Credit: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 24 2020 (IPS)

The COVID 19 Pandemic continues relentlessly. Deaths approaching a million globally, 22 million infected and growing. Brazil, India, the US and Russia accounting for almost 50% of the total cases in the world.

Medically the promise of a vaccine is given as signs of hope; what surprises awaits us when such a vaccine is available, would be another story. Economically, to address the uncertainty and the grim future ahead, the UN, some governments and even Joe Biden the US Presidential hopeful, are waving “Build Back better” as ways to achieve ‘a new normal’ out of the current pandemic.

“Build Back Better” emerged out of the 3rd International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, in March 2015 and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which had outlined seven clear targets and four priorities for action to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks. (1) Understanding disaster risk; (2) Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; (3) Investing in disaster reduction for resilience and; (4) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Other concepts such as Circular Economy (CE) are gaining more adherents. Professor Martin Charter in a recent edited book, “Designing for the Circular Economy’, published by Routledge (2019), says, “product circularity means taking an extended lifecycle perspective that focusses on maximising value in economic and social systems for the longest time”.

He offers ‘CE’ as a key part of achieving the SDGs, though he also cautions that CE is not a magic bullet and “achieving a more sustainable future will require integrated, systemic thinking, creativity, hard work and change”. The book is a very useful collection of contributions covering different industries and design specialists.

While we see young engineers and others, even in developing countries, applying concepts like CE and biomimicry to contribute to sustainability, CE also has its critics. ‘Low Tech Magazine’ (www.lowtech.org) is of the view that, “The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste.

However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics”. CE would need a movement from all sides, government, industry and consumers to be actually implemented in practice.

Talking of movements, one is represented in ideas around ‘Degrowth’. Provoked by a question, the famous French philosopher Andre Gorz, asked around 1972, “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth – or even degrowth – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system? ”, gave rise to the famous word “décroissance”, French for ‘degrowth.

After the COVID 19 Pandemic, ‘Degrowth’ is also gaining currency. In, ‘Degrowth – A Vocabulary for a New Era’ published by Routledge, three ecological economists, Giacomo D’Alisa, Frederico Demaria and Giorgis Kallis, bring 51 contributors to examine a wide range of topics and themes related to Degrowth. Published in 2015, it gains greater relevance now.

The Editors state in their Preface, “When the ordinary language in use is inadequate to articulate what begs to be articulated, then it is time for a new vocabulary”. They point to the deep ills plaguing the world such as growing inequalities, socio-ecological disasters, climate change and the continuous disaster of deaths by lack of access to land, water, and food.

To this we can add, the pandemic deaths, the Australian Bush fires, the Beirut explosion and the massive oil spill in the serene territorial waters off Mauritius endangering livelihoods and marine life. Apocalypse now? May be not! The quote at the beginning of this contribution, is from a must read chapter in the book by Serge Latouche titled, ‘Pedagogy of Disaster’.

Latouche says, “Worshippers of progress immediately accuse anyone who reflects on the dangers that threaten our civilization of pessimism”. He quotes Hans Jonas, philosopher and author of the much celebrated book, ‘The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age’ who had said, “it is better to lend an ear to the prophecy of misfortune than to that of happiness”.

In Latouche’s view, Hans Jonas, “does not masochistically hope for a taste of the apocalypse, but precisely to ward it off”. For Latouche, Jonas’ appeal is “an alternative to the suicidal optimism of a ‘politics of ostriches’. In a tone of melancholy, he says, “It is this latter blissful (and passive) optimism that will lead certainly to more disaster than an attitude of a crystalizing catastrophe”.

The ”worshippers of progress” in the world today are many. Among the powerful, Bolsinaro, Modi, Putin, Trump and Xi Ping represent the “progress fundamentalists” and the world of “business as usual”. In the context of the growing consciousness and awareness around climate change, these leaders also seem to represent thinking that goes back 50 years.

More than 28% of the Brazilian Rain Forest is burning, with little concern shown or actions taken to prevent it by Bolsinaro. Trump wants more fossil fuel driven “unlimited growth”; so too Narendra Modi whose government is busy dismantling environmental safeguards, built over decades and which however imperfect could in the past delay the destruction of ecology and provide defence to nature, biodiversity and forests in India.

Currently, while undermining India’s long term security, to immediately boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.

Increasing evidence shows, the link between forest destruction and increase in viruses and pandemics. We are losing more forests and disrupting nature, says Katarina Zimmer, writing in the National Geographic.

According to her, “Over the past two decades, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that deforestation, by triggering a complex cascade of events, creates the conditions for a range of deadly pathogens—such as Nipah and Lassa viruses, and the parasites that cause malaria and Lyme disease—to spread to people”.
(read full story at <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans).

In such a scenario, the UN seems powerless, with most of its economists especially in regions like Asia clinging on like religious fundamentalists to some outdated neoliberal economics much of which has brought us to where we are now. SDGs and “Build Back Better” are just labels applied by these economists “on old bottles” of wine that has almost become vinegar!.

There are no road maps nationally and globally for “sustainable futures” or “build back better”. The latter two are aspirational, what we need is more specific identification of normative pathways like Green Growth and a systems approach to achieve it by normative global public goods organization like the UN and those who work for it. Otherwise we may be back, metaphorically to, “Parachuting Cats into Borneo”.

In the 1950s, when the malaria epidemic was out of control in Sarawak and the adjoining state of North Borneo, now called Sabah, the WHO advised indoor spraying of DDT to control the spread of the malaria carrying mosquitoes. The indigenous people of Sarawak and Sabah live in each village in long houses with thatched roofing that could house as much as hundred families.

The spraying of DDT led to a chain of events such as deterioration of the thatched roofs and collapsing of the roofs which the locals complained about. A WHO team sent to investigate found out that the some of the moth larvae (caterpillars) living in the thatch were able to distinguish the presence of DDT and so avoided eating thatch sprayed with the chemical, whereas their parasites, small chalcid wasps that injected their larvae into the caterpillars, were highly susceptible to DDT, causing their decline and the subsequent increase in caterpillar numbers.

A 50% increase per roof area in caterpillar larvae led to deterioration of the thatch roofs and collapses. Accompanied by the death and decline of cats due to the DDT spraying and the boom in rat population resulted in a double crisis. The latter required new cats having to be parachuted into the area. The whole chain of events, captured in the metaphor, “Parachuting Cats into Borneo” demonstrates how one track thinking devoid of a systems approach could just lead us out of one disaster into another.

The same metaphor of ‘Parachuting Cats into Borneo’ has been very cleverly and productively used by Alan Atkisson and Axel Klimek, two among the world’s leading systems thinking practitioners and trainers, and change management experts, to produce a book of the same title, ‘Parachuting Cats into Borneo – And Other Lessons from the Change Café’.

Published by Chelsea Green Publishers, the book is offered as a ‘Toolkit of Proven Strategies and Practices for Building Capacity and Creating Transformation’. While the UN and some of their professional economists are advising member states ‘to look for a black cat in a dark room where there is no cat’ and till the UN decides that institutional reform is urgent and gets down to it, we may have to do our own homework for change and change management.

Axel Klimek and Alan Atkisson’s book, have much to contribute in these efforts towards fundamental transformations in thinking that can take us closer to sustainable futures.

* Views expressed are his own and do not represent organizations he has been affiliated or currently affiliated with.

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WHO delivered medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Congo in April 2020. Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

In the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, the much-anticipated 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) of the WHO concluded without any major controversies or disagreements.

The landmark WHA resolution to bring the world together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, co-sponsored by more than 130 countries, and adopted by consensus, called for the intensification of efforts to control the pandemic, and for equitable access to and fair distribution of all essential health technologies and products to combat the virus.

Basically, a message that any vaccines produced should not be privatised by corporate capitalist greed.

Pandemics have been with us for a very long time. Medical science and public health focus on infectious diseases spanning the pre-antibiotic and post-antibiotic era, has tried to keep pace with the newer forms and zoonotic variations and shown us that reducing the emergence of a virus to a single source is futile.

The eminent flu epidemiologist, late Dr Louis Weinstein, commenting on the 1968 Hong Kong Flu epidemic that appeared simultaneously all over the world, observed that such epidemics do not spread from a single source. Humans have constantly battled with new infectious diseases.

Post COVID, anti-bacterial treatments for what are called ‘sick-car’ and ‘sick building’ syndromes are now flourishing. Though, however much we sanitise and keep our immediate environment clean, will that help in the fight against infections and infectious diseases?

Dr. Zinsser in , ‘Rats, Lice and History’, wrote in 1935, “ Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world … however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine or war lets down the defences….

About the only genuine sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against these ferocious little fellow creatures which lurk in the dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love”.

His work was considered a classic with the NYTimes calling it, “one of the wisest and wittiest books that have come off the presses”.

Looking for the source of the viruses is a distraction in understanding the causes. The destruction of our natural environment, clearly, has been the major cause for the pandemics that humanity has faced.

COVID 19 forcefully brought this truth home; while forcing a lock down on the activities of humans, it allowed the natural world to breathe again.

Rene Dubos, the pioneer of Ecological Medicine, who was awarded a Pulitzer in 1969 for his classic work, ‘So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events’, brought to us long back the connection between the state of our natural environment and our pathologies.

Writing in the Scientific American (1955) an article titled, “Second Thoughts on the Germ Theory’, he wrote, “During the first phase of the germ theory the property of virulence was regarded as lying within the microbes themselves. Now virulence is coming to be thought of as ecological. Whether man lives in equilibrium with microbes or becomes their victim depend upon the circumstances under which he encounters them”.

He was the one who coined the expression, “think globally, act locally” which nowadays is used like a fashion statement, without knowing the origins or the deep philosophical significance Rene Dubos attached to an expression that he first coined. The current COVID world has forcefully shown the importance of “thinking globally and acting locally”.

Where do we go from here in managing this global public health crisis and repairing the relationship of humans to the planet and its sentient beings? The question ‘What now?” is posed as a query for action, for a road map, in the way, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Report ‘What Now: Another Development ‘
posed it in 1975.

Another Development: Approaches and Strategies was launched in 1976, as an independent contribution to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Development and International Cooperation. With a print run of 100,000 copies in six languages, the Report came to play a significant role in the development debate during the following years.

The ‘What Now Report’ was envisaged as a “tribute to the man, Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary-General 1953–1961 and one of the last century’s most remarkable international leaders, who more than any other, gave the United Nations the authority which the world (now) needs more than ever”.

The five principles of ‘Another Development’ in 1975 stated, “Need based – Development geared to meeting human needs, material and non-material; Endogenous – stemming from the heart of each society which defines in sovereignty its values and the vision of its future;

Self-reliant – implying that each society relies primarily on its own strength and resources in terms of its members’ energies and its natural and cultural environment;

Ecologically sound – utilising rationally the resources of the bio-sphere in full awareness of the potential of local ecosystems as well as the global and local outer limits imposed on present and future generations.

And based on Structural transformation – so as to realise the conditions required for self-management and participation in decision making by all those affected by it, from the rural or urban community to the world as a whole, without which the goals above could not be achieved.

These five principles are even more relevant today and could be the new Panchseel of a new commitment we should make for mutual co-existence between peoples and between humans and nature.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, delivering the prestigious Dag Hammarskjold Uppsala Lecture on Earth Day in 2018 and titled, ‘Twenty-first century challenges and the enduring wisdom of Dag Hammarskjöld’, stated that, “The problems of our time are global problems that can only be solved with global solutions”.

Pointing in his lecture that Hammarskjold, “was a man of culture”, Guterres said, “that allowed him to have a universal view, a universal perspective; to consider diversity as a richness; to be able to understand others; to promote tolerance; to promote dialogue and to find solutions for the most difficult and intricate diplomatic problems of his time”.

“This is what, indeed, is sometimes lacking today” and that, “the proof that this translated into a vision of the world that remains as accurate today as during his lifetime is very well captured” he said in what Hammarskjold had said then, ‘Our world of today [of course many decades ago] is more than ever before, one world. The weakness of one is the weakness of all, and the strength of one – not the military strength, but the real strength, the economic and social strength, the happiness of people – is the strength of all. Through various developments that are familiar to all, world solidarity has been forced upon us. This is no longer the choice of enlightened spirits, it’s something which those whose temperament leads them in the direction of isolationism have also to accept’.

Almost five decades later, organizations with the history, prestige and authority like the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation are uniquely placed to draw upon the wisdom of the past and cooperatively navigate Earth and humanity to a safe place.

Reviving the spirit of ‘What Now’ as the new Panchsheel that works beyond nation states and the strong men that lead these nations states lies the future.

The Foundation needs urgently to take initiatives, using the current crisis as an opportunity to create new global institutional platforms for solidarity based on the principle of ‘planetary citizens’ away from the hyper-nationalists of the present who in history, have “goose stepped” us into disasters.

New generations are looking for such answers. The world must move away from the strong-man politics of men who are also no ‘men of culture’.

Former US President Barack Obama in his Nelson Mandela speech in South Africa, commenting on strong man politics dominating the major large nations of the world, said, “Look around. Strongman politics are ascendant, suddenly, whereby elections and some pretence of democracy are maintained—the form of it—but those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning”.

Fortunately, both in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere we now have women in power who are bringing a different quality to national and global leadership.

From Asia, and in small countries like South Korea articulate women of such clarity and depth of experience in international leadership, like Madam Kang, Kyung-wha Korea’s Foreign Minister, are leading with such finesse the Foreign Policy of a nation wedged between big powers. These resources of leadership need to be harnessed for the global good.

The theme for World Environment Day (Friday June 5), is ‘Time for Nature’. Humanity has ‘Time for Nature. Nation states and strong men who lead them have no time for nature which is why we are in the mess we are in and why we need ‘Another Development’ led by this new generation of women leaders currently managing national and global affairs with such wisdom.

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By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 14 2020 (IPS)

US President Donald Trump’s battle with the World Health Organization (WHO) hides two important issues. One, the long running love-hate relationship between the US and the UN, and two, a better understanding of how global public health is governed and in the overall context of global governance.

We must first recognize, that notwithstanding Trump’s disdain for multilateralism and international institutions especially the UN, his behaviour is basically consistent with history of the US threatening UN institutions periodically by withholding financial contributions.

One should not therefore let the impression gain, especially among younger generations not familiar with global and international politics, that the US as a power is innocent and Trump is but a bull in the China shop of international governance and global public policy.

As for the love-hate relationship of the US with the UN, just rewind back to the days of President Reagan in the 1980s and which saw the peak of such hostility to the UN. Advised by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the US pulled out of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The latter decision though, was only a shadow play; behind the scenes the US severely undermined the work of important UN agencies like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) seen as opposed to US multinationals was dismantled. The resignation letter of Peter Hansen, the Danish Director of UNCTC then made him a cause celebre.

UN agencies such as UNCTC, working on a Code of Conduct for TNCs and WHO with its Drugs for All policy were viewed with suspicion by US corporate interests especially US pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was not spared either.

The US made sure that the FAO was under the influence of US multinational companies especially US agribusiness and in critical areas such as the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources of the FAO and in the Codex Alimentarius to weaken and undermine regulation of US TNCs.

One cannot forget, the ignominious manner in which Dr. Gamani Corea the eminent Sri Lankan economist was asked to quit as Secretary General of UNCTAD by the US. Countries like India were singled out and the role they played at the UN monitored.

India’s independent international public policy then while seen as valuable for the international community was viewed as a threat to US domination of international institutions and attacked. India’s role at the UN was relevant to not only India’s national interests and the developing world but also to Europe and Scandinavian Countries.

India made significant contributions, for example, in the creation of the South Centre, an institution, that was relevant in contributing to the international public policy of developing countries; its relevance continues even more so in the context of issues such as global taxation regimes and how India, as well as developing countries are being deprived of taxes from TNCs.

The Reagan and Thatcher domination of the international arena in the 1980s saw the North-South dialogue being scuttled. Mrs. Gandhi, a trusted leader of developing countries and the global South, played a major role on their behalf, in trying to bring the North-South Dialogue back on track. She did this, even while India was facing the brunt of US pressure including in strategic and national security terms.

A meeting of world leaders in Cancun, Mexico, in 1981, was possibly the last of the North-South Dialogue meeting, where Mrs Gandhi met with Reagan to work out a compromise. However, what resulted was the South being thrust with the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations instead of the North-South Dialogue.

The Uruguay Round, after a decade or more of tortuous negotiations led by the US, and for US dominance in world trade though projected as promoting free trade, produced an elephant in the form of the WTO. The latter seems to have now metamorphosed to a mouse.

As for Trump and WHO, let us not make the mistake that withdrawal of US funding means any less influence of the US or its corporate interests in the WHO. More so in influencing global public health policies.

A must read and very relevant in this regard is the book by Chelsea Clinton (yes President Clinton’s only daughter) and Devi Sridhar, Professor at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, who holds the Chair in Global Public Health.

The book was published in 2017, as if anticipating the unique global public health crisis of today. Appropriately titled, ‘Governing Global Health’ with an even more piercing sub title, “Who Runs the World and Why?’, the book tells us as a lot about what is happening regarding how Public Health is governed globally.

In the Preface, they present a clear case as to why such a book now, and point out, that we live in the best of times as well as the worst of times and give reasons for saying so. The book deserves an in-depth review, but for now in the present conjecture of COVID 19 it is important to first bring the book to public notice.

The Covid Pandemic, has also kept social media abuzz with conspiracy theories especially around Bill Gates his Foundation and the profits to be made in the vaccines to be developed. This given the Gates Foundation’s large financial contributions to the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) and the Global Fund.

While there may be grains of truth as in all conspiracy theories, unfortunately their wild allegations also damage serious important initiatives such as the UN SDGs (especially SDG 3) and the 2030 Road Map by making them part of these conspiracies.

Another reason to read this book, and be informed not only who the actors in global public health governance are, but more importantly how global public health governance has shifted from UN institutions governed by Member States to Global Public Health International NGOs and private companies.

This is especially so with the rise of this nebulous and ubiquitous practice (recognised by the authors) of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and its increasing dominance in international cooperation and governance including ironically the UN.

It might be nice to repeat the oft repeated statements of present and past UN bureaucrats about UN institutions being governed by Member States but they all miss a major reality of today’s world. A reality succinctly captured by Kofi Annan in 1999 and quoted in the book.

He has noted that, “our post War institutions were built for an international world, but we now live in a global world”. Negotiating this “global world” is not easy for nation states and more so for international and UN institutions. In this world crisis we need the UN more than ever before.

At this moment of deep crisis for global public health and global governance, we are fortunate that like the late Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon of the past, we now have a Secretary General, in the person of Antonio Guterres who commands both respect and legitimacy. Even before the pandemic, he was faced with the unenviable task of steering the UN through massive financial constraints that it was already in”

The challenge for the UN and its agencies including the WHO is far greater now including establishing their legitimacy. The implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals which is in its fifth year of its launch will be seriously affected.

The role of the UN as a global public goods organization can be reclaimed by using the SDGs and thus also gain greater legitimacy for the work of the UN. This is the route to be taken for the UN’s own survival, not the narrow public-private partnerships that excludes wider partnership with other actors and will make a big difference.

UN staff, in an age of ‘ultra-nationalism’ should keeping with their allegiance to the UN and its Charter, vaccinate themselves from such toxic nationalism, and remind themselves that they are International Civil Servants serving the needs of global public goods.

They should reassure themselves that the shrinking budget of the UN for a global institution needed in a crisis, is no more than that of a small European City Municipality and the budget of the WHO is perhaps as much as a medium sized New York hospital and rededicate themselves with a new sense of ethics and purpose and work on synergy, coherence and partnership as the core thrust of their work.

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