The Crises-Poverty-Sustainability Nexus in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals and Covid-19

Abstract

This chapter offers an introduction to the volume Financial Crises, Poverty and Environmental Sustainability: Challenges in the Context of the SDGs and Covid-19 Recovery. The first part examines the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on socio-environmental sustainability. The pandemic crisis has triggered multiple and interacting social, economic and environmental impacts. Mitigating these impacts post-pandemic will require policy actions intent on transforming our current unsustainable socio-environmental model, i.e. managing to use the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to build forward better. The second part of the chapter assesses the Covid-19 support packages and recovery strategies. We find that existing policy actions are falling short from the transformation that is required to bring our planet onto a sustainable socio-environmental path. For instance, we observe social exclusion and leaving behind those most in need, increase in atmospheric emissions, and loss of biodiversity. In this context, we argue for a rethink of the underlying assumptions that have determined the economy-environment interaction in our societies. We advocate the need to move away from the commercialisation of nature and a ‘net-zero’ rationale, towards a ‘do no harm’ and ‘common good’ approach. Our transition to sustainability requires nothing less than a new global eco-social contract. The third part of our chapter presents summaries of the volume’s case-studies that inform the above analysis and demonstrate how the above challenges are manifested in countries and communities across the globe.KeywordsFinancial crisesSustainabilityInequalityCovid-19Recovery strategies‘Do no harm’Eco-social contract