The speed and scope of the coronavirus spreading across the globe have caught the world governments off guard, dramatically disrupted the economic activity and crashed stock markets, launching a global economic recession. Since COVID-19 first emerged in the Chinese province of Hubei in December, according to the official data of the World Health Organization, it has infected about 1.3 million and killed over 70,000 people worldwide as of the first week of April. This is just the beginning of a chain of events which may turn all aspects of our lives upside down. The world is entering a turbulent time that can only be compared to the Great Depression and World War II.
The old economic system of domination with powerful centres of capital accumulation is falling apart due to the pandemic, losing its status as the only viable alternative. How do we restore the economy, strengthen healthcare and protect the environment in a fair way? To be successful, the “Green New Deal,” which is being discussed in the US and already implemented in Europe, must answer all these questions. First, though, we need to understand how the world has got to this point and what long-term threats we are facing.
Pandemic and the Economic Shock
In rich countries, where emergency measures have been announced, governments and central banks give away trillions of dollars for public expenses, social support to the population and interest-free loans to businesses to mitigate the economic harm of the quarantine. At the same time, in countries of Latin America and Southeast Asia, where millions of people live in cities with big families crammed into tight living spaces, full quarantine is often impossible. People who make money in temporary and low-wage jobs risk losing their means of survival and face starvation if they stay at home. Communities already affected by horrible living conditions, exploitation, inequality and environmental problems are now facing the triple threat of the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and natural disasters driven by climate change.
For countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, this results in an unprecedented healthcare emergency and a deep economic crisis. While richer countries are facing the same problems, poor countries, where billions of people are on the brink of survival even in the best of times, the dangers are much stronger.
While rich countries usually have 2–12 hospital beds per 1,000 people, the ratio in poor countries is just 1 bed per 10,000 people. Adequate healthcare is usually unavailable in refugee camps, while the mortality rate from COVID-19 can be much higher than the 3–4% calculated based on the statistics so far, since the statistics mostly comes from countries with more developed healthcare systems. The level of contagion may be much higher as well due to limited living spaces and bad hygiene.
At the same time, international investments into developing markets are decreasing, with capital being pulled out of them. In 2019, a group of about 20 developing countries, including China, India, South Africa and Brazil, had a net inflow of investments of USD 79 billion. During the past two months in 2020, over USD 70 billion have been pulled out of these countries. This may lead to the national bankruptcy of some of them.
Countries dependent on export of natural resources have to sell oil and other natural resources for low prices due to the global recession in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences. Evidently, these countries will become the victims in the situation of a neocolonial system and have lost the most people and economic resources.
Combined with the negative impact of climate change, the social and economic consequences may be devastating. Meanwhile, centres of capital accumulation may reinforce their positions and use the pandemic to get even richer, gain even more power and unlimited access to natural resources of the most vulnerable countries. The current crisis is ripping the mask of decency and humanity off of the neocolonial system, exposing its predatory lethal nature.
Fighting the New KKK: /k/oronavirus, /k/apitalism and /k/limate
Takeover and redistribution of public goods for the benefit of private interests in the situation of a crisis is a brutal yet fairly regular tactic of right-wing governments, explains prominent Canadian writer Naomi Klein, author of the global bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In this book, written 13 years ago, Klein uses historic examples to illustrate how oligarch groups and their political forces use the disorientation of people after a shocking even, such as a war, a terrorist attack, a market crash or a natural disaster, to restrict democracy, promote privatization and radical neo-liberal policy, which enriches the wealthy at the expense of the poor and the middle class.
Nowhere is this policy more aggressive than in the United States of America, the financial centre of the global neocolonial capitalism. Currently, the attempts to implement “the shock doctrine” are taking place both within the country, against its own population, and towards the so-called “third world” countries — external economic colonies of the US. This is accompanied by radical right and racist attitudes being cultivated in the country. Ku-Klux-Klan is making a comeback — a racist movement founded by Southern slave owners in the XIX century created for organized terror against the exploited black population after the defeat in the Civil War.
The Trump administration wages a consistent war not only against the left and anticolonial social movements, but also against all environmental and “green” ones. Since his election in 2016, Trump has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, even though his country is historically responsible for the highest amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and tried to abolish over 80 environmental legislative provisions. In addition to that, Trump justified right-wing radicals, including the Ku-Klux-Klan, comparing activists and human rights defenders protesting against racism to neo-Nazis attacking peaceful demonstrations in Charlottesville in 2017.
Now Naomi Klein points to the public funding granted to the biggest polluters of the environment and those responsible for the climate crisis: oil and gas mining companies, the coal industry, as well as payments to cruise ships, airlines and hotels — all industries connected with excessive consumption and major greenhouse gas emissions.
“[It] is a big problem because virus isn’t the only crisis that we face. There’s also climate destruction, and these industries that are getting rescued with our money are the ones driving it,” says Naomi Klein.
Is Colonialism at Heart of Planet-Wide Crisis?
In the research published by the American PNAS journal in May 2017, climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, who has analysed the consequences of climate change-related natural disasters, arrived at the conclusion that most poor countries on the Earth have become much poorer than they would be without global warming. At the same time, most rich countries have become richer than they would have otherwise.
In her interview for the French newspaper Le Monde, Donna Haraway, professor of University of California Santa Cruz, points out the deep historic roots of this phenomenon. In the research that she has done with her colleagues Nils Bubandt and Anna Tsing she has proven that climate crisis stems from slavery and colonialism:
“[T]his model of establishing plantations on a large scale preceded industrial capitalism and allowed it to develop, accumulating wealth on the back of human beings reduced to slavery. From the 15th to 19th century, sugar cane plantations in Brazil, then in the Caribbean, were closely linked to the development of mercantilism and colonialism,” explained Haraway, referring to the devastating impact of plantations of the environment and the beginning of mass deforestation.
Malcolm Ferdinand, a researcher at the French national research centre CNRS, commented on the research of his American colleagues, adding that their findings explained how “the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans and their resistance are included in the geological history of the Earth” in the context of man-made climate change.
The least economically developed countries of the Global South are not accountable for the industrial consumption of the natural resources and the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, which are the root cause of the climate change, but it is precisely these countries that are most affected. They also still suffer from exploitation in the neocolonial capitalist system and the so-called “resource curse,” which has had an impact on Ukraine as well.
For instance, oil mining in Nigeria or Azerbaijan does not bring welfare to the population of these countries but makes big transnational companies richer instead and keeps corrupt authoritarian regimes in power. The lack of expenses for maintenance of environmental and social standards makes this oil cheap, driving demand and, respectively, the emissions of СО2 in richer countries where it is consumed.
The predatory attitude to natural resources is obvious even from our experience, as we have witnessed the social and economic disintegration and devastation of Donbas. In this situation, under the auspices of the Russian occupation, certain groups rob the land, coal mines and the remnants of the industrial infrastructure completely, turning the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts into scenes from postapocalyptic films. The new global anticolonial movement must resonate with Ukraine as well.
Crisis or Full Launch of Green New Deal?
As Naomi Klein said, based on her research of modern history, shock and crisis are not always overcome by means of strengthening private interests. A systemic crisis itself may serve as a catalyst for an evolutionary jump for the society.
“Think of the 1930s, when the Great Depression resulted in the New Deal,” says Klein, referring to the prominent period in the US history, when Roosevelt’s socially oriented economic policy helped to overcome the long-term crisis and laid the foundation for rapid growth during the next decades. Now, the idea of the Green New Deal is gaining traction in the US political space, while it is already being implemented in the EU, turning into a plan for strategic development.
In its fifth analytical report, IPCC warns that to maintain the level of global warming between 1.5–2°С and prevent climate change on an irrevocable and catastrophic level, we need to eliminate anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and achieve a balance of emissions and their absorption by 2050 on a global sale. To achieve this, all countries should start treating climate change as a worldwide emergency, which it is, and start taking resolute transformative measures.
Unlike the US with its current oligarchic political system oriented towards maximizing short-term profits, the European Union took the scientists’ warning seriously and announced full decarbonization by 2050 as its political goal, decided to build a new kind of economy, and made a commitment to the Green Deal.
The scope and speed of transformation necessary to change our trajectory and avert the climate catastrophe are unprecedented: in the next 20–30 years, the humankind must achieve energy transition to renewable energy sources and fully terminate the industry of fossil fuels; energy efficiency must be improved, industry must be modernized while agriculture, utilities, transport and infrastructure must be transformed. Thus, this historic analogy with the biggest transformational programme, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, makes a lot of sense.
Rebuilding the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic gives us every chance to reset it based on fair social relations. This is also what members of the Club of Rome, an organization advocating for sustainable development and environmental protection since 1970s, say in their open letter to the world governments:
“COVID-19 has shown us that overnight transformational change is possible. A different world, a different economy is suddenly dawning. This is an unprecedented opportunity to move away from unmitigated growth at all costs and the old fossil fuel economy, and deliver a lasting balance between people, prosperity and our planetary boundaries. We know what the solutions are: investing in renewable energy instead of fossil fuels; investing in nature and reforestation; investing in sustainable food systems and regenerative agriculture; and, shifting to a more local, circular and low carbon economy. These positive actions can also be a much-needed source of collective hope and optimism for life regeneration in these uncertain times,” says the letter.
In Ukraine, like everywhere else in the world, public funds for post-COVID-19 restoration must be directed towards rapid transition to renewable energy sources, implementation of the Green Deal together with the EU and creation of a new wave of productive mass employment of the population, which is needed for comprehensive restructuring of the economy. This transformation also provides an opportunity to stop internal and external exploitation of natural resources and to create sustainable, fair economic relations.
Baseline for Ukraine
In these turbulent times, Ukraine should focus on the European Green Deal, passed in 2019 by the newly appointed European Commission. The prospects of building circular economy in Europe and the termination of fossil fuels import give us an opportunity to make a leap from deindustrialization and post-Soviet recession towards a new “environmental civilization.”
Today, the protection of Ukrainian’s welfare against predatory takeover by oligarchs and corporations is becoming especially urgent in the new round of struggle around key positions and reforms in the energy sector, as well as in connection with the upcoming opening of the land market, scheduled to start in July 2021 under the provisions of the law adopted on March 31.
Combined with the infrastructure programmes of the Green Deal, especially pertaining to the transition to renewable energy sources, replacement of fossil fuels and extended electrification, the land reform may give an impetus to build a new economy, more local, fair and sustainable, with closed circuits of utilization and renewal of resources. Currently, Ukraine has all the conditions and extra pressure of the circumstances to carry out the transition to renewable energy sources and start redirecting itself to eco-friendly agriculture. We can still partake in “green” development and create millions of new jobs. To do this, we need public funds for economic renewals to be directed not towards restructuring of private debt, support of big agricultural companies and further subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, but towards a structural reconstruction, based on circular economy and energy transition.
In this dark period of the pandemic and economic shock, our nation should not undertake the role of a victim — instead, it should unite and leap towards the window of opportunity for profound change, enabled by new technology, renewable energy sources and the land reform. The bright “green” future can already be seen on the global horizon, and it is not as distant and unattainable as it may seem, as long as we confidently move towards it.
As renewable energy sources are becoming more common and thus cheaper, digitalization is happening everywhere and the internet reaching even rural communities, while knowledge, innovation and know-hows of organic agriculture methods are becoming more accessible, there is an enormous potential just ahead of us. Ukraine can and should serve as an example for the whole world, building a new network economy of self-sufficient local communities, which will overcome the resource curse and will build their welfare based on cooperation, care for the environment and the use of clean local production, combined with renewable energy sources.
Imagining this future is the first step towards a revolution.
Author: Oleh Savytskyi, expert on climate and energy policy of the Ukrainian Climate Network
