Institute, Honorary President of the Club of Rome
- Herbert Girardet, co-founder, World Future Council, ExCom member, Club of Rome
- Anders Wijkman, Chairman Climate-KIC, Honorary President Club of Rome, Sweden
- Dr Ashok Khosla, Chairman, Development Alternatives
- Prof. Dr Maja Göpel, Secretary General, German Advisory Council Global Change
- Prof. Dr Vandana Shiva, Right Livelihood Award recipient, founder of Navdanya, board member for Regeneration International
- J. Daniel Dahm, Senior Advisor, World Future Council; German Association Club of Rome
and our Executive Director Alexandra Wandel.
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