• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Joe Biden
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Will the Pandemic Revitalize Ideas of the Global Common Good?

Faced with unprecedented crises, humanity will have to find a way to come together and develop novel and innovative concepts of governance.
By Andreas Rechkemmer, Deborah Brosnan & James Bohland • Jan 05, 2021
Andreas Rechkemmer, James Bohland, Deborah Brosnan, Hamad bin Khalifa University Doha, COVID-19 pandemic news, COVID-19 pandemic globalization, COVID-19 pandemic lessons, global leadership, climate change threat to humanity, will COVID-19 pandemic change the world

© GoodIdeas / Shutterstock

Two decades into the 21st century, humanity is faced with a plethora of unprecedented global crises. After SARS-1, multiple novel avian influenza strains, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the current COVID-19 pandemic is by far the most severe and widespread public health crisis in at least a century.

Global climate change is finally being recognized as the single most severe threat to humanity and the planet. This century is also on track to become the era of natural disasters, unique in the history of humanity, with tropical storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires rising exponentially in number. Pandemics, global warming and natural disasters are but three of the many large-scale crises at play, posing problems that are particularly challenging for policymaking at various levels.


A New Social Contract Amid a Crisis

READ MORE


The 21st century is expected to produce even more and ever greater challenges for the global community. Biodiversity loss, water scarcity and desertification, food insecurity, refugee crises, failing states and more will affect many societies in intricate, complex ways. Termed “Grand Challenges” by the United Nations and various other institutions in an effort to generate data, knowledge and advice to decision-makers, the pressing problem centers around how we go about solving them.

Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity

Phenomena like climate change, pandemics or the creeping collapse of democratic governance and the rule of law can be resolved neither by any individual country, let alone by populist and nationalist politics that defy multilateralism, nor by conventional policy design. Humanity will have to find a way to come together and develop novel and innovative concepts of governance of global public goods and commons, and of global crises, under 21st-century conditions.

Embed from Getty Images

These are conditions of wickedness, ambiguity, non-linearity, multi-causality and multi-scalar occurrence at a planetary scale. Humanity and planet Earth, with all its living species, form a huge symbiosis, a socio-ecological system, much as depicted in James Cameron’s 2009 movie “Avatar.” There is no pristine natural space left untouched by human influence and no human remains untouched by at least one of the many disturbance regimes, such as climate change or the current pandemic, that are haunting us.

In our previous op-eds, we advocated that in the face of these mega crises, new or renewed social contracts are key and that social learning will provide for the vehicle to get us there. We argued that scientists play an important role if they become engaged citizens of their societies and that the self-serving politics of delusional populists and autocrats — whose global mushrooming coincides with the exponential rise of global crises — are to be replaced.

Future narratives that are necessary to guide collective action in the 21st century must be principled and must be about resilience and, sometimes, resistance, often through adaptive or transformative approaches and processes, as well as through education, learning, enlightenment, empowerment and responsible citizenship. Such narratives have to be global and universal, mirroring the scale and globality of the crises that are so daunting today.

The truth is simple: Solutions have to fit the scale and magnitude of the problems, as the pandemic has shown. Humanity must now overcome the comfort zones and confines of tribalism, nationalism and self-interest, or it will perish. In the face of a perfect storm of global mega crises, we must transcend the ideological concept of self-interest driven nation-states, of hegemony and of balance-of-power ideologies that date back from the 17th century but still drive much of our modern world. The 21st century poses brutal challenges to humanity but bears the potential for an evolutionary leap forward, toward true global citizenship and a global social contract.

Transforming Globalization

In less than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the very tenets of 50 years of globalization: the tyranny of international trade regimes, return on investment-oriented global supply chain management, carbon-intense industrial production, the brutal transnational labor market and related migration schemes and global air travel. The notoriously short-lived international capital flow and foreign direct investment came to a halt for a moment — something the 2007-09 financial crisis failed to achieve — and are now being questioned by unlikely sources.

Even die-hard Chicago School economists have started to explore the circular economy (better late than never). It appears that the pandemic and its fallout are a drastic eye-opener that forces us to realize, finally, that much of the “progress” that globalization has brought about is borrowed, if not stolen, from future generations, non-human species, ecosystems and the planet, divided as we are by equators of rich and poor, of winners and losers, of “developed’ and “underdeveloped.” It is simply not sustainable.

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

COVID-19, climate change and many of the other “Grand Challenges” are of course correlated with the so-called Third Industrial Revolution and 50 years of neoliberal globalization and Wall Street finance capitalism. One does not have to be a socialist to understand this simple truth. Indeed, there is hope that the current global public health crisis will lead to a general reckoning, including of people in power, and that there will not be a mere continuation of business as usual after the pandemic.

Globalization and capitalism have to be transformed, enlightened, guided by mutuality and governed by wisdom and foresight based on the revitalized ideas of the global common good, of global citizenship and of a new global social contract. Think “Avatar.”

*[This article was submitted on behalf of the authors by the Hamad bin Khalifa University Communications Directorate. The views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Share Story
CategoriesClimate change news, Coronavirus, Education, Environment, Environmental news, Global Change, Insight, World News TagsAndreas Rechkemmer, climate change threat to humanity, COVID-19 pandemic globalization, COVID-19 pandemic lessons, COVID-19 pandemic news, Deborah Brosnan, global leadership, Hamad bin Khalifa University Doha, James Bohland, will COVID-19 pandemic change the world
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

Fair Observer Recommends

Why the US Return to the WHO Matters Why the US Return to the WHO Matters
By Andreas Rechkemmer • Mar 18, 2021
A New Social Contract Amid a Crisis A New Social Contract Amid a Crisis
By James Bohland, Andreas Rechkemmer & Deborah Brosnan • Oct 20, 2020
Scientists’ Social Engagement Is Needed to Stem the COVID-19 Pandemic Scientists’ Social Engagement Is Needed to Stem the COVID-19 Pandemic
By Deborah Brosnan, Andreas Rechkemmer & James Bohland • Sep 18, 2020

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious Ethiopia’s Heavy Hand in Tigray Sends a Message
Next PostNext Can Mike Pompeo Swagger His Way Into 2024 Election?
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept