Category: Covid-19: Responses to the Pandemic
What does it mean to live a “not quite fatal” existence?
By Sadie E. Hale
Lockdown in most European countries ended two months ago; but as I write this, cases are rising again, and the sense of impending confinement informs my thoughts. Questions of what constitutes a “good life” and, more chillingly, a “good death” have become more urgent during the pandemic. Yet there is a strong imperative to think about this question from a more-than-human perspective.
Lockdown and Locked In: Houseplants and Covid-19
By Darya Tsymbalyuk
Just before the official lockdown was announced in Scotland, I moved all of my office plants home. There was no space for them in my room, but I rearranged my furniture to accommodate my office plants since they had been my closest companions during the crisis.
Masking Our Uncertainties: “The Way of the Masks”
By Rita Brara
An overwhelming sense of uncertainty fogs the Covid-19 pandemic and cityscapes in India as elsewhere in a planetary reminder of our common environment. Our uncertainties are multi-faceted—personal, practical, and social—but resonate in the insistence that we consider science-based inputs and the accompanying masked and unmasked claims regularly (if not 24/7).
Understanding Reverse Worker Migration During the Covid-19 Lockdown in India and the Green Revolution
By Vipul Singh
The Covid-19 pandemic has posed a grave challenge, with countries around the world struggling to control its spread. The easiest and most viable solution to reducing the rate of infection has been to impose a total lockdown. India is no exception. Here, too, the government announced a complete lockdown understanding the indispensability of taking such a step.
The Distant Spring: Philosophy and Social Innovation
By Rafael Ziegler
In response to the harm done to birds by the widespread use of pesticides, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring (1962). Her account of the “silencing of the birds” helped motivate a flock of social innovation via the emerging environmental movement. Spring 2020 has arrived with a virus pushing us behind windows and glued to screens. It is too early to tell what this “distant” spring will bring for later seasons and years to come. However, distance invites reflection.
Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic for Environmental Governance
By Erin Ryan
The coronavirus pandemic offers lessons for leaders on every level about how—and how not—to manage complex interjurisdictional challenges, like the environment, which unfold without regard for political boundaries [1].
Fault Lines: On the Ground in Colombia
By Paula Ungar
I spend the quarantine days in my old, quiet apartment. From the window, I can see the shape of the Andean mountains that embrace the Eastern part of Bogotá. Groups of little houses are embroidered into that mountainside, like honeycombs, forming one of the numerous self-built quarters in this city inhabited by seven-million.
Corona Crisis, UNESCO and the Future: Do We Need a New World Heritage?
By Cornelius Holtdorf and Annalisa Bolin
A virus has put the world on hold. Many individual human actions suddenly appear extremely small and insignificant in comparison with the unyielding might and relentless spread with which the SARS-CoV-2 virus is presently conquering Earth. We are witnessing how the virus does not distinguish between human hosts and how all societies struggle with the challenges of containing and managing the coronavirus.
Cross-Species Conversations and the Coronavirus
By Serenella Iovino (translated by Elena Past)
Zoonosis. This is one of the strange words that the onset of the coronavirus has forced us to learn. Zoonosis is a transitive infection, a virus that passes from animals to human beings. Or rather: it passes to our species from other animal species, recalling that human and nonhuman animals share an entire biological kingdom and that our bodies’ cells speak languages that are not all that dissimilar.
“You have to change your life!” Our Common Post-Corona Future through a Swedish Lens
By Sigurd Bergmann
Once the coronavirus pandemic is over, we will wake up to a new society. Before everything gets better, however, everything will get worse—for a long time yet. We are faced with frightening images and stories of suffering in refugee camps, ill-equipped hospitals in poor countries, and the suffering of so many people across Europe.
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