COVID-19, extractive industries, and indigenous communities in Canada: Notes towards a political economy research agenda

Strengthening a One Health approach to emerging zoonoses

Given the enormous global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Canada, and manifold other zoonotic pathogen activity, there is a pressing need for a deeper understanding of the human-animal-environment interface and the intersecting biological, ecological, and societal factors contributing to the emergence, spread, and impact of zoonotic diseases. We aim to apply a One Health approach to pressing issues related to emerging zoonoses, and propose a functional framework of interconnected but distinct groups of recommendations around strategy and governance, technical leadership (operations), equity, education and research for a One Health approach and Action Plan for Canada. Change is desperately needed, beginning by reorienting our approach to health and recalibrating our perspectives to restore balance with the natural world in a rapid and sustainable fashion. In Canada, a major paradigm shift in how we think about health is required. All of society must recognize the intrinsic value of all living species and the importance of the health of humans, other animals, and ecosystems to health for all.

The commercial determinants of Indigenous health and well-being: a systematic scoping review

INTRODUCTION

Health inequity within Indigenous populations is widespread and underpinned by colonialism, dispossession and oppression. Social and cultural determinants of Indigenous health and well-being are well described. Despite emerging literature on the commercial determinants of health, the health and well-being impacts of commercial activities for Indigenous populations is not well understood. We aimed to identify, map and synthesise the available evidence on the commercial determinants of Indigenous health and well-being.

METHODS

Five academic databases (MEDLINE Complete, Global Health APAPsycInfo, Environment Complete and Business Source Complete) and grey literature (Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, Google Scholar, Google) were systematically searched for articles describing commercial industry activities that may influence health and well-being for Indigenous peoples in high-income countries. Data were extracted by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and narratively synthesised.

RESULTS

56 articles from the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden were included, 11 of which were editorials/commentaries. The activities of the extractive (mining), tobacco, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, alcohol and gambling industries were reported to impact Indigenous populations. Forty-six articles reported health-harming commercial practices, including exploitation of Indigenous land, marketing, lobbying and corporate social responsibility activities. Eight articles reported positive commercial industry activities that may reinforce cultural expression, cultural continuity and Indigenous self-determination. Few articles reported Indigenous involvement across the study design and implementation.

CONCLUSION

Commercial industry activities contribute to health and well-being outcomes of Indigenous populations. Actions to reduce the harmful impacts of commercial activities on Indigenous health and well-being and future empirical research on the commercial determinants of Indigenous health, should be Indigenous led or designed in collaboration with Indigenous peoples.

Dynamic co-movements of COVID-19 pandemic anxieties and stock market returns

In this study, we constructed two pandemic anxiety indexes based on an assumption that people's emotions fluctuate with the COVID-19 reported cases and deaths, to examine the dynamic co-movements between these anxiety indexes and the stock markets in the BRICS and G7 countries. We found that the anxiety indexes are volatile over time but have an overall downtown trend. The correlations between stock market returns and the epidemic anxiety indexes are time varying. We found a common feature across the countries studied, namely that the correlation becomes weaker and has smaller fluctuations after the announcement of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.

The COVID-19 pandemic is intricately linked to biodiversity loss and ecosystem health

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, caused by zoonotic SARS-CoV-2, has important links to biodiversity loss and ecosystem health. These links range from anthropogenic activities driving zoonotic disease emergence and extend to the pandemic affecting biodiversity conservation, environmental policy, ecosystem services, and multiple conservation facets. Crucially, such effects can exacerbate the initial drivers, resulting in feedback loops that are likely to promote future zoonotic disease outbreaks. We explore these feedback loops and relationships, highlighting known and potential zoonotic disease emergence drivers (eg, land-use change, intensive livestock production, wildlife trade, and climate change), and discuss direct and indirect effects of the ongoing pandemic on biodiversity loss and ecosystem health. We stress that responses to COVID-19 must include actions aimed at safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystems, in order to avoid future emergence of zoonoses and prevent their wide-ranging effects on human health, economies, and society. Such responses would benefit from adopting a One Health approach, enhancing cross-sector, transboundary communication, as well as from collaboration among multiple actors, promoting planetary and human health.

How Did the Media Report the Mining Industry's Initial Response to COVID-19 in Inuit Nunangat? A Newspaper Review

Mining in Inuit Nunangat relies on a southern Canada fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) and local workforce. The FIFO workforce, combined with existing social determinants of health, can create health risks to Inuit Nunangat. These risks were increased with COVID-19. As newspaper reporting can shape public opinion and policy actions regarding these COVID-19 risks, we systematically searched databases to identify newspaper articles during the initial phase of COVID-19 (i.e., articles published from 1 January to 30 June 2020). Descriptive statistics and qualitative thematic analysis were used to analyze the nature, range, and extent of included articles. Most included articles were published by Inuit Nunangat-based newspapers. Half the sources quoted were mining companies and most reported reactions to their initial response were negative. The most frequent topic was concern that an infected FIFO employee could transmit COVID-19 to a worksite and subsequently infect Inuit employees and communities. Inuit Nunangat-based newspapers were crucial in shaping the narrative of the initial response. National newspapers mainly focused on the takeover of TMAC™ during the pandemic, while Inuit Nunangat-based newspapers provided timely and locally-relevant pandemic information. Without Inuit Nunangat-based newspapers, the reporting would be from national and southern newspapers, which was less in-depth, less frequent, and less relevant to Inuit.

The Social Lives of Infectious Diseases: Why Culture Matters to COVID-19

Over the course of the year 2020, the global scientific community dedicated considerable effort to understanding COVID-19. In this review, we discuss some of the findings accumulated between the onset of the pandemic and the end of 2020, and argue that although COVID-19 is clearly a biological disease tied to a specific virus, the culture-mind relation at the heart of cultural psychology is nonetheless essential to understanding the pandemic. Striking differences have been observed in terms of relative mortality, transmission rates, behavioral responses, official policies, compliance with authorities, and even the extent to which beliefs about COVID-19 have been politicized across different societies and groups. Moreover, many minority groups have very different experiences of the pandemic relative to dominant groups, notably through existing health inequities as well as discrimination and marginalization, which we believe calls for a better integration of political and socioeconomic factors into cultural psychology and into the narrative of health and illness in psychological science more broadly. Finally, individual differences in, for example, intolerance of uncertainty, optimism, conspiratorial thinking, or collectivist orientation are influenced by cultural context, with implications for behaviors that are relevant to the spread and impact of COVID-19, such as mask-wearing and social distancing. The interplay between cultural context and the experience and expression of mental disorders continues to be documented by cultural-clinical psychology; the current work extends this thinking to infectious disease, with special attention to diseases spread by social contact and fought at least in part through social interventions. We will discuss cultural influences on the transmission, course, and outcome of COVID-19 at three levels: (1) cross-society differences; (2) within-society communities and intergroup relations; and (3) individual differences shaped by cultural context. We conclude by considering potential theoretical implications of this perspective on infectious disease for cultural psychology and related disciplines, as well as practical implications of this perspective on science communication and public health interventions.

Spatio-temporal variations in COVID-19 in relation to the global climate distribution and fluctuations

This study investigated the spatio-temporal variations in the occurrence of COVID-19 (confirmed cases and deaths) in relation to climate fluctuations in 61 countries, scattered around the world, from December 31, 2019 to May 28, 2020. Logarithm transformation of the count variable (COVID-19 cases) was used in a multiple linear regression model to predict the potential effects of weather variables on the prevalence of the disease. The study revealed strong associations (-0.510 ≤ r ≤ -0.967; 0.519 ≤ r ≤ 0.999) between climatic variables and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in majority (68.85%) of the selected countries. It showed evidences of 1 to 7-day delays in the response of the infection to changes in weather pattern. Model simulations suggested that a unit fall in temperature and humidity could increase (0.04-18.70%) the infection in 19.67% and 16.39% of the countries, respectively, while a general reduction (-0.05 to 9.40%) in infection cases was projected in 14.75% countries with a unit drop in precipitation. In conclusion, the study suggests that effective public health interventions are crucial to containing the projected upsurge in COVID-19 cases during both cold and warm seasons in the southern and northern hemispheres.

Now is the time to press the reset button: Helping India's companies to become more resilient and effective in overcoming the impacts of COVID-19, climate changes and other crises

COVID-19 is the pandemic caused by one of the coronaviruses. This virus was not known before the outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. By January of 2020 it was declared to be a global human health crisis. The deaths and illnesses caused by the virus caused extensive fear and anxiety among people in all societies. The pandemic slowed economic activities nearly to a halt. The challenges of how companies should respond to the disruptions in their supply chains and how they can build more resilient systems, must be systematically addressed. The authors of this paper highlighted essential factors which can help companies to overcome this crisis and other types of crises, by learning from the approaches taken in India, which has a unique and diverse economic system. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique was used to identify the essential factors which can help companies to improve their resilience so they can recover during and after the COVID-19 pandemic era and potentially in other similar complex crises. The results of the AHP evaluation were prioritized by performing a sensitivity analysis to prioritise the essential factors. The "Role of governance" was found to be the most important factor that can be used to help in rebuilding industries and societies and in helping them to become more resilient to future severe shocks. The results of this research were used to develop recommendations for company managers, practitioners and policy-makers. The authors hope that this advice will help India to become a stronger nation with more resilient companies, which are better prepared to anticipate and to respond to future crises. We hope people in other nations will also benefit from the finding presented in this paper.

Environmental impacts of pre/during and post-lockdown periods on prominent air pollutants in France

The nationwide lockdown inflicted by the global COVID-19 disease epidemic and imposed during 57 days in France was not immune to fluctuations in atmospheric pollutant concentrations. A whole range of human activities has been suspended Monday 17 March 2020 in all French regions. Since then experiments are progressing to reflect the effectiveness of reduced emissions. In this paper, we looked at variations of pollutants prior to, during and after containment period. In a first step, we proved through experiments on eight air pollutants, how all daily maximum pollutants concentration have decreased during containment phase, apart from the ozone pollutant O₃. This Ozone pollutant has indeed increased by 27.19% during lockdown period and kept growing by 21.35% as well right after deconfinement. Indeed, the maximum daily concentrations detected in different regions of France, have decreased by 18.18%, 37.14%, 20.36%, 9.28%, 44.38%, 5.1% and 44.38%, respectively, for the pollutants SO₂, NO₂, CO, C₆H₆, NOX, PM_2.5 and PM₁₀. Declining levels of other pollutants, however, were not sustained after deconfinement for NO₂, NOX and PM₁₀. We have reinforced these findings by classifying each pollutant according to the ATMO and AQI indexes, to better visualize their criticality throughout the three lockdown phases (Pre/During/Post). The family of air pollutant variables with their associated geographical sources was thereafter exploited to justify their approximate contribution to the daily mortality rates associated to COVID-19 across all French regions. However, more thorough study is still in progress to validate this finding. Finally, coming up to the abrupt changes in airborne pollutants experienced in this period, a question about future climate crisis was raised again. Whereby a weighting study has shown the current and very short-term French scenario (Status-Quo) in view of its current environmental path, the political responses made towards future climate change crisis and French investments done in this sense.

Small-scale gold mining and the COVID-19 pandemic: Conflict and cooperation in the Brazilian Amazon

The COVID-19 pandemic exposes both conflict and cooperation in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon. Reporting on the experiences of artisanal and small-scale gold miners (garimpeiros, in Brazilian Portuguese), we show how, on the one hand, the pandemic challenges an already precarious working system that could lead garimpeiros, often invisible to public policies, to positions of further vulnerability; and, on the other hand, highlights the capacity of garimpeiros to self-organize and navigate the difficulties by finding alternative solutions to cope with the crisis. This leads us to argue that emerging strategies of cooperation, related to self-organization and communication channels have the potential to provide experiences useful for processes of conflict transformation in the post-crisis. We acknowledge that much depends on the severity of the crisis and its manifestations in the region; nevertheless, the potential for constructive outcomes from the crisis should not be disregarded.

California oil: Bridging the gaps between local decision-making and state-level climate action

California has set ambitious climate policies, including economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2045. Yet levels of oil production and consumption remain high in the state. This gap between California's oil politics and its climate ambitions is deepened by decentralized decision-making processes. County officials are tasked with extractive planning decisions that have wide-ranging implications. In this Viewpoint article, we analyze proposals for enhanced extraction at the Cat Canyon oilfield in Santa Barbara County. After two of three proposals were withdrawn in recent months, we highlight how it has been oil industry volatility and public opposition - rather than state regulations - that have brought county development plans into closer alignment with state climate goals. As California pursues a goal of 'managing the decline' of domestic oil production, we identify strategies for bridging such gaps between local decision-making and state-level climate action, including: a comprehensive state-wide ban on new enhanced oil extraction projects; a 2,500 ft buffer zone around extraction sites; and revenue generation schemes that support a just transition. As Covid-19 forces an oil surplus and lowered production, there are opportunities to enact such changes - particularly by redirecting oil industry labor toward the growing problem of well decommissioning.

A brief review of socio-economic and environmental impact of Covid-19

In recent months, Covid-19 has caused significant global social and economic distress. Governments and health officials around the world have introduced mandatory preventive measures to combat Covid-19, i.e., hand sanitizers, gloves, and masks, which have contributed to large quantities of medical wastes. Social distancing and mandatory lockdown have also been put in place to protect people from Covid-19. This epidemic has caused severe demographic changes and unemployment, and economic activities have been shut down to save human lives. Transportation and travel industries are most severely hit as global tourism has fallen to almost zero in recent months; as a solution, economic institutes have introduced stimulus packages worth more than $6 trillion. However, restricted economic activities have also contributed towards a cleaner environment. However, environmental changes are not permanent, and the pollution level may rise again in the future. As a result, current research suggests that policymakers must introduce stringent environmental policies to promote clean energy.