Giving Compass' Take:

• Andrew McCormick highlights strategies from city mayors around the world, who want a climate-conscious economic recovery from the coronavirus.

• Why is it important not to return to the status quo in conservation following the COVID-19 pandemic? What are you doing to influence a climate-conscious economic recovery in your own community?

• Read on about the role different institutions play in generating a climate-conscious economic recovery from COVID.

Trillions of dollars are on the table, as governments around the world seek to dig out from the economic crater caused by the coronavirus. With time also running short to avoid the worst of the climate crisis, a growing consensus of world leaders have urged that Covid-19 recovery spending be "climate-smart."

"This terrible challenge that has caused so much suffering is an opportunity," United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said Monday in an interview with Covering Climate Now. "We can either rebuild as it was, which is a huge mistake, because of the fragilities of the world, or we can rebuild a more inclusive and more sustainable economy and society."

Climate-conscious stimulus spending creates more jobs per dollar invested than do expenditures on fossil fuel projects, according to an Oxford University study of more than 700 stimulus programs initiated after the 2008 global financial crisis. Nevertheless, with the exception of the EU, a majority of Covid-19 recovery spending to date by the world's leading economies has reinforced the carbon-intensive status quo, propping up the very economic sectors and practices that have driven the climate crisis, including the fossil fuel and airline industries.

At the local level, however, leaders are calling for a better way.

In a recent letter coordinated by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, dozens of mayors from the world's biggest cities declared that the economic recovery "should not be a return to 'business as usual,' because [business as usual is] on track for 3 degrees Celsius or more of over-heating." What's more, mayors say, their cities have existing and "shovel-ready" projects that could put climate-smart stimulus spending to work right away, if only national governments or central banks provide it.

Read the full article about a climate-conscious economic recovery from COVID-19 by Andrew McCormick at Inside Climate News.