COVID-19 continues to have severe impacts on the societies, economies and environment of forest communities. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on forest communities have been shaped by pre-existing social, economic en environmental vulnerabilities. Despite existing vulnerabilities, forest communities have shwon a great deal of resilience. Forest communities have not been passive in the face of these significant impacts. Key responses have included the use of informal and formal social protection programmes. Reflecting on past crisis and building on the initial COVID-19 responses found in the case studies and lessons from producer organisations, this working paper identifies seven key pathways and 14 strategic actions for forest communities to recover and building back better from COVID-19.
"The Fight for Climate after COVID-19 draws on the troubled and uneven COVID-19 experience to illustrate the critical need to ramp up resilience rapidly and effectively on a global scale. After years of working alongside public health and resilience experts crafting policy to build both pandemic and climate change preparedness, Alice C. Hill exposes parallels between the underutilized measures that governments should have taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 -- such as early action, cross-border planning, and bolstering emergency preparation -- and the steps leaders can take now to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Through practical analyses of current policy and thoughtful guidance for successful climate adaptation, The Fight for Climate after COVID-19 reveals that, just as our society has transformed itself to meet the challenge of coronavirus, so too will we need to adapt our thinking and our policies to combat the ever-increasing threat of climate change." --
Environmental Resilience and Transformation in Times of COVID-19: Climate Change Effects on Environmental Functionality is a timely reference to better understand environmental changes amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns. The book is organized into five themes: (1) environmental modifications, degradation, and human health risks; (2) water resources—planning, management, and governance; (3) air quality—monitoring, fate, transport, and drivers of socioenvironmental change; (4) marine and lacustrine environment; and (5) sustainable development goals and environmental justice. These themes provide an insight into the impact of COVID-19 on the environment and vice versa, which will help improve environmental management and planning, as well as influence future policies. Featuring many case studies from around the globe, this book offers a crucial examination of the intersectionality between climate, sustainability, the environment, and public health for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in environmental science. - Features global case studies to illustrate themes and address issues to support environmental management - Offers fundamental and practical understanding of ways to improve and validate predictive abilities and tools in addition to response - Examines climate-related trends in the spread of the pandemic - Presents different ways forward in order to achieve global goals with a specific focus on SDGs
Two previous reports (Díaz Bonilla, Laborde and Piñeiro, 2021, and Diaz-Bonilla, Flores, Paz, Piñeiro, and Zandstra, 2021) covered the evolution and impacts of the pandemic on food systems in Guatemala until the time of their writing (which together covered from the start of the pandemic in early 2020 until about October 2021. This third report concludes the analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food systems in Guatemala. It summarizes the previous reports and updates the analysis until the end of May 2022. However, this country and its food systems have also been affected by other events since the pandemic started in early 2020. Between 3 and 17 November 2020, tropical storms Eta and Iota hit Guatemalan territory with heavy rains that led to floods and mud landslides, affecting 16 of the country's 22 departments. Later, in 2021 the strong world economic rebound due to expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in the USA and many other developed and developing countries combined with persistent strains on value chains due to COVID19 to lead to increases in transportation costs and the prices of food, energy, and fertilizers. In the case of agricultural products, those increases were com-pounded by adverse climate events in some important producers, particularly in South America. Finally, the Russian-Ukraine Conflict (RUC) on February 24, 2022, has added further pressures on the prices of energy, fertilizers and food products including wheat and vegetable oils. Therefore, the pandemic's specific impact on Guatemala's food systems has been interacting with the other developments mentioned, making it very difficult to differentiate among them. Policymakers, how-ever, need to respond to the overall impact of the conditions affecting the population, whatever the leading causes may be. Therefore, this final report, while emphasizing those aspects linked to the pandemic, will discuss the conditions in Guatemala considering those other factors. This report is structured as follows. First, it summarizes the main policy responses, costs, and financing related to the COVID-19 shock. Second, it brings up to date the evolution of the pandemic, using different indicators. Third, it updates the evolution of key economic and nutritional variables. Fourth, there is a brief discussion of the implications of RUC for food systems.. Fifth, the report continues with a more specific analysis of the evolution of some food value chains that are central for food consumption in Guatemala. The next section discusses policy considerations for health, poverty and nutrition, and food value chains, based on the updated analysis of the previous sections, including cost and financial aspects. A final section concludes.
The Rohingya Crisis is now in its fifth year with no end in sight. While the international community has supported the displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh by providing humanitarian assistance, what is needed now is to investigate the short-and long-term implications of the crisis from the host country's perspective. Also, it is imperative to examine the current political situation, which was caused by the Myanmar military coup in February 2021. It has cast a dark shadow on the possibility of a negotiated repatriation. In this volume, scholars from Bangladesh and Canada have reflected upon the security situation, the pandemic’s impact on the Rohingyas, inter-group conflict, environmental impact and burden sharing aspects, the informal labor situation, NGO intervention for resilience mapping, and diaspora activities. For both academics and policymakers who work in the fields of conflict resolution and peacebuilding, this book will show how not intervening early in a crisis can have long-term consequences.
This edited volume focuses on the largest single tract contiguous mangrove forest in the world— the Sundarbans— exploring traditional knowledge, customary sustainable use and community-based innovation. The book analyses the current state of the Sundarbans, its multiple values and ecosystem services, to demonstrate that Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) is essential for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Not only does this play an integral role in realising SDG 14 (life below water) and SDG 15 (life on land), it also actively contributes towards achieving many other goals and targets. It contributes a new understanding of sustainability by bringing human-nature relationships in view of the renewed interest in biodiversity and climate change— heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The book links scientific knowledge with multi, inter, trans- disciplinary nature of ILK for sustainable development collected from the ground. It challenges the market-based approach in valuing the natural resources, and demonstrates that the valuation of environmental resources through market penetration pricing does not reckon the social benefits and values coproduced through complementarity between humans and nature.
The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus. Now a mini-series drama starring Julianna Margulies, Topher Grace, Liam Cunningham, James D'Arcy, and Noah Emmerich on National Geographic. A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.
The Covid-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020. It had initially spread in Wuhan, China in late 2019, before the first cases outside the country were recorded at the beginning of 2020. Today there are millions of cases of Covid-19 globally, with thousands of new cases being confirmed every day. The Covid-19 pandemic is, at root, a public health emergency, driven by its ready transmission and ability to cause severe illness and death. But while its ability to overwhelm the best of health systems has already been demonstrated, its far-reaching social, economic and political consequences are still unfolding. Although everyone is at risk of the virus, some groups have been worse affected by the pandemic and its consequences, including in particular minorities and indigenous peoples. Especially in the global north, mounting evidence has shown that ethnic, racial and religious minorities are not only at greater risk of contracting the virus for a wide range of reasons – from their disproportionate employment in high-risk sectors such as nursing, cleaning and public transport to their concentration in overcrowded housing where social distancing is more difficult – but can also face higher rates of mortality once infected, often due to limited access to medical care. Linguistic minorities may face problems in accessing accurate public health advice. While there is so far less data available on the impact of the pandemic on indigenous peoples, particularly smaller or more isolated communities, emerging evidence from the US and elsewhere suggests that the implications of the pandemic have been ‘disproportionately devastating’ for indigenous peoples.
