June 2020

“To vitally support the developing world at the present moment, is not a matter of generosity, it’s a matter of enlightened self-interest.” António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

The United Nations will turn 75 years old on 24 October this year. For the past 75 years, it has been tasked with serving the world’s population and alleviating hunger, disease and poverty. The current pandemic has brought the world to its knees, but especially in the economic and healthcare fields. While scientists are racing to find a vaccine against Covid-19 many of the UN agencies are desperate to prevent the collateral damage of the crisis, including a pandemic-induced food emergency, which will hit the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. Two UN agencies that face great challenges at this time are the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). While the WHO is dealing with the pandemic itself, in addition to treating and preventing the many other communicable and non-communicable diseases in the world, the WFP is faced with logistical challenges on how to continue to reach the millions of people who rely on it for food each year.

The WFP, responsible for alleviating hunger and malnutrition in the world, currently assists over 100 million people in 83 countries, including 30 million people who depend on the organization just to stay alive. Like all UN agencies, it relies on member state donations to operate, with the US and Germany being its two most generous donors. Before the pandemic, appallingly, 1 in 9 people in the world already did not have enough food to eat – that is roughly 821 million people. However, the pandemic has made an intolerable situation even worse and has exacerbated already existing inequalities.

The Executive Director of the WFP, David Beasley, told the UN Security Council in April 2020, that the world is now at risk of facing “multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months” because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and that in order to avoid this catastrophe urgent action is needed. Beasley – who himself had contracted and recovered from Covid-19 – said that “an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people”.

While the entire world lives in fear of the coronavirus pandemic, many comments abound about its origin, on social networks and even the mainstream media.

Some claim that the new 5G technology for smartphones is responsible for weakening our immune system. Those who promote that theory never miss an opportunity to point out that Wuhan, the apparent origin of the virus, was the first place in the world where 5G was intensively developed and tested near the Institute of Virology in the same city.

Others see the connection with the poor pangolin, hunted and sold for food in Chinese markets, as a symbol of nature’s revenge, and the animal kingdom in particular, on uncaring human beings.

Many other theories and ‘explanations’ have been circulating wildly. But one thing that our governments will certainly do their utmost to hide from public opinion and awareness is the unpreparedness of our healthcare systems. It is not only that this pandemic was not expected by both governments and the scientific community but also the fact they should have known, since previous epidemics such as SARS, H1N1 and others had shown that such an occurrence could actually break out unexpectedly.

Above all, what is striking is that we have lost the capacity to face such situations in the so-called developed countries and economies. And the precise reason for this has nothing to do with science or with 5G or the pangolin. It is rooted in our politics.

The example of France is significant in this respect. In 2000, France was ranked first by the World Health Organization (WHO) for its healthcare system. Since then, regular cuts in the healthcare budgets have been made by successive governments, in order to comply with the General Orientations of Economic Policy (GOEP) enacted by the European Commission. Thousands of beds were removed and complete hospitals and maternity centres were literally closed in the name of ‘good governance’.

We could call this ‘good governance’ or we could call it ‘austerity’ but, whatever the descriptor, the fact remains and the result is clear: the French healthcare system has been significantly reduced in the last 20 years. So much so that now France is hardly ranked among the first ten countries in Europe for healthcare.

Before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, medical staff took to the streets and triggered strikes, in order to protest against their desperate situation, the lack of personnel and adequate equipment. They had warned the government that they were exhausted and that the system was on the verge of a collapse. Congested accident and emergency departments in hospitals across the country were a dramatic symbol of the problem.

Cutting medical service to pay off debts

When he was elected President, Emmanuel Macron, a so-called convinced ‘liberal’, had already designed a programme intended for a €15 billion saving on health insurance. That, inevitably, meant more budget cuts to the healthcare system.

According to French economist Thomas Porcher, member of ‘Les économistes atterrés’ [literally, ‘The Appalled Economists’; an association created by economists in order to “resist the neoliberal orthodoxy”] nearly 20,000 hospital beds have therefore been removed in the last ten years.

In the case of Italy, the country ‘saved’ €20 billion of social ‘expenses’ and closed 70,000 hospital beds in ten years, Porcher says.

Successive Conservative governments in the UK have implemented a policy of ‘austerity’, with real-term cuts to health and social care.

Implicit in the GOEP is the underlying obligation to give priority to national debt repayment rather than social welfare. By cutting its health expenses, Italy clearly preserved its capacity to borrow money on the financial markets. It is not by chance that Italy, Spain, France, and the UK are four of the European countries hardest hit by the coronavirus.

Today we are all experiencing one or more of the negative effects of an incredibly destructive ‘agent of change’. Truth be told, horrific things happen every day on this planet, but they usually affect other people in other places. Covid-19, on the other hand, has the potential to reach anyone, anywhere, and our lives have been upended in a multitude of ways. The obvious questions — how do we stop this virus, how can we protect ourselves from a resurgence, will we be able to resurrect the global economy, what happens if our jobs can’t be restored — are all unknowns. They occupy our thoughts and emotions daily, hourly, with every newscast or twitter feed.

For some, the crisis is merely an inconvenient interruption in their ‘business as usual’. For some it has increased their already staggering profits or created new ways to capitalize at the expense of others. But for most of the other billions of people on the planet it is a radically amplified survival issue.

From both scientific and spiritual perspectives, we know that nothing happens by chance: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” and “As you sow, so shall you reap.” What is happening today has its roots in everything that has gone before, and when the tension reaches a tipping point, something extraordinary happens to get our attention. This pandemic may be saying “STOP … NOW … look at the world you have built … untold suffering amidst obscene excess … all life forms and the planet itself in mortal danger.” The winding down and isolation are giving us the opportunity to think about these issues deeply and come out of it with a better Plan B.

That so many people are actually getting the message is a very hopeful sign. Neighbors are helping with each other’s daily needs; service organizations are expanding their roles and methods to accommodate a rapidly increasing clientele; advocacy groups are fighting hard on behalf of the environment, human rights, social justice and many more crucial issues; scientific organizations around the world are sharing their findings in an effort to develop both treatments and vaccines; governments are trying to lift the financial burden of their citizens.

What would happen if this behavior were to continue on an even bigger scale after the coronavirus is subdued? Could it not eventually lead to treating a recovering planet as a ‘global village’ and its citizens as the one human family it truly is? It would take time, but it has to start with the recognition of our interdependence and demanding of our ‘leaders’ that we all push the ‘reset’ button and begin to move in this direction!

Graeme Maxton is an economist, lecturer and best-selling author. He was Secretary General of the Club of Rome from 2014 to 2018. His latest book, Globaler Klimanotstand (Global Climate Emergency), was published in 2020. He is deeply critical of modern economic thinking and writes urgently about the need for fundamental change. His 2018 book Change! Warum wir eine radikale Wende brauchen (Why we need a radical turnaround) was a number one Amazon best-seller in Germany. Felicity Eliot interviewed him in early April at a very intense time of the lockdown.

SI: What strange times we find ourselves in!

Graeme Maxton: Indeed, but it is one of those things which I suppose has been expected in some form and, of course, the more we push against the boundaries of nature the more likely it is that such a thing is going to happen. But, awful as it is in terms of human lives lost and misery, it’s the first thing that’s given me hope in a long time.

SI: Despite all the suffering, many seem to be hopeful, sensing that there are possibilities within the present bizarre time of plague. One thing is clear — we can’t go back to business as usual. Do I understand you to mean that you think most change advocated isn’t radical enough?

GM: The idea that you can just make slight modifications to the way we do things, the way we live, recycle more and cut the number of flights you take is not going to achieve anything like the cut in emission levels needed. But suddenly it seems possible! We can stop all the flights. We can stop all those cars, all those ships carrying all sorts of stuff that we don’t need all around the world. And now suddenly that radical thing is being shown to have happened. So suddenly what seemed a fanciful idea can happen. And this has given people like me a tremendous opportunity to say: look we can do it! For the first time in a very long time I feel optimistic because we can see that we can actually solve the climate problem.

SI: Some are still in denial about climate change, including some prominent leaders. Could you say how it is that our financial and economic systems clash with the environment and have resulted in much destruction of the planet?

GM: We have this economic system where we try and grow the economy every year. There’s great focus on economic growth, but to achieve growth we have to increase production. To increase production we have to use more resources. And we have to use more energy, since to do all these things needs energy. To dig up all those resources and to generate the energy required for the factories, the ships, all the things that are required to grow food as well, for example, to create all that energy is mostly based on carbon. And that means coal, oil and gas. So every year we have to create more stuff which means we have to generate more energy which creates more emissions and so we create climate change. It is the push for increased productivity and more economic growth that is the direct cause of climate change.

On this May Day in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which up to now has infected over 3.19 million and killed over 228,000, let us not forget that we are also facing the Pandemic of Hunger as well as that of the Destruction of Livelihoods. The World Food Programme tells us of the looming “hunger pandemic” which has the potential to engulf over a quarter of a billion people whose lives and livelihoods will be plunged into immediate danger. It tells us that more than a million people are on the verge of starvation, and 300,000 could starve to death every single day for the next three months.

The ILO [International Labour Association] informs us that as a result of the economic crisis created by the pandemic almost 1.6 billion informal economy workers, the most vulnerable in the labour market, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. The Agency tells us: “For millions of workers, no income means no food, no security and no future.

…

As the pandemic and the jobs crises evolve, the need to protect the most vulnerable becomes even more urgent.”

All three pandemics have their roots in an economic model based on profits, greed and extractivism, which has accelerated ecological destruction, aggravated loss of livelihoods, increased economic inequality, and polarised and divided society into the 1% and 99%. In these times of the Corona Crisis let us imagine and create new economies based on Earth Democracy and Economic Democracy to protect the earth and humanity. Let us address all three crises through democratic participation and solidarity and let us take action to participate in shaping future economies to ensure no hands are without work, no person is without a voice.

These three crises are a clear message that the economy run by the 1% is not working for people and nature. The 1% is talking of 99% being “useless people”, based on the future they envisage of digital agriculture and farming without farmers, automated factories and production without workers. There are no disposable or useless people. As citizens of the Earth we have an obligation to create economies that do not destroy nature and create hunger, do not destroy livelihoods and freedom, dignity and right to work, and that do not destroy our health by spreading disease and pandemics.

…

Post Covid-19, let us regenerate the economy and consciously become aware that all lives are equal, that we are part of the Earth, that work is our right and is at the heart of being human. In the midst of the coronavirus, let us remember that the care of the Earth and of each other is the most important work.

We are One Humanity on One Planet. Autonomy, meaning, dignity, work, freedom, and democracy are our birthright.

www.navdanya.com