Letter Letter from from the the Editor Editor
Letter from the Editor
Credit: United Nations COVID-19 Response
-When I last wrote to you, we were reeling from the devastating Australian bushfires that had killed over one billion animals. Discussions about the urgency of climate change were surging in the press. Then, as fast as our focus had sharpened on the pressing need to address our ailing climate, COVID-19 spread across the world, shifting our attention to “flatten the curve” of a global epidemic. But as news cycles shift from one global catastrophe to another, we should be reminded that climate change and COVID-19 require the same set of actions: They can only be abated by resilience thinking that reduces our vulnerability to external shocks, such as disease, economic fluctuations, floods and famine. Although none of us could see this specific virus coming, we definitely saw ourselves hanging from
Beth Schaefer Caniglia, Ph.D The Solutions Journal Editor-in-Chief
an ever thinning thread. Winnowing resources and increasing inequality have left us vulnerable to a dystopian future, where competition for scarce resources deteriorates into “Us” versus “Them” in an epic battle for survival. We are living in that world now. Our efforts to increase density in cities to lessen waste through economies of scale have provided the ideal conditions for this virus to spread. Almost overnight, tens of millions of people worldwide lost their jobs, restaurants boarded their doors, international travel and trade ground to an abrupt stop. The vulnerabilities in our local and global systems were revealed in an instant. Much of my own research and writing has focused on the factors that predict vulnerability when crises occur. In my book Resilience, Environmental Justice and the City, I wrote: When we look at inequality and resilience at the international level, three critical dimensions are highlighted in the sociological literature: the exposure and impacts of … disasters; the ability of elites to exclude the poor from decision-making and available resources; and the power of industrialized nations to dominate the international institutions that create policies, treaties and other cooperative agreements.1 These findings are as relevant for the spread and devastation of COVID-19 as they are for other economic, technical, and natural crises. Some can shelter, while others remain exposed. Frontline workers, whether fire fighters, health
8 | Solutions | Spring 2020 | www.thesolutionsjournal.com