Two global public ills

Both COVID19 and climate change require simultaneous and forceful collective action

Below we present the editorial of the book entitled: "The climate change emergency in Latin America and the Caribbean: are we still waiting for catastrophe or are we taking action? This publication has also received financial support from the EUROCLIMA+ programme.

In March 2020, the COVID 19 health crisis erupted, highlighting what it means, as in the case of the climate emergency, to have a global public ill - a pandemic - break out, with repercussions across the entire planet and requiring simultaneous and forceful collective action.

To tackle it, two fronts were aligned; the health front, to flatten the exponential growth of the frequency curve of cases over time to prevent the response capacity of public health systems from being exceeded. The second was a socio-economic front to reduce the effects of the severe recession currently underway, which is undermining people's income and the productive fabric.

As with global warming, inaction in the pandemic also has costs. After indecision in many countries, the will to act and the sense of urgency prevailed. Thus, many governments have committed significant fiscal and lending efforts to sustain employment, maintain the income of informal workers and sustain the economic viability of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. In both the environmental crisis and the pandemic, governments and countries are faced with situations where solving the problem involves enormous costs, while fiscal resources tend to fall because of the suspension or decline of important economic activities such as air transport or tourism.

Efforts have been heterogeneous given the very different economic conditions and fiscal space prevailing in national realities. Few countries in Latin America and the Caribbean had solid foundations for responding to the pandemic, as public health policies had lagged behind. Moreover, average health spending was barely 2.2 per cent of GDP compared to the WHO recommendation of 6 percent. Despite these structural failures, the response is led by governments in a situation where markets cannot solve the emergency due to their failure to generate adequate supplies of public goods, in a context of excessive commodification of health services and inputs. (For an in-depth analysis, see ECLAC, Special Report COVID-19, No. 1, 3 April 2020).

COVID

It is not only in terms of the costs of action or inaction that the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency can be compared. In the former, a sense of urgency and political decisiveness prevailed. In the climate emergency, not yet. In the pandemic, the human and financial resources devoted to mitigation are significant; in the climate emergency they are far from being so. In the climate emergency, government leadership has a long way to go as markets pile pressure on the global climate system. It continues to act as if these pressures do not exist, and they will, perhaps more slowly, but necessarily spread through economic and social systems as has happened with the pandemic. As we know, the next climate crisis will cost much more if we do not do what is necessary. Both the pandemic and climate crises make us recognise the value of public goods and services as insurance against greater evils, while they are also insurance against inequality in access to those services. The pandemic thus forces us to rethink the strategic value of public goods and the need for effective governance.

When the end of the pandemic arrives due to immunity, the economic and employment recovery is expected to be not too far away and its pace is expected to be strong. In the case of climate change, the exponential curve will only go up, with no foreseeable reversal even in the medium and long term. In the climate emergency, there is so far no immunity to the predatory behaviour of the human species fuelled by the exploitation of fossil fuels. Unless such behaviour is given a high political and economic cost, we will not be able to stop the upward curve of the climate emergency.

SOURCE: this article is part of the preface of the book entitled "The climate change emergency in Latin America and the Caribbean: are we still waiting for catastrophe or are we taking action?", authored by Alicia Bácena, Joseluis Samaniego, Wilson Peres and José Eduardo Alatorre.

 

NOTE: This publication was made possible thanks to the information accumulated over the last 10 years that has been produced largely by the processes driven by EUROCLIMA in its early stages and by the actions that EUROCLIMA+, the European Union's flagship programme on environmental sustainability and climate change with Latin America, continues to foster now.

 

 

Euroclima is the European Union's flagship programme on environmental sustainability and climate change with Latin America. It aims to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects in Latin America by promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation through resilience and investment. 
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