22 May, 2020
With more than 4.5 million confirmed cases and over 300,000 deaths across 216 countries due to COVID-19 over the last 4-5 months, the world has gone viral. With no treatment or vaccine in store to prevent or manage the spread of the novel coronavirus, countries after countries responded to the pandemic by imposing economic and social lockdown as the only viable option to break the chain of transmission, contain spread of the disease and prevent health systems from collapsing under an exponentially rising patient load. The lockdown caused disruption in most of the economic activities – industrial production almost came to a halt, surface and air traffic stopped, and global and local supply chains except for essential commodities and services broke down. Consequently, the environmental externalities of these economic activities – carbon emission, pollution, effluent discharge and noise declined remarkably. Cities across the world experienced improved air quality, rivers and lakes became cleaner with reduced industrial effluents, and people stated witnessing birds and wildlife come closer to their backyards.
With a heightened collective awareness of correlation between the economic lockdown and environmental improvement, conservation organisations and media started reminding us about the interlinkages between the spread of new and re-emerging zoonotic infections and loss of natural habitats and biodiversity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated largest ever year-on-year reduction in global CO2 emissions this year by 8% due to COVID-19 lockdown. Coming out of such unprecedented economic shock will be possible only with government stimulus and rebooting the economy. Many experts and global leaders are calling on governments to consider ‘green recovery’ of the economy, meaning, providing fiscal stimulus for decarbonising economic sectors and scaling up nature-based solutions for environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience.
The storyline in India has been no different. The UN report World Economic Situation and Prospects 2020 has forecasted India’s economic growth at 1.2% in 2020, a further deterioration from the low growth of 4.1% in 2019. The economic lockdown has led to huge employment and income loss for people working in the informal and unorganised sectors. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) reported an unemployment rate of 27.1% in the week ended 3rd May, the highest unemployment rate so far . Daily wage labourers, street hawkers, small traders and self-employed petty service providers account for most of these job losses. Altogether 418 million workers or 89% of all Indian workers fall under the informal work category . Migrant labourer, estimated to be in the range of 120 million to 139 million, constitute a large segment of daily wage earners and informal workers. According to the Azim Premji University COVID-19 Livelihoods Survey, about 80% of urban workers and 57% of rural workers reported losing their work during the lockdown. With little money left and looming hunger in the cities, the migrant workers have been returning to their origins – their villages – in tens of thousands, even if that required undertaking long arduous journey with small children on foot in absence of any public transport during the lockdown.
With the economic, physical and psychological trauma suffered during the lockdown, a large number of migrant workers returning to villages are not likely to come back soon to cities for work. As a result, while urban areas will face labour shortage in the coming months, the rural areas, especially in states with high rural poverty such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, will see labour surplus, further suppressing the low rural wages. Agriculture, with already high disguised unemployment, will not be able to accommodate this surplus labour. CMIE has already reported an increase of farmer count by 6 million in April 2020 compared to the average count of farmers in 2019-20. The rural employment guarantee of 100 days employment in a year per household offered by the MGNREGA may not provide sufficient succour to the surplus rural workforce. The national average employment provided per household under MGNREGA stood at 42 days during 2018-19, with populous and poor states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha reporting much lesser employment generated. With little opportunities in the rural areas, large number of people are likely to fall back on extraction of already stressed natural resources – forests, wetlands and rivers – further exacerbating the future resilience of agriculture and other natural resources-based production systems.
Post lockdown effective economic recovery strategy in India should include stimulus to sectors and activities that will create large scale employment in rural areas in short-term, while safeguarding future resilience of rural production systems and human health. Allocating resources and investing in nature-based solutions (e.g. restoration and rehabilitation of degraded land, forests, water bodies and wetlands) and public health and education infrastructures in rural areas do offer opportunities for creating large scale employment for the surplus labour in the short-term and contributing to sustainable development over medium to long term. Such economic recovery strategy will support and complement implementation of India’s climate policy and commitments to Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. India has pledged restoration of 26 million hectares degraded land by 2030 and NDC goal of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide through additional forest and tree cover. Implementing nature-based solutions for economic recovery will develop adaptive capacities in the rural areas and sector highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Post COVID-19 cannot be pre COVID-19, return to business as usual will be unwise and futile. We will need to reimagine and establish a development paradigm to prevent similar future pandemic and ensure equity and sustainability to human wellbeing. Our developmental policies and strategies need to account for the interlinkages between nature and human health and wellbeing. Though these interlinkages are inherently complex, they are crucial for our survival. India is one of the 17 mega-diverse countries. It is also among the hottest of hotspots for emerging infectious diseases in the world. According to the WHO, environmental change, human and animal demography, pathogen changes and changes in farming practices are some of the factors leading to the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Experts consider the emergence of diseases like COVID-19 a result of mistreated biodiversity and human plunder of ecosystems for short term economic gains. Our future development paradigm needs to be based on ‘One Health’ approach – “a collaborative, multisectoral, and trans-disciplinary approach - working at local, regional, national, and global levels - to achieve optimal health and well-being outcomes recognizing the interconnections between people, animals, plants and their shared environment”. With One Health at the core of economic policies, environment and climate policies, health policy and agriculture policy, we can hope to ‘bend the curve for people and nature’ and accomplish the vision of living in harmony with nature.
By Ravindra Singh
References
The views expressed in this post are purely those of the author.
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