Defining Green Recovery; the new post-COVID Socio-economic paradigm
The post-COVID World presents an era with highly disrupted global economic and production systems. The pandemic has as well exposed the vulnerability of the global systems brought about and accelerated by anthropogenic influences; dominantly mounting enormous pressure on the use of natural resources; deemed as unsustainable.
Green recovery is a widely adopted name for a proposed package of environmental, regulatory and fiscal reforms to recover prosperity after the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been broad support from political actors, governments, activists and academia. In enactment of the global green recovery strategy, the immediate tasks of governments are primarily to address the health care crisis and a great deal of focus on economic growth that puts the sustainable interactions with natural components and resources at the center of focus.
In this context, the aims of the Paris Agreement; to keep the rise in global temperature below 2% and pursue efforts to keep it to 1.5% may appear an unnecessary distraction and seemingly draw less focus and attention. However, recent occurrences; most significantly the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent Australian wildfires, rises in the volume of both inland and offshore waters in most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa among other extreme weather events around the world vividly demonstrate that the adverse and devastating impacts of climate change can’t be ignored.
While the economic slowdown caused daily global greenhouse gas emissions to fall 17%¹ by early April, compared to last year’s average, they’re quickly rising again as economies reopen and get back to the norm. The world can ill-afford to achieve the much-needed economic growth by resuming the polluting ways of the past. Instead, we must see the pandemic as a one-off opportunity to bring radical change; making sure the economic recovery is rather sustainable and eco-friendly and considerate.
