AWC Going Dutch Jan Feb 2021

Lessons from COVID-19 Applied to
the Climate Crisis
by Karen Rudin (AWC Zurich) and Anne van Oorschot (AWC The Hague and FAWCO
Environment Co-Chair)
If you are anything like me, you are sick to
death of coronavirus and all the restrictions
and changes that accompany it!! There have
been so many changes and cancelled plans in
my family alone: one wedding postponed and
one cancelled, vacations and trips to the US
cancelled, no Thanksgiving with the whole
family around the table, a Christmas that was
sliced up into little pieces with our kids taking
turns coming over and meeting each other, and
worst of all: no hugs! I will never again take
hugging people for granted. When I remember
that Anne Frank spent 761 days confined in
an Amsterdam attic―no trips to the grocery
store, walks outside to enjoy nature, or ZOOM
calls with family and friends―I do feel like
an enormous whiner. However, for me and
the rest of us, being so limited in our activities
and movements is a big deal and a hardship. I
know these coronavirus restrictions will end
and do try to keep it in perspective. I am also
heartened to learn that even this crisis has a
bit of a silver lining. For whom you may ask?
Why for our planet.
The recent COVID-19 crisis was only a
couple of weeks old when the media began
reporting one unexpected positive effect:
worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were
markedly reduced and the atmosphere less
polluted as a result. As well as being good
news in itself, this was an inkling that the
coronavirus crisis and the climate crisis are
linked. Recognition of more linkages followed;
not only of causes and effects, but
also similarities between the two crises. Both
are global in scope and require international
cooperation and respect for scientific facts.
Both are unprecedented in the scope of disruption
they bring to society, and both require
coordinated efforts and long-term thinking
on the part of politicians, scientists, the business
world and society itself for their solution.
Climate change threatens broad natural
and human systems, among them health
networks. As was noted in The Economist,
“Following the pandemic is like watching the
climate crisis with your finger jammed on the
fast-forward button.” (The Economist, May
21, 2020)
As time went on, another parallel became evident.
It is the poor and the disadvantaged who
have been hardest hit by the coronavirus, and
it is just those who will suffer the most as the
climate crisis continues to unfold. We began
to see that this virus isn’t just a health issue
and, of course, the climate crisis doesn’t just
affect the environment. The climate crisis can
be seen as the major public health threat of
our time. Both are going to require broader
and more fundamental changes if they are to
be mitigated.
At this point we should look at another cause
and effect relationship: a deep lack of respect
for nature and its part in causing coronavirus
devastation and environmental destruction.
We pave over, build, cut back and generally
encroach on wilderness, so that animals in
the wild increasingly lose their habitats and
move closer to our habitats. It is inevitable
that zoonoses, diseases that can be transmitted
from animals to humans, are on the rise,
among them COVID-19.
As we dug deeper into the coronavirus crisis,
all sorts of cascading effects became clear.
The most obvious was economic disruption,
all the way from soaring unemployment to
the threat of worldwide recession. The immediate
worry was the enormous cost of imposing
lockdowns; would they prove disastrous
to the economy? It took a few cost-benefit
analyses to answer that no, drastic action
at the beginning would in fact be worth the
costs, economically as well as socially. In a
world where the enormous cost of fighting
climate change is often touted as a reason to
do nothing, it was fervently hoped that business
and political leaders would get the parallel
message that spending now would lead to
clean air and green jobs later.
Having taken a deep breath and pledged
millions to prevent coronavirus deaths, has
society experienced any other positive effects
of the various lockdowns? Yes, indeed.
Economic aid on a huge scale became necessary
to prevent social disaster, and voices
were loud and clear in all sectors of society
that this aid presents an excellent chance to
create a new green deal. A petition introduced
by Greenpeace, for example, sees coronavirus-related
economic aid being part of the
European Green New Deal (www.greenpeace.
org/eu-unit/issues/democracy-europe/2780/
seize-the-moment-to-deliver-a-green-economic-transformation-says-greenpeacefirst-hologram-march-in-the-europeancapital).
Seventeen European Climate and
Environment Ministers have asked the
European Commission to put the Green Deal
at the heart of the recovery after the pandemic.
Hundreds of companies globally have
signed open letters to world leaders, requesting
the assurance that economic stimulus
packages will be applied to the impacts of the
coronavirus and the climate crisis.
Has the pandemic shown us other behaviors
that we would like to see continue? A few
practical ones come to mind: less travel and
consumption, mutual help and social solidarity,
appreciation of nature, greater respect
for healthcare workers, and greater interest
in healthy food and its origins and processing.
On the social scene, young people have
recently been the source of information and
action demanding climate change with the
same gravity as their elders now feel about
COVID-19, perhaps making mutual understanding
and cooperation possible.
COVID-19 has thrown a glaring spotlight
on social inequalities, most notably the need
for universal health coverage. Various international
human rights agreements make it
mandatory for countries to protect their citizens’
right to health, and the Paris Agreement
draws a connection between action on climate
change and promotion of the right to health.
Perhaps most heartening is the fact that,
“If COVID-19 is a precautionary tale, it is
also a crash course in the possible” (World
Economic Forum, June 9, 2020). Our worldwide
community has acted to work through
the crisis, showing that all aspects of society,
from the individual to governments, can pitch
in and make radical changes to behavior. One
hopes that this cooperation and determination
can coalesce into the resoluteness to
make the fundamental changes necessary to
face the huge challenges of the climate crisis.
20 GOING DUTCH
JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 21