Corona Sustainability Compass - A Science Blog by Umweltbundesamt, Future Earth, International Science Council and Foundation 2°

In times of upheaval, we see developmental trends in a magnifying glass. The question isn't just what the coronavirus crisis “does to us”; on the contrary, “what we do” with the crisis is far more relevant. The momentum of the crisis should be used to turn the juxtaposition and partial opposition of two very important developmental trends into a collaborative process for creating something new: We need to be building synergies from the interaction of digitalisation and sustainability! Both developments – digitalisation and sustainability – are based on similar basic principles. It therefore is no accident that both fields make use of the “ecosystem” concept. The sustainability community …

We are in the midst of one of the biggest global wake-up calls in history, threatening both individual lives and entire economic and social systems. Let’s make sure we don’t learn the wrong lesson. It’s not just a public health emergency. It’s something bigger. It’s nature telling us that the new global ecology that we have created through our ravaging of Earth’s resources holds great risks for humanity. It’s telling us that local impacts of our actions are transmitted through the global ocean, the global atmosphere and though global cultural, economic, trade and travel networks to become global impacts. It’s telling us that national solutions alone are quite inadequate, that viruses and …

Work is currently underway worldwide to stop COVID-19 from spreading and to develop a suitable vaccine. This is absolutely right and important, and is as much a top priority as maintaining the functioning of the public health system and providing care for people who have fallen ill with the virus.

At the same time, the huge shortterm economic consequences of the corona-virus crisis must be tackled with suitable instruments so that businesses in the country remain able to operate and can contribute to the country’s economic recovery after the crisis. This requires straightforward, pragmatic and unbureaucratic efforts so as to achieve a sufficiently rapid response and breadth of impact.

Mech …

“The only thing missing right now is an invasion by extra-terrestrials,” is what a friend who works as a journalist said to me at the weekend. Her words seemed to sum up the strange situation in which our society currently finds itself. Over the months to come, decisions will be taken that determine our lives in the 2020s.

We are currently in a situation that experts have described as the perfect storm – a multidimensional crisis in which reciprocal dynamics of varying magnitude can cause considerable damage. Three forces must be tamed, which is possible, but in no way certain.

The first is the coronavirus crisis: if we fail to bring the virus under control and prevent it from spreading …