Interactions between two existential threats: COVID-19 and climate change

Can Stringent Government Initiatives Lead to Global Economic Recovery Rapidly during the COVID-19 Epidemic?

This paper investigates the effectiveness of government measures implemented against COVID-19 and the factors influencing a country's economic growth from a global perspective. With the help of the data of the Government Response Stringency Index (GRSI), Google mobility, and confirmed COVID-19 daily cases, we conducted a panel model for 105 countries and regions from 11 March 2020 to 31 June 2021 to explore the effects of response policies in different countries against the pandemic. First, the results showed that staying in residential places had the strongest correlation with confirmed cases. Second, in countries with higher government stringency, stay-at-home policies carried out in the early spread of the pandemic had the most effective the impact. In addition, the results have also been strictly robustly analyzed by applying the propensity score matching (PSM) method. Third, after reconstructing a panel data of 47 OECD countries, we further concluded that governments should take stricter restrictive measures in response to COVID-19. Even though it may also cause a shock to the market in the short term, this may not be sustainable. As long as the policy response is justified, it will moderate the negative effect on the economy over time, and finally have a positive effect.

COVID-19 response in Africa: impacts and lessons for environmental management and climate change adaptation

The COVID-19 pandemic adds pressure on Africa; the most vulnerable continent to climate change impacts, threatening the realization of most Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The continent is witnessing an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, and environmental change. The COVID-19 was managed relatively well across in the continent, providing lessons and impetus for environmental management and addressing climate change. This work examines the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment and climate change, analyses its management and draws lessons from it for climate change response in Africa. The data, findings and lessons are drawn from peer reviewed articles and credible grey literature on COVID-19 in Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic spread quickly, causing loss of lives and stagnation of the global economy, overshadowing the current climate crisis. The pandemic was managed through swift response by the top political leadership, research and innovations across Africa providing possible solutions to COVID-19 challenges, and redirection of funds to manage the pandemic. The well-coordinated COVID-19 containment strategy under the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention increased sharing of resources including data was a success in limiting the spread of the virus. These strategies, among others, proved effective in limiting the spread and impact of COVID-19. The findings provide lessons that stakeholders and policy-makers can leverage in the management of the environment and address climate change. These approaches require solid commitment and practical-oriented leadership.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10668-023-02956-0.

The ecosyndemic framework of the global environmental change and the COVID-19 pandemic

The ecosyndemic theory combines the concept of 'synergy' with 'epidemic' and the term "eco" implies the role of the environmental changes. Each of the conditions enhances the negative impacts of the other in an additive way making our society more vulnerable and heightening individual risk factors. In this study, we analyze the mutually reinforcing links between the environment and health from the complexity angle of the ecosyndemic theory and propose the characterization of the COVID-19 pandemic as ecosyndemic. We use the term 'ecosyndemic' because the global environmental change contributes to local-scale, regional-scale and global-scale alterations of the Earth's systems. These changes have their root causes in the way that people interact with the physical, chemical, and biotic factors of the environment. These interactions disturb nature and the consequences have feedbacks in every living organism.

COVID-19, climate change, and the finite pool of worry in 2019 to 2021 Twitter discussions

Climate change mitigation has been one of the world's most salient issues for the past three decades. However, global policy attention has been partially diverted to address the COVID-19 pandemic for the past 2 y. Here, we explore the impact of the pandemic on the frequency and content of climate change discussions on Twitter for the period of 2019 to 2021. Consistent with the "finite pool of worry" hypothesis both at the annual level and on a daily basis, a larger number of COVID-19 cases and deaths is associated with a smaller number of "climate change" tweets. Climate change discussion on Twitter decreased, despite 1) a larger Twitter daily active usage in 2020 and 2021, 2) greater coverage of climate change in the traditional media in 2021, 3) a larger number of North Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, and 4) a larger wildland fires area in the United States in 2020 and 2021. Further evidence supporting the finite pool of worry is the significant relationship between daily COVID-19 cases/deaths on the one hand and the public sentiment and emotional content of climate change tweets on the other. In particular, increasing COVID-19 numbers decrease negative sentiment in climate change tweets and the emotions related to worry and anxiety, such as fear and anger.

Climate change and COVID-19: Interdisciplinary perspectives from two global crises

The repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change - two major current global crises - are far-reaching, the parallels between the two are striking, and their influence on one another are significant. Based on the wealth of evidence that has emerged from the scientific literature during the first two years of the pandemic, this study argues that these two global crises require holistic multisectoral mitigation strategies. Despite being different in nature, neither crisis can be effectively mitigated without considering their interdependencies. Herein, significant interactions between these two crises are highlighted and discussed. Major implications related to the economy, energy, technology, environment, food systems and agriculture sector, health systems, policy, management, and communities are detailed via a review of existing joint literature. Based on these outcomes, practical recommendations for future research and management are provided. While the joint timing of these crises has created a global conundrum, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated opportunities and lessons for devising sustainable recovery plans in relation to the climate crisis. The findings indicated that governments should work collaboratively to develop durable and adjustable strategies in line with long-term, global decarbonisation targets, promote renewable energy resources, integrate climate change into environmental policies, prioritise climate-smart agriculture and local food systems, and ensure public and ecosystem health. Further, differences in geographic distributions of climate change and COVID-19 related death cases revealed that these crises pose different threats to different parts of the world. These learnings provide insights to address the climate emergency - and potential future global problems with similar characteristics - if international countries act urgently and collectively.

An analysis of awe evoked by COVID-19 on green purchasing behavior: A dual-path effect of approach-avoidance motivation

The spread of the COVID-19 virus shows that it is time to re-emphasize the ethical attitude of “awe of others, awe of nature, and awe of life.” It once again reveals the importance of green development. In this study, we introduce awe into the context of COVID-19 and construct an “emotion-motivation-behavior” framework, aiming to explore the relationship between the epidemic and green purchasing behavior from a psychological perspective. Study 1 demonstrates the effect of awe on green purchasing and examines the mediating role of the motivation perspective, to reveal the potential different path. Specifically, prosocial motivation mediates the effect of positive awe evoked by COVID-19 on green purchasing; risk avoidance motivation mediates the effect of negative awe evoked by COVID-19 on green purchasing. Study 2 examined the moderating effect of self-construal. These findings have important management implications for enterprises to correctly use emotional guidance strategies and promote green marketing practices during the COVID-19.

The existential risk space of climate change

Climate change is widely recognized as a major risk to societies and natural ecosystems but the high end of the risk, i.e., where risks become existential, is poorly framed, defined, and analyzed in the scientific literature. This gap is at odds with the fundamental relevance of existential risks for humanity, and it also limits the ability of scientific communities to engage with emerging debates and narratives about the existential dimension of climate change that have recently gained considerable traction. This paper intends to address this gap by scoping and defining existential risks related to climate change. We first review the context of existential risks and climate change, drawing on research in fields on global catastrophic risks, and on key risks and the so-called Reasons for Concern in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We also consider how existential risks are framed in the civil society climate movement as well as what can be learned in this respect from the COVID-19 crisis. To better frame existential risks in the context of climate change, we propose to define them as those risks that threaten the existence of a subject, where this subject can be an individual person, a community, or nation state or humanity. The threat to their existence is defined by two levels of severity: conditions that threaten (1) survival and (2) basic human needs. A third level, well-being, is commonly not part of the space of existential risks. Our definition covers a range of different scales, which leads us into further defining six analytical dimensions: physical and social processes involved, systems affected, magnitude, spatial scale, timing, and probability of occurrence. In conclusion, we suggest that a clearer and more precise definition and framing of existential risks of climate change such as we offer here facilitates scientific analysis as well societal and political discourse and action.