Giving Compass' Take:

• Amar Bhattacharya and Nicholas Stern discuss resilience and collaboration in recovering from crisis with a renewed sense of climate urgency.

• Recovering from crisis requires a concerted, collaborative effort. What are you doing to work together with those around you for coronavirus response? What can we learn about the global connections between health, climate, and economy?

• Find out how you can get involved in recovering from crisis with effective funding.

The importance of resilience and the dangers of ignoring the links between nature, pandemics and climate have come to the fore as this pandemic has taken hold. The crisis has also underscored the importance of inclusion and social cohesion, and of internationalism.

At the same time the need to respond to the threat of climate change remains just as urgent, with mounting emissions and evidence on the rising costs and risks of climate change (including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5oC of 2018). While there has been progress on many different fronts and by different players on climate action, collectively the world is falling far short of what science tells us is needed to respond to the threat of climate change.

The current crisis presents the risk of a major depression. We are in a moment more like the post-WWII era, with its dislocated economies and risks of mass unemployment, than any global financial crisis, including that of 2008–09. An extraordinary collective response from the world is needed to get through, as was necessary in the 1940s.

The challenge is to avoid a depression and to set off on a new path of growth that responds to the climate threat.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic is still unfolding. Beyond its evident profound human costs and great loss of life, the pandemic is enacting enormous economic and social costs, even in countries that have not experienced large numbers of infections.

While we have the knowledge and the means to emerge out of this crisis stronger and better, there is a significant risk that we could go the other way.

Only with collective mobilisation and solidarity will we overcome the crisis and build a better world – strong, inclusive, sustainable and resilient.

Read the full article about recovering from crisis by Amar Bhattacharya and Nicholas Stern at LSE.