Coronavirus, wildfires, and climate change
The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the fragility of priorities. Governments have sought to limit the spread of the virus through lockdowns and travel restrictions, which have stalled economies and created recession. This has spurred the confusion of priorities.
With shifting weather patterns and loss of intact ecosystems and biodiversity, COVID-19 is a threat multiplier. Just as policymakers address the short-term effects of greenhouse gases and fossil fuels, governments have scrambled to address the immediate health and economic consequences of the virus, while overlooking broader security risks.
In mid 2021, wildfires in Mediterranean regions namely Greece and Turkey had displaced thousands of people. Based on the report from Financial Times, The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted the Mediterranean region will face more extreme heat.
The ominous consequences don’t stop there. As with climate change, the pandemic’s destruction of livelihoods will reduce the opportunity costs of resorting to violence or may even create economic incentives to heighten the risk of conflict. The potential for violence is especially high in fragmented political systems, within communities that have a history of conflict, and among the politically marginalized. Governments’ irresponsible handling of the COVID-19 crisis, strains relations with citizens and leads to increased public concern and dissatisfaction.
It would not be surprising for tensions to culminate in civil unrest on a broader level, given situations where food and water shortages, triggered by the state’s failure to adapt to climate-related setbacks, have fueled social upheaval. There is also a serious risk that official mismanagement of the public-health crisis will marginalize populations even more and increase tensions along geographical, ethnic, or sectarian lines. Likewise, people nursing grievances against their governments may exploit the pandemic to undermine the state’s authority. As with climate change, political elites aiming to mobilize support or conceal shortcomings can manipulate the crisis by scapegoating, which may cause more severe forms of violence.
That includes pursuing rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes to limit global warming and strengthen our collective response to the threats it poses. The world may now be more receptive to such reforms. We have no choice. While we may be able to manage the COVID-19 pandemic with social distancing, new antiviral drugs, and eventually, one hopes, a vaccine, climate change represents an even larger existential threat, because its effects have no defined treatment or lifespan. There may be a reset button for the post-pandemic global economy, but there is none for the planet on which it depends.
