Covid-19, Climate Change, Poverty and Corruption: Quest for Nature Friendly Lives and Livelihoods

The unique nature of Covid-19 crisis have been blessings to build lives and nature friendly green planet. Strategic policy responses should be designed internalizing the effective governance to pursue both short and long-term benefits to achieve both the global resilience to climate change as well as reducing the risks of the pandemic.

Covid-19 is just not like a virus that posed the world too unstable to predict the future direction in post Covid-19 world. Coincidentally, theme of the World Environment Day 2020 have focused on urgency of conserving the nature. Ahead of the WED, the UNSG António Guterres stressed that “nature is sending us a clear message. We are harming the natural world, to our own detriment. Habitat degradation and biodiversity loss were accelerating, climate disruption is getting worse. To care for humanity, and we must care for nature.”

As we know that biodiversity plays a notable role in maintaining the natural balance of life on earth, including the provision of materials necessary for life and human development. Worth to mention that to conserve biodiversity, the Sustainable Development Goals 14 and 15 have emphasized the sustainable use as well as the conservation of the biodiversity, prevention of desertification by curbing the deforestation, and prevention of environmental pollution through the reduction of land degradation. Those negative factors are contributing significantly to men-made global climate change across the planet as well. With that background considering the “common but differentiated responsibilities” principle  affirmed in the UNFCCC, SDG 13 have dedicated to tackle the climate change by effective climate adaptation and mitigation with the financial and technical resources from the polluter countries. The Paris Agreement on climate change have paved the path for meaningful and committed efforts of both polluters and victims of the pollution for joint efforts to reduce the negative outcomes of extreme events caused by the unabated consumption driven profiteering economy.

Covid-19, Conservation of the Nature and Potential Risks 

“At least 70 per cent of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, are crossing from the wild, to people, and transformative actions are urgently required to protect environment and human rights. Countries should take urgent action to protect the environment and stop climate disruption, biodiversity loss, toxic pollution and diseases that jump from animals to humans”, claimed by David Boyd, the independent UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, ahead of WED 2020 as the global community is struggling to control the ubiquitous COVID-19 health crisis. However, with the population doubling over the past 50 years, and the global economy extended fourfold over the same period, the elusive balance of nature has been disrupted and in some extent damaged as well, created the favorable conditions for spreading pathogens, such as COVID-19.

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) identified nearly one million animal and plant species are believed to be on the brink of extinction over the past few decades.

In a short, lives of ordinary people are in danger due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic caused by the deforestation, indiscriminate destruction of wildlife habitat, natural disasters, and locust invasions. 

For centuries, forests have been serving as source of nature-based solutions especially the reliable safety nets for the poor and forest dependent community, although since 2000 reliance of the poor communities on forests have been reduced due to uplift of the economic well-being (Wunder et al. 2014). Around 2.4 billion people – one-third of the world’s population – still rely on wood fuel to meet their basic energy needs, such as cooking food, boiling water and heating their homes. Wood fuel, which includes both fuel wood and charcoal, remains one of the most affordable and accessible energy sources for people affected by natural disasters and humanitarian crises. However, forests and wildlife are in danger due to indiscriminate deforestation around the world and hence the current environment and public health of the world is under serious threat. According to Global Forest Watch and the UNEP, it is time to reconsider the relationship between nature and humans and prioritise the conservation of the environment and biodiversity at the core of all activities. 

Among 850 million people who are engaged in fuel wood collection or charcoal production, 83 per cent are women (FAO, 2018).

Amongst the extreme poor in rural areas, around 40 per cent live in the forest and savannah areas and forest products provide food, income, and nutritional diversity for about 20 per cent or one-fifth of the global population, especially women, children, landless farmers and other vulnerable people of the society (FAO, 2018). Many indigenous peoples have a deep cultural and spiritual relationship with ancestral forests and are the keepers of traditional knowledge on forest biodiversity, much of which is at risk of being lost (FAO/UNEP, 2020). But Indigenous peoples tend to be in the most “vulnerable” health category, due to higher rates of communicable and non-communicable diseases, high mortality rates and lower life expectancies (UN DESA, 2020).

On the other hand, the sharp increase in economic vulnerability of the people of the adversely affected countries will in turn increase pressure on the natural resources. Reliance on forest biomass energy will likely grow during the COVID-19 crisis, as supply chains get disrupted, and income-generating opportunities decrease. Moreover, both the inward migration from the rural to city as well as outward migration of the jobless people of the informal sector will likely swell at an alarming rate and millions grapple with the sudden loss of income and food insecurity due to COVID-19. However, they are coping with the pandemic by retreating deeper into forests for food, fuel and shelter, and to protect themselves from the risk of COVID-19 infection (Anderson, 2020).

Due to climatic changes in the planet frequency of the extreme weather events especially natural disasters like cyclone, flood, tidal surge, etc. have been increased in recent times due to climate change and it is clearly pointing out that what we mean by the ecosystem is almost on the verge of destruction. Besides, recent invasion of locust swarms in different places on the earth has reduced crop production to zero. Climate change results in excessive rainfall in tropical regions which is playing as a helpful role in the breeding of locusts. Climate change and the extinction of endangered species of birds, frogs, snails etc. are acting as a major regulator of such global spread of pests. Scientists said that infectious diseases and viruses can spread easily due to the destruction of biodiversity and their habitat. Every year about one billion people are affected by various types of zoonoses and millions of people are dying. About 80 percent of all infectious diseases and 75 percent of newly developed infectious diseases are of a zoonotic nature. Scientists predict that if humans do not change their behavior towards wildlife and their habitat, the outbreak of this type of viruses will increase in the future. The Covid-19 pandemic has reaffirmed to mankind that human health is intertwined with the health of the world and these viruses are zoonotic or they can be transmitted from animals to humans.

It is evident that the global economic meltdown due to the pandemic will certainly increase the global poverty.

Recent analysis indicates that COVID-19 related loss of jobs and income will likely push 34.3 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020 and in the worst-case scenario, 160 million more people could face extreme poverty by 2030 (UN 2020b). 

Moreover, more than 570 coastal cities could be affected by sea level rise by 2050 and as many as 1 billion people could be displaced by environmental hazards — primarily sea level rise and natural disasters. Displacement can push a person into poverty by stripping them of their home, profession, and networks. An estimated 100 million people living in developing countries could be pushed into poverty by climate change by 2030. 

Along with the cyclical poverty, both Covid-19 and climate change have made the global poverty situation have posed in real danger. Unfortunately, either recovery from Covid-19 or climate change related poverty syndrome have been critical due to poor governance or perverse corruption in using limited resources.  Altogether have detrimental effects to achieve the SDG targets, particularly the country which are vulnerable to climate change, Covid-19 and corruption simultaneously. Citizens must be more responsible in protecting and implementing the commitments in protection of nature, biodiversity and environment in order to live on the earth. 

Covid-19 and Climate Finance: Opportunity for Green Recovery or Debt-Trap

Reality is that due to Covid-19 majority countries especially industrialized nations are economically in immense pressure. However, the Covid-19 also affected most of the fragile economic and social condition of the developing and LDCs. Of the estimated 897 million people of the earth living in extreme poverty (PPP$1.90/day, 2012), around half (46%) are located in climate vulnerable countries and lack of adaptive capacity that is increasing the potential for adverse impacts. Though the LDCs are obliged to access the grant based resources, but we are observing keenly to address both the Covid-19 and climate change these countries are heavily relying on foreign loan and according to the Global Climate risk Index 2018) received only around 7% of total adaptation finance. The 10 most vulnerable countries including Bangladesh have received only $1.3 billion from the Global Climate Fund (GCF). From the allocation of the GCF around 41% of total funding was the loan. That is contradictory to the “Polluters-Pay-Principle” of the UNFCCC.

The unique nature of Covid-19 crisis have been blessings to build lives and nature friendly green planet. Strategic policy responses should be designed internalizing the effective governance to pursue both short and long-term benefits to achieve both the global resilience to climate change as well as reducing the risks of the pandemic. Time is now to go beyond the business-as-usual in all spheres of economic interventions, what sustainable development defined. These could be ensured by several means such as to include a big expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, bus and bike lanes, electricity transmission and distribution systems, water and sanitation service coverage, or making neighborhoods more livable, ambient environment and less energy intensive. If policymakers could able to intervene properly, timely and efficiently by equitable governance, the response to COVID-19 may not only minimize pain and suffering now, but can also build the solid or sustainable foundation for a greener, safer, and prosperous future of the planet earth is its future inhabitants.