Building Back Differently: A Climate Emergency Recovery from COVID-19
Jonathan Essex draws on his experience of flooding in Bangladesh in 2004 to reflect on the COVID-19 crisis and how we recover from it. He suggests that we should aim to build back differently in order to retrain the economy’s emergency footing to the far bigger crisis of climate change. He expands on five lessons that we should draw from the COVID-19 crisis: ensure our response is timely, and matches what we say is required with what is actually done; rethink what is important, putting solidarity over self-interest; reprioritise which jobs are critical and redirect resources to these areas; ensure fairness runs through our plans and responses, including to address institutional inequality and bias that exists in our economy and society, and apply the ‘real emergency’ approach to tackling COVID-19 to a climate emergency recovery.