Let COVID not derail work towards a sustainable future

The post COVID world has thrown up painful, even tragic outcomes, many seen and felt such as the loss of livelihoods, deaths of young breadwinners, orphaned children, and national economic downturns. In addition, there have been several impacts largely unseen and unfelt, atleast as of now. These setbacks could potentially derail our march towards a more sustainable future for mankind.

The COVID Pandemic has made a lasting impression on people all over. For most of us, it was the first time we witnessed streets deserted during peak hours, busy markets completely devoid of any vendors or customers, near-zero vehicular traffic during what we knew as high traffic congestion times. In short, it has been, and in many places continues to be, something we never experienced before. As a consequence, COVID-19 has delivered a body blow to the economy of most cities, states and nations. While at the macro level, GDP of nations across the globe has gone into a downward spiral, government revenues have quickly dried up, millions of livelihoods have been snatched, and education has been adversely impacted. Among the more tragic impacts has been the large numbers of children orphaned, with parents and other family members succumbing to the virus. Sadly, the devastation may not be over; likely further waves and new variants of the virus could pose fresh challenges. A grim aspect of the impacts of COVID-19 is with respect to poverty alleviation. It is likely that the significant gains made in the recent past by pulling millions out of poverty have been erased; large numbers could have slipped back into unemployment, ill-health, and poverty. The bright spot however, is the rapid and efficient rollout of the vaccination programme in India. We have seen daily numbers of vaccinated increasing steadily, new vaccines being approved, and production ramped up. The public and private healthcare systems have responded admirably.
Among the pandemic-related setbacks are some not yet fully felt. Take for example, mobility. Governments have been pushing for use of public transport in order to achieve better air quality and remove congestion from streets. But citizens may now avoid public transport and prefer private modes instead, out of fear of infection. This can be a double whammy. While on the one hand, the efforts for cleaner air and less congestion could suffer, and on the other hand public transport undertakings could incur bigger losses due to lockdown restrictions and reduced ridership. Recently, the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation announced it is in a financial crisis; the utility had suffered a loss of about `400 crores due to the lockdown and higher fuel prices. Such losses could prevent the operators from taking up expansion of their services. In Mumbai however, there is a clamour among users for restoring suburban train services given the speed, reliability, connectivity, and affordability of these services. Similar is the case with the metro in many cities. A reversal in the push for public transport could be a big step backward in the clean air mission of cities.
Yet another significant setback is in the use of plastic. There is no doubt that use of single use plastic has been a potent tool in protecting frontline healthcare workers (PPE kits), and in protecting citizens (disposable masks, coffee cups). But these have added to plastic waste. Increased home delivery of food and online shopping have also resulted in more plastic in landfills. Prior to COVID, administrators including local governments all over had been pushing hard for banning use of several kinds of single use plastic and penalising violations; so businesses and citizens had begun moving away from things like disposable shopping bags, cups, plates and cutlery to reusable ones. All this has changed. The COVID pandemic threatens to stall or even reverse the gains we made in the last several years in reducing plastic waste. “Anecdotally, Covid is undoing all the work we have done on the elimination of single-use plastic. Another very big downside (of the pandemic) has been the increased use of single-use plastic and the legitimacy it has got as a sign of safety. This is what worries us,” says Sunita Narain, environmentalist and Director General of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) as quoted in the Economic Times. We must ensure that we do not allow the short-term setbacks to derail our long term actions for a cleaner, safer and healthier planet; that the COVID pandemic does not lead to a plastic pandemic.
Another threat to life on our planet is getting elevated. That is water security. Dwindling water resources in several parts of the world, especially in the developing countries worries planners and policy makers. Unbridled water extraction from the earth has left cities boring deeper and deeper to extract water. Bengaluru is an example of Indian cities’ overdependence on ground water. COVID has added significantly to water usage in cities and therefore threatens our water conservation efforts. Anand Mahindra said in a tweet last year, “Ironically, Covid 19 is raising per capita water needs to more affluent country levels. Not just Mumbai, but other Indian cities could face a crisis in water supply by next year…We will need to aggressively plan ahead to save water and augment resources.” Advisories for improved hygiene to avoid COVID infection have likely led to frequent hand washing, bathing after outdoor trips, regular mopping of floors, washing vegetables and fruits, and so on. The additional demand for water has put the already stressed water situation under further strain.
The COVID Pandemic has put several other global priorities in jeopardy. E-mobility, green energy, and poverty alleviation are some. Consequently the world has possibly gone back several paces in its fight against climate change and the quest for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Earth Overshoot Day – the day on which humanity consumes all the biological resources that the earth regenerates in a whole year – is advancing. For 2021, it was 29th July, meaning that by 29th July 2021, we have consumed all the resources that the earth could regenerate in the whole of 2021. It was 22nd August in 2020.
Additionally, the COVID crisis has resulted in strained public finances of governments – national, state, and local with the unexpected and unbudgeted expense in responding to the pandemic on the one hand, and lower revenues on account of depressed economic activity on the other. Yet, they must not slacken or pull back on committed outlays for developing clean (renewable) energy, incentivising e-mobility, and conservation of the natural ecosystem.
Policymakers must keep the long term direction firmly in their sights inspite of the short term distractions, which seem to run contrary to the long term goals. And there could be several other such distractions like the current COVID crisis. There is, therefore, need for extra effort to realign ourselves on the path towards a safe, just, inclusive and sustainable future on this planet. For as it is said so often – this is the only planet we have, ateast for the time being.

The COVID Pandemic has put several other global priorities in jeopardy. E-mobility, green energy, and poverty alleviation are some. Consequently the world has possibly gone back several paces in its fight against climate change and the quest for achieving the SDGs