On 12 December, as 2020 was drawing to a close, UN Secretary General, António Guterres, called on governments around the world to declare a state of climate emergency until the world has reached net zero CO2 emissions. Guterres posed the question at the Climate Ambition Summit, “Can anybody still deny that we are facing a dramatic emergency?”
The plain answer is no.
38 countries have declared such a state of emergency, however many others, G20 countries, Guterres noted were “spending 50% more in their stimulus packages on fossil fuels and CO2-intensive sectors than they were on low-CO2 energy” as governments strive to recover from the pandemic and its accompanying recession.
In October 2020, the World Bank released Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune, highlighting the convergence of three forces- a pandemic and its associated global economic downturn, armed conflict and climate change- and its impoverishing impact. Undeniably, the “dramatic emergency” in our fragmented world is not confined to a climate crisis. The long list is growing and interwoven including a profound global crisis of trust on leaders and institutions including media and technology giants.
A few days after Guterres’ speech at the Climate Ambition Summit, UNDP launched, The Human Development Report 2020: The Next Frontier. Human Development and the Anthropocene. Alongside ending 2020 in a “state of emergency,” scientists have proposed as the report highlights that we are entering a new ecological epoch- the Anthropocene- where we are the “first people to live in an age defined by human choice, in which the dominant risk to our survival is ourselves.”
The Human Development Index was conceptualised thirty years ago to challenge the primacy of growth and GDP as the measure of progress. Today, the report calls for “nothing short of a great transformation- in how we live, work and cooperate…” unequivocally indicating that not much has changed since 1990. In the first report, economist Mahbub ul Haq wrote, “People are the real wealth of a nation. The basic objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. This may appear to be a simple truth. But it is often forgotten in the immediate concern with the accumulation of commodities and financial wealth.” The last 30 years have forgotten, evidenced by the “inequalities within and between countries, with deep roots in colonialism and rascism, means that people who have more capture the benefits of nature and export the costs” (https://reliefweb.int/report/world/human-development-report-2020-next-frontier-human-development-and-anthropocene). The report also makes a correlation between planetary and social imbalances, arguing that these imbalances exacerbate each other. The report’s lead author, Pedro Conceição, argues that “How people experience planetary pressures is tied to how societies work….The next frontier for human development is not about choosing between people or trees; it’s about recognising, today, that human progress driven by unequal, carbon-intensive growth has run its course.”
Indeed, 2020 has exposed structural inequalities in a way that has gained more traction in grabbing people’s attention. But it is one thing to acknowledge and another to wrestle with the inconvenient truth. And the burden of such a reckoning must not be transferred to “the people” without confronting certain power dynamics.
A few days ago, a friend shared with me Panthea Lee’s Towards a Politics of Solidarity and Joy. It was more than a good read; her reflections resonated with me as I engaged with my own. I couldn’t agree with her more when she says that “… we cannot let justice hinge on individual decisions and acts, we must embed it within fundamental structures and norms.” It led me to reflect further on the work I have dedicated myself to in the last 20 years or so accompanying women, men and communities in engaging constructively with governance, choosing to address the differential impact of conflict and the climate crisis on people and communities, probing if institutions are fit for purpose, exacting accountability from decision makers and political leaders, amplifying the voices of women, believing in the power of creative expression for social transformation and embracing a systems and critical intersectional thinking in governance and policy making, among others. Each time I ponder this in the midst of turbulence, I can’t help doubt the possibility of a fair future, yet I am buoyed by the conviction that we must persist with the work to secure an inclusive and just world because it is the right thing to do, even as the process of change is incremental and arduous.
If indeed we are entering a new epoch, one of the questions posed by the Human Development Report 2020 is, “what do we do with this new age?” Panthea Lee lent words to a re-imagination, to shifting the path of transformation:
“Our visionary artists and writers, with their gift of radical imagination, can help us see beyond our current realities. Our bravest activists, with their unwavering moral clarity, can help us set the bar for solutions that protect and nurture our humanity. Our most creative community groups, with their powers of loving generosity, can help us map out how to implement radical alternatives… from there, our think tanks and researchers, with their intellect rigour, can help us define paths to seizing this future. And “powerful”institutions, with their infrastructure and resources, can then set policies and organise markets to realise these agendas.’
A new epoch, a state of emergency, a global crisis of multifaceted dimensions, all call for audacity. Our fragmented world requires defiant hope and justice. If indeed the dominant risk of humanity’s survival is humanity itself, then the system of excessive accumulation, ecological unequal exchange, the culture of impunity, structural inequality and systemic oppression must end. We can’t afford to keep the status quo.
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