Let’s Not Wait for Covid-20 to Do the Right Thing

By: Eric Ini

Covid-19 has shut down the social and economic life of the entire world. Stock prices are down, interest rates are down, schools are suspended, and movement across the globe is restricted. Humanity seems helpless. Even the best public health systems, like those in the North of Italy, are failing.

The most widely affected countries are superpowers – along with Italy, the top of the list includes China, the USA, Germany, France, and Spain. But even the biggest powers cannot threaten the microscopic virus with nuclear weapons or discipline it with economic sanctions. Coronavirus knows no super power and respects none.

In China, where the virus was first discovered, manufacturing and services sectors plunged to a record low in February, automobile sales sank a record 80% and exports fell 17.2% in the past two months. Japan and the European Union are likely rushing into a recession. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicted that COVID-19 will lower global GDP growth by one-half of a percentage point for 2020 (from 2.9 to 2.4 percent); Bloomberg Economics warns that full-year GDP growth could fall to zero in a worst-case pandemic scenario.

Coronaviruses (CoV) are generally zoonotic diseases, meaning they are transmitted between animals and humans. They are part of a large family of viruses that cause illness, ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). The new strain of coronavirus disease (also known as COVID-19) is a strain that was discovered in 2019 and had not been previously identified in humans.

If Covid-19 will finally be confirmed as having originated from a zoonotic disease, it might have originated from forests in China that are not so different from those I grew up next to in Cameroon. In pristine forests, wildlife is often poached and consumed by local communities and Indigenous People as a vital and possibly only source of protein. In the decades that followed my childhood, such forests have become ever more accessible through logging, mining and road building, bringing more people in close contact with such animals as rodents, pangolins, and monkeys. This new reality is exacerbating the first mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs—and significantly increases the risk of exposing humans to viruses for which they have no immunity, and therefore the risk of pandemics.

If Covid-19 will finally be confirmed as having originated from a zoonotic disease, it will be a painful wake-up call to the high-income countries, which are also responsible for the planet’s highest outputs of pollution, highest-emissions of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and highest rates of deforestation.

Those countries have operated under the assumption that whatever the impacts of climate change caused by their economies, they will have the resources and capabilities to contain the impacts. They even have a new buzzword for it - “climate adaptation”.

For many high-income countries, it has been comfortable to believe that mostly poorer and so-calleddeveloping nations like mine will carry the burden: "we will adapt, and would also support them (people like me, E.I.) with aid payments." Who knows, maybe they will even pledge to plant a trillion trees to offset their emissions? Well, the coronavirus might be the proof that this wishful selfish thinking-- that rich countries can simply open their wallets and make global problems go away, or at least protect their own comfortable quality of life-- simply doesn’t have a chance.

Covid-19, the specific strain of Coronavirus that is causing so much misery now, can and most likely will be ultimately defeated. There are important preventive measures like social distancing and washing hands and the world’s leading scientists are united in finding a vaccine.

However, if Covid-19 comes from the wildlife that was until a few decades ago only to be found far from large population centers, that means the pandemic is actually just a symptom of a larger problem. Deforestation and the use of fossil fuels are drivers of climate change. The impact of climate change could make the relatively brief impacts we can expect from Covid-19—grounding aircraft, crashing the stock markets, crushing small business and suspending social and economic life—seem like minor mishaps. The impacts of climate change will be far more severe, and far longer lasting.

As governments prepare recovery plans, they should take this opportunity not just to stimulate the economy, but to move from the past. We should be forward looking, increasing investments in sectors like renewable energy that could help not just by providing jobs and revenue, but by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the risk of harm from future climate crises.

The coronavirus may end up sparking the systemic shift we need through very tragic circumstances, which countless peaceful marches for the planet did not. Super powers and low-income countries are all in this together. We are all in this together. Let’s move to 100% renewable energy. Let’s move towards protecting our forests, wildlife and biodiversity. Let’s not wait for Covid-20 to do the right thing to ensure a better future for everyone.

Eric Ini received an LLM in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School in 2011. He has worked for Greenpeace in the Congo Basin  since 2014, and is currently on sabbatical from his position as Senior Forest Campaigner.

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