COVID-19: THE GREAT RESET by klaus schwab
Quotes:
“In early July 2020, we are at
a crossroads, the authors of COVID-19: The Great Reset argue. One path will
take us to a better world: more inclusive, more equitable and more respectful
of Mother Nature. The other will take us to a world that resembles the one we
just left behind – but worse and constantly dogged by
nasty surprises. We must therefore get it right.
[...]
It is our defining moment – we will be dealing with its fallout for years, and many
things will change forever. It is bringing economic disruption of monumental
proportions, creating a dangerous and volatile period on multiple fronts – politically, socially, geopolitically –
raising deep concerns about the environment and also extending the reach
(pernicious or otherwise) of technology into our lives. No industry or business
will be spared from the impact of these changes. Millions of companies risk
disappearing and many industries face an uncertain future; a few will thrive.
On an individual basis, for many, life as they’ve always known it is unravelling
at alarming speed. But deep, existential crises also favour introspection and
can harbour the potential for transformation. The fault lines of the world – most notably social divides, lack of fairness, absence of
cooperation, failure of global governance and leadership –
now lie exposed as never before, and people feel the time for reinvention has
come. A new world will emerge (...)
Many of us are pondering when
things will return to normal. The short response is: never. Nothing will ever
return to the “broken” sense of normalcy that prevailed prior to the crisis
because the coronavirus pandemic marks a fundamental inflection point in our
global trajectory. Some analysts call it a major bifurcation, others refer to a
deep crisis of “biblical” proportions, but the essence remains the same: the
world as we knew it in the early months of 2020 is no more, dissolved in the
context of the pandemic. Radical changes of such consequence are coming that
some pundits have referred to a “before coronavirus” (BC) and “after
coronavirus” (AC) era. We will continue to be surprised by both the rapidity
and unexpected nature of these changes – as they
conflate with each other, they will provoke second-, third-, fourth- and
more-order consequences, cascading effects and unforeseen outcomes. In so
doing, they will shape a “new normal” radically different from the one we will
be progressively leaving behind. Many of our beliefs and assumptions about what
the world could or should look like will be shattered in the process.
... The changes were so
diverse and widespread that it led to “the end of an age of submission”,
bringing feudalism and serfdom to an end and ushering in the era of
Enlightenment. Put simply: “The Black Death may have been the unrecognized
beginning of modern man.”
... In reality, the pandemic
is dramatically exacerbating pre-existing dangers that we’ve failed to confront
adequately for too long.
... World War II was the
quintessential transformational war, triggering not only fundamental changes to
the global order and the global economy, but also entailing radical shifts in
social attitudes and beliefs that eventually paved the way for radically new
policies and social contract provisions... There are obviously fundamental
dissimilarities between a pandemic and a war (...), but the magnitude of their
transformative power is comparable. Both have the potential to be a
transformative crisis of previously unimaginable proportions (...) the impact
of the pandemic will go well beyond the (already staggering) statistics
relating “simply” to death, unemployment and bankruptcies.
... The objective of this book
is to offer some coherent and conceptually sound guidelines about what might
lie ahead ... The broader point is this: the possibilities for change and the
resulting new order are now unlimited and only bound by our imagination, for
better or for worse. Societies could be poised to become either more
egalitarian or more authoritarian, or geared towards more solidarity or more
individualism, favouring the interests of the few or the many; economies, when
they recover, could take the path of more inclusivity and be more attuned to
the needs of our global commons, or they could return to functioning as they
did before. You get the point: we should take advantage of this unprecedented
opportunity to reimagine our world, in a bid to make it a better and more
resilient one as it emerges on the other side of this crisis.
... If just one word had to
distil the essence of the 21st century, it would have to be “interdependence”.
A by-product of globalization and technological progress,(...) The fact that
globalization and technological progress have advanced so much (...) that the
world is now
“hyperconnected” – a variant of interdependence on steroids!
... In an interdependent
world, risks amplify each other and, in so doing, have cascading effects. That
is why isolation or containment cannot rhyme with interdependence and
interconnectedness.
The chart below, extracted
from the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2020, makes this plain (...) As
the chart makes clear, an “infectious diseases” risk is bound to have a direct
effect on “global governance failure”, “social instability”, “unemployment”, “fiscal
crises” and “involuntary migration” (to name just a few). Each of these in turn
will influence other individual risks, meaning that the individual risk from
which the chain of effects started (in this particular case “infectious diseases”)
ends up amplifying many other risks not only in its own macro category
(societal risks), but also in the other four macro categories.
... This new culture of
immediacy, obsessed with speed, is apparent in all aspects of our lives, from
“just-in-time” supply chains to “high-frequency” trading, from speed dating to
fast food...
... Exponential growth is so
baffling to our cognitive functions that we often deal with it by developing
exponential “myopia”... In a famous experiment conducted in 1975, two
psychologists found that when we have to predict an exponential process, we
often underestimate it by factor of 10 [...] things tend to change gradually at
first and then all at once. Expect the same for the macro reset.
For years, international
organizations like the World
Health Organization (WHO),
institutions like the World Economic
Forum and the Coalition for
Epidemic Preparedness Innovations
(CEPI –
launched at the Annual Meeting 2017 in Davos), and individuals like Bill Gates
have been warning us about the next pandemic risk, even specifying that it: 1)
would emerge in a highly populated place where economic development forces
people and wildlife together; 2) would spread quickly and silently by
exploiting networks of human travel and trade; and 3) would reach multiple
countries by thwarting containment... Many Asian countries reacted quickly
because they were prepared logistically and organizationally (due to SARS) and
thus were able to lessen the impact of the pandemic. By contrast, many Western
countries were unprepared and were ravaged by the pandemic... To sum up, the
pandemic is not a black-swan event, but some of its consequences will be.
A theoretical physicist turned
head of state made this point when he coined the expression “quantum politics”,
outlining how the classical world of post-Newtonian physics (linear) had given
way to the quantum world: highly interconnected and uncertain, incredibly
complex and also changing depending on the position of the observer... The
COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare this quantum world. <...>
History shows that epidemics
have been the great resetter of countries economy and social fabric. Why should
it be different with COVID-19? A seminal paper on the long-term economic
consequences of major pandemics throughout history shows that significant
macroeconomic after-effects can persist for as long as 40 years, substantially
depressing real rates of return. This
is in contrast to wars that have the opposite effect: they destroy capital
while pandemics do not – wars trigger higher real
interest rates, implying greater economic activity, while pandemics trigger
lower real rates, implying sluggish economic activity. In addition, consumers
tend to react to the shock by increasing their savings, either because of new
precautionary concerns, or simply to replace the wealth lost during the epidemic...
Unlike previous pandemics, it
is far from certain that the COVID-19 crisis will tip the balance in favour of
labour and against capital. For political and social reasons, it could, but
technology changes the mix...
In the face of uncertainty, it
makes sense to resort to (3) scenarios... are based on the core assumption that
the pandemic could go on affecting us until 2022... Whichever of the three the pandemic follows policy-makers must be
prepared to deal with “at least another 18 to 24 months of significant COVID-19
activity, with hotspots popping up periodically in diverse geographic areas”.
As we will argue next, a full-fledged economic recovery cannot take place until
the virus is defeated or behind us.
...there has been a perennial debate about “saving lives versus saving
the economy”– lives versus livelihoods. This is a false
trade-off. From an economic standpoint, the myth of having to choose between
public health and a hit to GDP growth can easily be debunked. Leaving aside the
(not insignificant) ethical issue of whether sacrificing some lives to save the
economy is a social Darwinian proposition (or not), deciding not to save lives
will not improve economic welfare...
... “Only saving lives will save livelihoods”, making it clear that only policy measures
that place people’s health at their core will enable an economic recovery,
adding: “If governments fail to save lives, people afraid of the virus will not
resume shopping, traveling, or dining out. This will hinder economic recovery,
lockdown or no lockdown.”
The shock that the pandemic has inflicted on the global economy has been
more severe and has occurred much faster than anything else in recorded
economic history (...) As the economist Kenneth
Rogoff warned: “Everything depends on how long
it lasts, but if this goes on for a long time, It’s
certainly going to be the mother of all financial crises.”
At different moments between February and May 2020, in a bid to contain
the pandemic, governments worldwide made the deliberate decision to shut down
much of their respective
economies... The impact of these decisions seemed all the more dramatic
because they concerned first and foremost service industries, a sector traditionally
more immune than other industries... Consequently, the service sector that
represents by far the largest component of economic activity in any developed
economy (about 70% of GDP and more than 80% of employment in the US) was hit
the hardest by the pandemic.
Several months into the pandemic, it looks like even a semblance of a
return to “business as usual” for most service companies is inconceivable as
long as COVID-19 remains a threat to our health. This in turn suggests that a
full return to “normal” cannot be envisaged before a vaccine is available. When
might that be? According to most experts, it is unlikely to be before the first
quarter of 2021 at the earliest. In mid-June 2020, already more than 135 trials
were under way, proceeding at a remarkable pace considering that in the past it
could take up to 10 years to develop a vaccine (five in the case of Ebola), so
the reason is not science, but production. Manufacturing billions of doses
constitutes the real challenge that will require a massive expansion and
diversion of existing capacity. The next hurdle is the political challenge of
vaccinating enough people worldwide (we are collectively as strong as the
weakest link) with a high enough compliance rate despite the rise of
anti-vaxxers.
In the coming months, the unemployment situation is bound to deteriorate
further for the simple reason that it cannot improve significantly until a
sustainable economic recovery begins. This
Won’t happen before a vaccine... In a slightly more distant time (from a
few months to a few years), two categories of people will face a particularly
bleak employment situation: young people entering for the first time a job
market devastated by the pandemic and workers susceptible to be replaced by
robots... physical labour will be replaced by robots and “intelligent”
machines... there is already ample evidence that it is accelerating the pace of
transformation. The call centre sector epitomizes this situation.
In the pre-pandemic era, new artificial intelligence (AI)-based
technologies were being gradually introduced to automate some of the tasks
performed by human employees. The COVID-19 crisis, and its accompanying
measures of social distancing, has suddenly accelerated this process of
innovation and technological change. Chatbots, which often use the same voice
recognition technology behind Amazon’s Alexa, and other software that can
replace tasks normally performed by human employees, are being rapidly
introduced. These innovations provoked by necessity (i.e. sanitary measures)
will soon result in hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions, of job
losses...
The process of automation is never linear; it tends to happen in waves
and often in harsh economic times... This is when employers replace
less-skilled workers with automation to increase labour productivity. Low-income
workers in routine jobs (in manufacturing and services like food and transportation)
are those most likely to be affected...
In the post-pandemic era, according to current projections, the new
economic “normal” may be characterized by much lower growth than in past
decades. As the recovery begins, quarter-toquarter GDP growth may look
impressive (because it will start from a very low basis), but it may take years
before the overall size of most nations’ economy returns to their pre-pandemic
level. This is also due to the fact that the severity of the economic shock
inflicted by the coronavirus will conflate with a long-term trend: declining
populations in many countries and ageing (demographics is “destiny” and a
crucial driver of GDP growth). Under such conditions, when lower economic
growth seems almost certain, many people may wonder whether “obsessing” about
growth is even useful, concluding that it doesn’t make sense to chase a target
of ever-higher GDP growth.
The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally has offered societies an
enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value... the opportunity can be
seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will
put economies on a new path towards a fairer, greener future. The history of
radical rethinking in the years following World War II, which included the
establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, the EU and
the expansion of welfare states, shows the magnitude of the shifts possible.
Recent academic efforts are beginning to tackle the measurement
challenge by bringing public- and privatesector data sources together.
We do not know yet whether the “tyranny of GDP growth” will come to an
end, but different signals suggest that the pandemic may accelerate changes in
many of our well-entrenched social norms.
Some have called for “degrowth”, a movement that embraces zero or even
negative GDP growth... By triggering a period of enforced degrowth, the
pandemic has spurred renewed interest in this movement that wants to reverse
the pace of economic growth... Their open letter calls for the adoption of a
democratically “planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of
the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less”.
The technology to do more with less already exists There is no
fundamental trade-off between economic, social and environmental factors if we
adopt this more holistic and longer-term approach to defining progress and
incentivizing investment in green and social frontier markets.
For quite some time, some analysts and policy-makers have been
considering a possible and progressive end to the dominance of the dollar. They
now think that the pandemic might be the catalyst that proves them right.
... US remains a formidable
global financial hegemon... many countries would like to challenge the dollar’s
global dominance. In the short term, there are no alternatives. The Chinese
renminbi (RMB) could be an option, but not until strict capital controls are
eliminated and the RMB turns into a market-determined currency, which is
unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The same goes for the euro; it
could be an option, but not until doubts about a possible implosion of the
eurozone dissipate for good, which again is an unlikely prospect in the next
few years. As for a global virtual currency, there is none in sight yet, but
there are attempts to launch national digital currencies that may eventually
dethrone the US dollar supremacy. The most significant one took place in China
at the end of April 2020 with a test of a national digital currency in four
large cities. The country is years ahead of the rest of the world in developing
a digital currency combined with powerful electronic payment platforms; this
experiment clearly shows that there are monetary systems that are trying to
become independent from US intermediaries while moving towards greater
digitization.
...
To a large extent, US global credibility also depends on geopolitics and
the appeal of its social model. The “exorbitant privilege” is intricately
intertwined with global power, the perception of the US as a reliable partner
and its role in the working of multilateral institutions.
[...]
... societal upheaval unleashed by COVID-19 will last for years, and
possibly generations...
the post-pandemic era will usher in a period of massive wealth
redistribution, from the rich to the poor and from capital to labour. Second,
COVID-19 is likely to sound the death knell of neoliberalism... It is no
coincidence that the two countries that over the past few years embraced the
policies of neoliberalism with most fervour – the US and the UK – are among
those that suffered the most casualties during the pandemic...
The pandemic is in reality a
“great unequalizer"... virus acted as an amplifier...
Countless studies, articles
and warnings have highlighting this particular risk, based on the obvious
observation that when people have no jobs, no income and no prospects for a
better life, they often resort to violence.
...acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state. It’s
always been the case and there is no reason why it should be different with the
COVID-19 pandemic... the responses to major crises have always further
consolidated the power of the state, starting with taxation... As in the past,
the social rationale and political justification underlying the increases will
be based upon the narrative of “countries at war” (only this time against an
invisible enemy)...
France’s top rate of income tax was zero in 1914; a year after the end
of World War I, it was 50%. Canada introduced income tax in 1917 as a
“temporary” measure to finance the war, and then expanded it dramatically
during World War II with a flat 20% surtax imposed on all income tax payable by
persons other than corporations and the introduction of high marginal tax rates
(69%). Rates came down after the war but remained substantially higher than
they had been before. Similarly, during World War II, income tax in America
turned from a “class tax” to a “mass tax”, with the number of payers rising
from 7 million in 1940 to 42 million in 1945. The most progressive tax years in
US history were 1944 and 1945, with a 94% rate applied to any income above
$200,000 (the equivalent in 2009 of $2.4 million). Such top rates, often
denounced as confiscatory by those who had to pay them, would not drop below
80% for another 20 years. At the end of World War II, many other countries
adopted similar and often extreme tax measures. In the UK during the war, the
top income tax rate rose to an extraordinarily stunning 99.25%!
At times, the sovereign power of the state to tax translated into
tangible societal gains in different domains, such as the creation of a welfare
system. However, these massive transitions to something entirely “new”were
always defined in terms of a response to a violent external shock or the threat
of one to come. World War II, for example, led to the introduction of
cradle-tograve state welfare systems in most of Europe. So did the Cold War:
governments in capitalist countries were so worried by an internal communist
rebellion that they put into place a state-led model to forestall it. This
system, in which state bureaucrats managed large chunks of the economy, ranging
from transportation to energy, stayed in place well into the 1970s.
Today the situation is fundamentally different... This is a situation
that is set to change (because of covid19)... the coronavirus succeeded in
altering perceptions about the complex and delicate balance between the private
and public realms in favour of the latter... On the dial that measures the
continuum between the government and the markets, the needle has decisively
moved towards the left... Everything that comes in the post-pandemic era will
lead us to rethink governments’ role...
How will this expanded role of governments manifest itself? A
significant element of new “bigger” government is already in place...
the role of the state will increase and, in doing so, will materially
affect the way business is conducted...
...Today, the fundamental reasons underpinning the loss of faith in our
social contracts coalesce around issues of inequality, the ineffectiveness of
most redistribution policies, a sense of exclusion and marginalization, and a
general sentiment of unfairness. This is why many citizens have begun to
denounce a breakdown of the social contract, expressing more and more
forcefully a general loss of trust in institutions and leaders. In some countries, this widespread
exasperation has taken the form of peaceful or violent demonstrations; in
others, it has led to electoral victories for populist and extremist parties.
Whichever form it takes, in almost all cases, the establishment’s response has
been left wanting – illprepared for the rebellion and out of ideas and policy
levers to address the problem... the policy solutions do exist and broadly
consist in adapting the welfare state to today’s world by empowering people and
by responding to the demands for a fairer social contract...
... As Henry Kissinger reminded us: “The historic challenge for leaders
is to manage the crisis while building the future. Failure could set the world
on fire”...
...This is made all the more significant by the fact that the younger
generation is likely to be more radical than the older one in refashioning our
social contract. The pandemic has upended their lives, and a whole generation
across the globe will be defined by economic and often social insecurity, with
millions due to enter the work force in the midst of a profound recession...
Already the millennials are worse off than their parents in terms of earnings,
assets and wealth. They are less likely to own a home or have children than
their parents were. Now, another generation (Gen Z) is entering a system that
it sees as failing and that will be beset by longstanding problems revealed and
exacerbated by the pandemic. As a college junior, quoted in ‘The New York Time’s, put it: “Young people have a deep desire
for radical change because we see the broken path ahead.”
[...]
...structural stress that inevitably occurs when a rising power like
China rivals a ruling power like the US. This confrontation will be a source of
global messiness, disorder and uncertainty for years to come. Irrespective of
whether one “likes” the US or not, its progressive disengagement... from the
international scene is bound to increase international volatility. More and
more, countries that tended to rely on global public goods provided by the US
“hegemon”... will now have to tend their own backyards themselves. The 21st
century will most likely be an era devoid of an absolute hegemon during which
no one power gains absolute dominance – as a result, power and influence will
be redistributed chaotically and in some cases grudgingly...
... If no one power can enforce order, our world will suffer from a
“global order deficit”. Unless individual nations and international
organizations succeed in finding solutions to better collaborate at the global
level...
...the possible unravelling of
the EU, a breakdown between China and the US that leads to war: all these and
many more have now become plausible (...) scenarios...
[...]
Globalization – an all-purpose word – is a broad and vague notion that
refers to the global exchange between nations of goods, services, people,
capital and now even data... today’s world is more interconnected than it has
ever been... The global economy is so intricately intertwined that it is impossible
to bring globalization to an end...
The trilemma suggests that the three notions of economic globalization,
political democracy and the nation state are mutually irreconcilable, based on
the logic that only two can effectively co-exist at
any given time. Democracy and national sovereignty are only compatible
if globalization is contained. By contrast, if both the nation state and
globalization flourish, then democracy becomes untenable. And then, if both
democracy and globalization expand, there is no place for the nation state.
Therefore, one can only ever choose two out of the three – this is the essence
of the trilemma. The European Union has often been used as an example to
illustrate the pertinence of the conceptual framework offered by the trilemma...
The vote for Brexit and the election of President Trump on a protectionist
platform are two momentous markers of the Western backlash against
globalization. Subsequent studies not only validate Rodrik’s trilemma, but also
show that the rejection of globalization by voters is a rational response when
the economy is strong and inequality is high.
... Since 2008, the drive towards greater localization has been firmly
on the political agenda in many countries (particularly in the West), but it
will now be accelerated in the post-pandemic era. On the right, the pushback
against globalization is driven by protectionists and national-security hawks
who were already gathering force before the pandemic started. Now, they will
create alliances and sometimes merge with other political forces that will see
the benefit of embracing an antiglobalization agenda. On the left, activists
and green parties that were already stigmatizing air travel and asking for a
rollback against globalization will be emboldened by the positive effect the
pandemic had on our environment (far fewer carbon emissions, much less air and
water pollution). Even without pressure from the far right and the green
activists, many governments will realize that some situations of trade
dependency are no longer politically acceptable. How can the US administration,
for example, accept that 97% of antibiotics supplied in the country come from
China?
The most likely outcome along the globalization–no globalization
continuum lies in an in-between solution: regionalization. The success of the
European Union as a free trade area or the new Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership in Asia (a proposed free trade agreement among the 10 countries
that compose ASEAN) are important illustrative cases of how regionalization may
well become a new watereddown version of globalization.
... The establishment of a much more inclusive and equitable form of
globalization that makes it sustainable, both socially and environmentally, is
the only viable way to manage retreat... This requires (...) some form of
effective global governance... Progress is indeed possible in those global
areas that have traditionally benefited from international cooperation, like
environmental agreements, public health and tax havens... There is no time to
waste. If we do not improve the functioning and legitimacy of our global institutions,
the world will soon become unmanageable and very dangerous. There cannot be a
lasting recovery without a global strategic framework of governance.
[<....>]
Global governance is commonly defined as the process of cooperation
among transnational actors aimed at providing responses to global problems
(those that affect more than one state or region). It encompasses the totality
of institutions, policies, norms, procedures and initiatives through which
nation states try to bring more predictability and stability to their responses
to transnational challenges.
...without appropriate global governance, we will become paralysed in
our attempts to address
and respond to global challenges...
...In the case of the pandemic, in contrast with other recent global
crises like 9/11 or the financial crisis of 2008, the global governance system
failed, proving either non-existent or dysfunctional. The US went on to
withdraw funding from the WHO but, no matter the underlying rationale of this
decision, the fact remains that it is the only organization capable of
coordinating a global response to the pandemic, which means that an albeit far
from perfect WHO is infinitely preferable to a non-existent one, an argument
that Bill Gates compellingly and succinctly made in a tweet: “Their work is
slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other
organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.”
This failure is not the WHO’s fault. The UN agency is merely the
symptom, not the cause, of global governance failure. The WHO’s deferential
posture towards donor countries reflects its complete dependence on states
agreeing to cooperate with it. The UN organization has no power to compel
information sharing or enforce pandemic preparedness. Like other similar UN
agencies, for example on human rights or climate change, the WHO is saddled
with limited and dwindling resources: in 2018, it had an annual budget of $4.2
billion, miniscule in comparison to any health budget around the world. In addition,
it is at the perpetual mercy of member states and has effectively no tools at
its disposal to directly monitor outbreaks, coordinate pandemic planning or
ensure effective preparedness implementation at the country level, let alone
allocate resources to those countries most in need. This dysfunctionality is
symptomatic of a broken global governance system, and the jury is out as to
whether existing global governance configurations like the UN and the WHO can
be repurposed to address today’s global risks. For the time being, the bottom
line is this: in the face of such a vacuum in global governance, only nation
states are cohesive enough to be capable of taking collective decisions, but
this model doesn’t work in the case of world risks that require concerted
global decisions.
The world will be a very dangerous place if we do not fix multilateral
institutions. Global coordination will be even more necessary in the aftermath
of the epidemiological crisis, for it is inconceivable that the global economy
could “restart” without sustained international cooperation. Without it, we’ll
be heading towards “a poorer, meaner and smaller world”.
[...]
Today, it is estimated that around 1.8-2 billion people lived in fragile
states, a number that will certainly increase in the post-pandemic era because
fragile countries are particularly vulnerable to an outbreak of COVID-19.
(...) Wealthier countries ignore the tragedy unfolding in fragile and
failing countries at their peril. In one way or another, risks will reverberate
through greater instability or even chaos. One of the most obvious knock-on
effects for the richer parts of the world of economic misery, discontent and
hunger in the most fragile and poorest states will consist in a new wave of
mass migration in its direction, like those that occurred in Europe in 2016.
[...]
At first glance, the pandemic and the environment might seem to be only
distantly related cousins; but they are much closer and more intertwined than
we think... they are global in nature and therefore can only be properly
addressed in a globally coordinated fashion...
In the case of the pandemic, the causation link between the virus and
the disease is obvious: SARS-CoV- 2 causes COVID-19. Apart from a handful of
conspiracy theorists, nobody will dispute that...
Zoonotic diseases are those that spread from animals to humans. Most
experts and conservationists agree that they have drastically increased in
recent years, particularly because of deforestation (a phenomenon also linked
to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions), which augments the risk of close
human– animal interaction and contamination. For many years, researchers
thought that natural environments like tropical forests and their rich wildlife
represented a threat to humans because this is where the pathogens and viruses
at the origin of new diseases in humans such as dengue, Ebola and HIV could be
found. Today, we know this is wrong because the causation goes the other way...
“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of
animals and plants – and within those
creatures, so many unknown viruses. We cut the
trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send
them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens,
they need a new host. Often, we are it.” By
now, an increasing number of scientists have shown that it is in fact the
destruction of biodiversity caused by humans that is the source of new viruses
like COVID-19. These researchers have coalesced around the new discipline of
“planetary health” that studies the subtle and complex connections that exist
between the well-being of humans, other living species and entire ecosystems,
and their findings have made it clear that the destruction of biodiversity will
increase the number of pandemics.
In a recent letter to the US Congress, 100 wildlife and environmental
groups estimate that zoonotic diseases have quadrupled over the past 50 years... As human activities like agriculture (with
many others like mining, logging or tourism) encroach on natural ecosystems,
they break down the barriers between human populations and animals, creating
the conditions for infectious diseases to emerge by spilling from animals to
humans... Nowadays, most scientists would agree that the greater population
growth is, the more we disturb the environment, the more intensive farming becomes
without adequate biosecurity, the higher the risk of new epidemics. To do this
effectively, it will be incumbent on us all to rethink our relationship with
nature and question why we have become so alienated from it...
As early as 2003, a study published in the midst of the SARS epidemic
suggested that air pollution might explain the variation in the level of
lethality, making it clear for the
first time that the greater the level of air pollution, the greater the
likelihood of death from the disease caused by a coronavirus... In the US, a
recent medical paper concluded that those regions with more polluted air will
experience higher risks of death from COVID-19, showing that US counties with
higher pollution levels will suffer higher numbers of hospitalizations and
numbers of deaths... This may explain why people in Lombardy (one of Europe’s
most polluted regions) who had contracted the virus were shown to be twice as
likely to die from COVID-19 than people almost anywhere else in Italy.
It is too early to define the amount by which global carbon dioxide
emissions will fall in 2020, but the International Energy Agency (IEA)
estimates in its Global Energy
Review 2020 that they will
fall by 8%. Even though this figure would correspond to the largest annual
reduction on record, it is still miniscule compared to the size of the problem
and it remains inferior to the annual reduction in emissions of 7.6% over the
next decade that the UN thinks is necessary to hold the global rise in
temperatures below 1.5°C.
Considering the severity of the lockdowns, the 8% figure looks rather
disappointing. It seems to suggest that small individual actions (consuming
much less, not using our cars and not flying)
are of little significance when compared to the size of emissions
generated by electricity, agriculture and industry, the “big-ticket emitters”
that continued to operate during the lockdowns (with the
partial exception of some industries). What it also reveals is that the
biggest “offenders” in terms of carbon emissions aren’t always those often
perceived as the obvious culprits. A recent sustainability report shows that
the total carbon emissions generated by the
electricity production required to power our electronic
devices and transmit their data are roughly equivalent to that of the global airline industry. The conclusion? Even unprecedented and
draconian lockdowns with a third of the world population
confined to their homes for more than a month came nowhere near to being a viable decarbonization strategy
because, even so, the world economy kept
emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide. What
then might such a strategy look like? The considerable size and scope of the
challenge can only be addressed by a combination of: 1) a radical and major
systemic change in how we produce the energy we need to function; and 2)
structural changes in our consumption behaviour. If, in the postpandemic era,
we decide to resume our lives just as before (by driving the same cars, by
flying to the same destinations, by eating the same things, by heating our
house the same way, and so on), the COVID-19 crisis will have gone to waste as
far as climate policies are concerned. Conversely, if some of the habits we
were forced to adopt during the pandemic translate into structural changes in
behaviour, the climate outcome might be different. Commuting less, working
remotely a bit more, bicycling and walking instead of driving to keep the air
of our cities as clean as it was during the lockdowns, vacationing nearer to
home: all these, if aggregated at scale, could lead to a sustained reduction in
carbon emissions...
... Governments led by enlightened leaders will make their stimulus
packages conditional upon green commitments. They will, for example, provide
more generous financial conditions for companies with low-carbon business
models...
... Having worried for months about the pandemic and its effect on our
lungs, we’ll become obsessed about clean air; during the lockdowns, a
significant number of us saw and smelled for ourselves the benefits of reduced
air pollution, possibly prompting a collective realization that we just have a
few years to address the worst consequences of global warming and climate
change. If this is the case, societal (collective and individual) changes will
follow...
... Change in behaviour. As a
consequence of the point above, societal attitudes and demands may evolve
towards greater sustainability to a greater degree than commonly assumed. Our consumption
patterns changed dramatically during the lockdowns by forcing us to focus on
the essential and giving us no choice but to adopt “greener living”. This may
last, prompting us to disregard everything that we do not really need, and
putting into motion a virtuous circle for the environment. Likewise, we may
decide that working from home (when possible) is good for both the environment
and our individual well-being (commuting is a “destroyer” of well-being – the
longer it is, the more detrimental it becomes to our physical and mental
health). These structural changes in how we work, consume and invest may take a
little while before they become widespread enough to make a real difference
but, as we argued before, what matters is the direction and the strength of the
trend. The poet and philosopher Lao Tzu was right in saying: “A journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step.” We are just at the beginning of a
long and painful recovery and, for many of us, thinking about sustainability
may seem like a luxury but when things start to improve we’ll collectively remember
that a relation of causality exists between air pollution and COVID-19...
... Many governments are starting to act, but much more is needed to tip
the system towards a nature-positive new norm and make a majority of people all
over the world realize this is not only an imperious necessity but also a
considerable opportunity...
...Hopefully, the threat from COVID-19 won’t last. One day, it will be
behind us. By contrast, the threat from climate change and its associated
extreme weather events will be with us for the foreseeable future and beyond.
The climate risk is unfolding more slowly than the pandemic did, but it will
have even more severe consequences. To a great extent, its severity will depend
on the policy response to the pandemic. Every measure destined to revive
economic activity will have an immediate effect on how we live, but will also
have an impact on carbon emissions that will in turn have an environmental
impact across the globe and measured across generations...
Technological reset.
When it was published in 2016, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”... In the four short
years since, technological progress has moved impressively fast. AI is now all
around us, from drones and voice recognition to virtual assistants and
translation software. Our mobile devices have become a permanent and integral
part of our personal and professional lives, helping us on many different
fronts, anticipating our needs,listening to us and locating us, even when not
asked to do so...
Automation and robots are reconfiguring the way businesses operate with
staggering speed and returns on scale inconceivable just a few years ago.
Innovation in genetics, with synthetic biology now on the horizon, is also
exciting, paving the way for developments in healthcare that are
groundbreaking. Biotechnology still falls short of stopping, let alone
preventing, a disease outbreak, but recent innovations have allowed the
identification and sequencing of the coronavirus’ genome much faster than in
the past, as well as the elaboration of more effective diagnostics. In
addition, the most recent biotechnology techniques using RNA and DNA platforms
make it possible to develop vaccines faster than ever...
...It will also accentuate one of the greatest societal and individual
challenges posed by tech: privacy. We will see how contact tracing has an
unequalled capacity and a quasi essential place in the armoury needed to combat
COVID-19, while at the same time being positioned to become an enabler of mass
surveillance.
... almost instantly, most things became “e-things”: e-learning,
e-commerce, egaming, e-books, e-attendance. Some of the old habits will
certainly return (the joy and pleasure of personal contacts can’t be matched –
we are social animals after all!)... If health considerations become
paramount, we may decide, for example, that a cycling class in front of a
screen at home doesn’t match the conviviality and fun
of doing it with a group in a live class but is in fact safer (and cheaper!).
The same reasoning applies to many different domains like flying to a meeting
(Zoom is safer, cheaper, greener and much more convenient), driving to a
distant family gathering for the weekend (the WhatsApp family group is not as
fun but, again, safer, cheaper and greener) or even attending an academic course
(not as fulfilling, but cheaper and more convenient).
This transition towards more digital “of everything” in our professional
and personal lives will also be supported and accelerated by regulators... What
was until recently unthinkable suddenly became possible... new regulations will stay in place... there
are no holds barred...
In one form or another,
social- and physical-distancing measures are likely to persist after the pandemic
itself subsides, justifying the decision in many companies from different
industries to accelerate automation... Indeed,
automation technologies are particularly well suited to a world in which human
beings can’t get too close to each other or are willing to reduce their interactions.
Our lingering and possibly lasting fear of being
infected with a virus (COVID-19 or another) will thus speed the relentless
march of automation, particularly in the fields most susceptible to automation.
In 2016, two academics from Oxford University came to the conclusion that up to
86% of jobs in restaurants, 75% of jobs in retail and 59% of jobs in
entertainment could be automatized by 2035. These three industries are
among those the hardest hit by the pandemic and in which automating for reasons
of hygiene and cleanliness will be a necessity that in turn will further
accelerate the transition towards more tech and more digital. There is an
additional phenomenon set to support the expansion of automation: when
“economic distancing” might follow social distancing. As countries turn inward
and global companies shorten their super-efficient but highly fragile supply
chains, automation and robots that enable more local production, while keeping
costs down, will be in great demand.
The process of automation was set in motion many years ago, but the
critical issue once again relates to the accelerating pace of change and
transition: the pandemic will fast-forward the adoption of automation in the
workplace and the introduction of more robots in our personal and professional
lives. From the onset of the lockdowns, it became apparent that robots and AI
were a “natural” alternative when human labour was not available. Furthermore,
they were used whenever possible to reduce the health risks to human employees.
At a time when physical distancing became an obligation, robots were deployed
in places as different as warehouses, supermarkets and hospitals in a broad
range of activities, from shelf scanning (an area in which AI has made
tremendous forays) to cleaning and of course robotic delivery – a soon-to-be
important component of healthcare supply chains that will in turn lead to the
“contactless” delivery of groceries and other essentials. As for many other
technologies that were on the distant horizon in terms of adoption (like
telemedicine), businesses, consumers and public authorities are now rushing to
turbocharge the speed of adoption. In cities as varied as Hangzhou, Washington
DC and Tel Aviv, efforts are under way to move from pilot programmes to
large-scale operations capable of putting an army of delivery robots on the
road and in the air. Chinese e-commerce giants like Alibaba and jd.com are
confident that, in the coming 12-18 months, autonomous delivery could become
widespread in China – much earlier than anticipated prior to the pandemic.
An important lesson can be learned from the countries that were more
effective in dealing with the pandemic (in particular Asian nations):
technology in general and digital in particular help. Successful contact
tracing proved to be a key component of a successful strategy against COVID-19...
A tracking app gains insights in real time by, for example, determining a
person’s current location through geodata via GPS coordinates or radio cell
location. By contrast, tracing consists in gaining insights in retrospect, like
identifying physical contacts between people using Bluetooth...
It comes as no surprise that digital tracing has become one of the most
sensitive issues in terms of public health, raising acute concerns about
privacy around the world. In the early phases of the pandemic, many countries
(mostly in East Asia but also others like Israel) decided to implement digital
tracing under different forms. They shifted from the retroactive tracing of
chains of past contagion to the real-time tracking of movements in order to
confine a person infected by COVID-19 and to enforce subsequent quarantines or
partial lockdowns. From the outset, China, Hong Kong SAR and South Korea
implemented coercive and intrusive measures of digital tracing. They took the
decision to track individuals without their consent, through their mobile and
credit card data, and even employed video surveillance (in South Korea). In
addition, some economies required the mandatory wearing of electronic bracelets
for travel arrivals and people in quarantine (in Hong Kong SAR) to alert those
individuals susceptible of being infected...
... No voluntary contract-tracing app will work if people are unwilling
to provide their own personal data to the governmental agency that monitors the
system...
Today, about 5.2 billion smartphones exist in the world, each with the
potential to help identify who is infected, where and often by whom...
As the coronavirus crisis recedes and people start returning to the
workplace, the corporate move will be towards greater surveillance; for better
or for worse, companies will be watching and sometimes recording what their
workforce does. The trend could take many different forms, from measuring body
temperatures with thermal cameras to monitoring via an app how employees comply
with social distancing... simply because employers don’t have any incentive to
remove a surveillance system once it’s been installed, particularly if one of
the indirect benefits of surveillance is to check on employees’ productivity.
This is what happened after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
All around the world, new security measures like employing widespread cameras,
requiring electronic ID cards and logging employees or visitors in and out
became the norm. At that time, these measures were deemed extreme, but today
they are used everywhere and considered “normal”. An increasing number of
analysts, policy-makers and security specialists fear the same will now happen
with the tech solutions put into place to contain the pandemic. They foresee a
dystopian world ahead of us.
Surveillance technology is developing at
breakneck speed, and what seemed science-fiction 10 years ago is today old
news. As a thought experiment, consider a hypothetical government that demands
that every citizen wears a biometric bracelet that monitors body temperature and
heart-rate 24 hours a day. The resulting data is hoarded and analysed by
government algorithms. The algorithms will know that you are sick even before
you know it, and they will also know where you have been, and who you have met.
The chains of infection could be drastically shortened, and even cut
altogether. Such a system could arguably stop the epidemic in its tracks within
days. Sounds wonderful, right? The downside is, of course, that this would give
legitimacy to a terrifying new surveillance system. If you know, for example,
that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than a CNN link, that can teach you
something about my political views and perhaps even my personality. But if you
can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heartrate as
I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry,
and what makes me really, really angry. It is crucial
to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love
are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough. The same technology that identifies coughs could also
identify laughs. If corporations and governments
start harvesting our biometric data en masse,
they can get to know us far better than we
know ourselves, and they can then not just
predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want — be it a product or a
politician. Biometric monitoring would make
Cambridge Analytica’s data hacking tactics
look like something from the Stone Age. Imagine
North Korea in 2030, when every citizen has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day. If you listen to a speech
by the Great Leader and the bracelet picks up the
tell-tale signs of anger, you are done for.
...the Great Reset will entail a long and complex series of changes and adaptation...
a return to business as usual. This won’t happen because it can’t happen...
In the pre-pandemic era, the buzz of ”digital transformation” was the
mantra of most boards and executive committees. Digital was “key”, it had to be
“resolutely” implemented and was seen as a “precondition to success”! Since
then, in the space of just a few months, the mantra has become a must – even,
in the case of some companies, a question of life or death. This is explicable and
understandable. During confinement, we depended entirely on the Net for most
things: from work and education to socialization. It is the online services
that allowed us to keep a semblance of normalcy, and it is only natural that “online”
should be the largest beneficiary of the pandemic, giving a tremendous boost to
technologies and processes that enable us to do things remotely: universal
broadband internet, mobile and remote payments, and workable e-government
services, among others. As a direct consequence, businesses that were already
operating online are bound to benefit from a lasting competitive advantage. As
more and diverse things and services are brought to us via our mobiles and
computers, companies in sectors as disparate as ecommerce, contactless
operations, digital content, robots and drone deliveries (to name just a few)
will thrive. It is not by accident that firms like Alibaba, Amazon, Netflix or
Zoom emerged as “winners” from the lockdowns.
... During the peak of the pandemic, O2O – online to offline – gained
major traction, highlighting the importance of having both an online and
offline presence... This new reality is captured in the market capitalization
of Zoom (the videoconferencing company) that skyrocketed to $70 billion in June
2020, higher (at that time) than that of any US airline. Concurrently, large
online companies like Amazon and Alibaba expanded decisively in the O2O
business, particularly in food retailing and logistics.
In the post-pandemic era, business will be subject to much greater
government interference than in the past... Better alignment between public
policy and corporate planning will be a particular focus of attention in terms
of greater government interference...
stakeholder capitalism and environmental, social and governance (ESG)...
The conviction that ESG strategies benefited from the pandemic and are
most likely to benefit further is corroborated by various surveys and reports.
Early data shows that the sustainability sector outperformed conventional funds
during the first quarter of 2020. According to Morningstar, which compared first-quarter
returns for more than 200 sustainability equity funds and exchange traded
funds, the sustainable funds performed better by one percentage point or two,
on a relative basis. A report from BlackRock offers further evidence that companies
with strong ESG ratings outperformed their peers during the pandemic. Several
analysts suggested that this outperformance might simply have reflected the
reduced exposure to fossil fuels of ESG funds and strategies, but BlackRock
asserts that ESG compliant companies (another way to say that they adhere to
the principle of stakeholder capitalism) tend to be more resilient because of
their holistic understanding of risk management. It seems that the more susceptible
the world becomes to a broad set of macro risks and issues, the greater the
necessity to embrace stakeholder capitalism and ESG strategies.
The debate between those who believe that stakeholder capitalism will be
sacrificed on the altar of the recovery and those who argue that it is now time
to “build back better” is far from resolved. For every Michael O’Leary (the CEO
of Ryanair) who thinks that COVID-19 will put ESG considerations “on the back burner
for a few years”, there is a Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb) who is committed to transforming
his business into a “stakeholder company”. However, irrespective of anybody’s opinion
about the merits of stakeholder capitalism and ESG strategies and their future
role in the post-pandemic era, activism will make a difference by reinforcing
the trend. Social activists and many activist investors will scrutinize closely
how companies behaved during the pandemic crisis. It is likely that the markets
or the consumers, or both, will punish those companies that performed poorly on
social issues.
...In France and the UK, several industry voices estimate that up to 75%
of independent restaurants might not survive the lockdowns and subsequent social-distancing
measures. The large chains and fast-food giants will. This in turn suggests
that big businesses will get bigger while the smallest shrink or disappear. A
large restaurant chain, for example, has a better chance of staying operational
as it benefits from more resources and, ultimately, less competition in the
wake of bankruptcies among smaller outfits. The small restaurants that survive
the crisis will have to reinvent themselves entirely...
At the other end of the size spectrum, some very large companies will
fall victim to the same predicament as the very small ones. Airline companies,
in particular, will face similar constraints in terms of consumer demand and
social-distancing rules. The three-month shutdown has left carriers around the world
with a cataclysmic situation of virtually zero revenues... consumption habits may change permanently. If
many businesses decide to travel less to reduce costs and to replace physical
meetings by virtual ones whenever possible, the impact on the recovery and ultimate
profitability of airlines may be dramatic and lasting. ..
Airports face the same challenges as airlines: the less people fly, the
less they transit via airports. This in turn affects the level of consumption
in the various shops and restaurants that make up the ecosystem of all
international airports throughout the world. Furthermore, the experience of
airports in a post-COVID-19 world, involving longer waiting times, highly
restricted or even no hand luggage and other potentially inconvenient
social-distancing measures, could erode the consumer desire to travel by air
for pleasure and leisure...
Three industries in particular will flourish (in aggregate) in the
post-pandemic era: big tech, health and wellness...
Resilience like all good practice begins at
home with us, so we can fairly assume that, in the post-pandemic era, we will
become collectively more aware of the importance of our own physical and mental
resilience. The desire, driven by greater necessity, to feel physically and
mentally well and the need to strengthen our immune system mean that well-being
and those sectors of the wellness industry positioned to help deliver them will
emerge as strong winners. Also, the role of public health will evolve and expand.
Well-being has to be addressed holistically; we cannot be individually well in
a world that is unwell. Therefore, planetary care will be as important as personal
care, an equivalence that strongly supports the promotion of principles we
previously discussed, like stakeholder capitalism, the circular economy and ESG
strategies. At the company level where the health effects of environmental degradation
are increasingly clear, issues like air pollution, water management and respect
for biodiversity will become paramount. Being “clean” will be an industry
imperative as well as an imperious necessity imposed by the consumer.
If history is any guide, natural disasters, like hurricanes and
earthquakes, bring people together, while pandemics do the opposite: they drive
them apart. (...)By contrast, pandemics are longer-lasting, prolonged events
that often elicit ongoing feelings of distrust (vis-à-vis others) rooted in a
primal fear of dying. Psychologically, the most important consequence of the
pandemic is to generate a phenomenal amount of uncertainty that often becomes a
source of angst. We do not know what tomorrow will bring (Will there be another
wave of COVID-19? Will it affect people I love? Will I keep my job?) and such a
lack of surety makes us uneasy and troubled.
As human beings, we crave certainty, hence the need for “cognitive
closure”, anything that can help erase the uncertainty and ambiguity that paralyse
our ability to function “normally”.
[...]
Will COVID-19 result in people withdrawing into themselves, or will it
nourish their innate sense of empathy and collaboration, encouraging them
towards greater solidarity? The examples of previous pandemics are not very
encouraging, but this time there is a fundamental difference: we are all
collectively aware that without greater collaboration, we will be unable to
address the global challenges that we collectively face. Put in the simplest
possible terms: if, as human beings, we do not collaborate to confront our
existential challenges (the environment and the global governance free fall,
among others), we are doomed. Thus, we have no choice but to summon up the
better angels of our nature.
Like all notions of moral philosophy, the idea of common good is elusive and contestable. Since the
pandemic started, it has provoked
furious debates about whether to use a utilitarian calculus when trying to tame the pandemic or
to stick to the sacrosanct
principle of sanctity of life.
Nothing crystallizes the issue of ethical choice more than the debate
that raged during the initial lockdowns about the trade-off between public
health and the hit to growth. As we said earlier, almost all economists have
debunked the myth that sacrificing a few lives will save the economy but,
irrespective of these experts’ judgement, the debate and arguments went on. In
the US in particular but not exclusively, some policy-makers took the line that
it was justifiable to value the economy over life, endorsing a policy choice
that would have been unimaginable in Asia or Europe, where such pronouncements
would have been tantamount to committing political suicide. (This realization probably
explains UK Prime Minister Johnson’s hasty retreat from an initial policy
advocating herd immunity, often portrayed by experts and the media as an
example of social Darwinism). The prioritization of business over life has a
long tradition, running from the merchants of Siena during the Great Plague to
those of Hamburg who tried to conceal the cholera outbreak of 1892. However, it
seems almost incongruous that it would remain alive today, with all the medical
knowledge and scientific data we have at our disposal. The argument put forward
by some groups like “Americans for Prosperity” is that recessions kill people.
This, while undoubtedly true, is a fact that is itself rooted in policy choices
informed by ethical considerations. In the US, recessions do indeed kill a lot
of people because the absence or limited nature of any social safety net makes
them life-threatening. How? When people lose their jobs with no state support
and no health
insurance, they tend to “die of despair” through suicides, drug
overdoses and alcoholism, as shown and extensively analysed by Anne Case and
Angus Deaton. Economic recessions also provoke deaths
outside of the US, but policy choices in terms of health insurance and worker
protection can ensure that there are considerably fewer. This is ultimately a
moral choice about whether to prioritize the qualities of individualism or
those that favour the destiny of the community. It is an individual as well as
a collective choice (that can be expressed through elections), but the example
of the pandemic shows that highly individualistic societies are not very good
at expressing solidarity.
[...]
For years now, an epidemic of mental health has engulfed much of the
world. The pandemic has already made it worse and will continue to do so.
(...) For many people, traversing the COVID-19 pandemic will be defined
as living a personal trauma (...) For months, COVID-19 became almost the only
news, news that was inevitably almost exclusively bad. Relentless reports of
deaths, infectious cases and all the other things that might go wrong, together
with emotionally charged images, allowed our collective imaginations to run
riot in terms of worry about ourselves and our closest loved ones. Such an
alarming atmosphere had disastrous effects on our mental well-being.
Furthermore, media-amplified anxiety can be very contagious. (...) For many, an explosion of mental
problems occurred during the first months of the pandemic and will continue to
progress in the post-pandemic era.
[...]
Much has already been written about the way in which the pandemic might
change us –how we think about things and how we do
things. (...) COVID-19 may compel us to address our inner problems in ways we
would not have previously considered. We may start asking ourselves some
fundamental questions that would never have arisen without the crisis and the
lockdowns, and by doing so reset our mental map. (...) the pandemic provided an
opportunity to think more deeply about who we are, what really matters and what
we want, both as individuals and as a society. This period of enforced
collective reflection could give rise to a change in behaviour that will in
turn trigger a more profound reconsideration of our beliefs and convictions.
This could result in a shift in our priorities that would in turn affect our
approach to many aspects of our everyday lives: how we socialize, take care of
our family members and friends, exercise, manage our health, shop, educate our
children, and even how we see our position in the world. Increasingly, obvious
questions may come to the fore, like: Do we know what is important? Are we too
selfish and overfocused on ourselves? Do we give too great a priority and
excessive time to our career? Are we slaves to consumerism? In the
post-pandemic era, thanks to the pause for thought it offered some of us, our
responses may well have evolved as compared to what our pre-pandemic selves
might have answered. (...)The reset: in the
post-pandemic era, we might have a different appreciation of time,
pursuing it for greater happiness.
Neuroscientists, psychologists, medical doctors, biologists and microbiologists, specialists of physical
performance, economists, social
scientists: all in their respective fields can now explain why nature makes us feel good, how it eases
physical and psychological pain
and why it is associated with so many benefits in terms of physical and mental well-being. Conversely, they can
also show why being separated from
nature in all its richness and variety
– wildlife, trees, animals and plants –
negatively affects our minds,
our bodies, our emotional lives and our mental health.
Yet, two other essential factors that are strongly contingent upon our
exposure to nature also play a vital role in our physical resilience to the
virus: immunity and inflammation. Both contribute to protecting us, but
immunity decreases with age, while inflammation increases. To improve our
chances of resisting the virus, immunity must be boosted and inflammation
suppressed. What part does nature play in this scenario? She is the leading
lady, the science now tells us! The low-level of constant inflammation
experienced by our bodies leads to all sorts of diseases and disorders, ranging
from cardiovascular conditions to depression and reduced immune capabilities.
This residual inflammation is more prevalent among people who live in cities,
urban environments and industrialized areas. It is now established that a lack
of connection with nature is a contributing factor to greater inflammation,
with studies showing that just two hours spent in a forest can alleviate
inflammation by lowering cytokine levels (a marker of inflammation). (...)
Ample research shows that together with nature, diet and physical exercise can
slow, even sometimes reverse, our biological decline. There is nothing fatalistic
about it! Exercise, nature, unprocessed food...
[...]
Could the COVID-19 debacle be the lightning before the thunder? Could
it have the force to ignite a series of profound changes? We cannot know what
the world will be like in 10 months time, even less what it will resemble in 10
years from now, but what we do know is that unless we do something to reset
today’s world, tomorrow’s will be profoundly stricken. In Gabriel Garcia
Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold,
an entire village foresees a looming catastrophe, and yet none of the villagers
seem able or willing to act to prevent it, until it’s too late. We do not want
to be that village. To avoid such a fate, without delay we need to set in
motion the Great Reset. This is not a “nice-to-have” but an absolute necessity.
Failing to address and fix the deep-rooted ills of our societies and economies
could heighten the risk that, as throughout history, ultimately a reset will be
imposed by violent shocks like conflicts and even revolutions. It is incumbent
upon us to take the bull by the horns. The pandemic gives us this chance: it
“represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine and
reset our world”.
[...]
A very real risk exists that tomorrow the world will be even more divided,
nationalistic and prone to conflicts than it is today. Many of the trends
reviewed in the macro section suggest that, moving into the future, our world
will be less open and less cooperative than before the pandemic. But an
alternative scenario is possible, one in which collective action within
communities and greater
collaboration between nations enable a more rapid and peaceful exit
from the corona crisis. As economies restart, there is an opportunity to embed
greater societal equality and sustainability into the recovery, accelerating
rather than delaying progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
and unleashing a new era of prosperity. What could make this
possible and raise the probability odds in favour of such an outcome?
These expressions of individual hope are supported by a multitude of
surveys concluding that we collectively desire change. They range from a poll
in the UK showing that a majority of people want to fundamentally alter the
economy as it recovers, in contrast to one-fourth wanting it to return to how
it was, to international surveys finding that a large
majority of citizens around the world want the economic recovery from the
corona crisis to prioritize climate change and to support a green recovery. Worldwide,
movements demanding a “better future” and calling for a shift to an economic
system that prioritizes our collective well-being over mere GDP growth are
proliferating.”
