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COVID-19 and a Green Recovery Building Back Better: What It Means, Why We Need It, and the Environmental Connection

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COVID-19 and a Green Recovery Building Back Better: What It Means, Why We Need It, and the Environmental Connection PHILANTHROPY BRIEFING Environmental Funders Network COVID-19 and a green recovery Building Back Better: what it means, why we need it, and the environmental connection LIZ GADD AUGUST 2020 COVID-19 AND A GREEN RECOVERY Contents What is ‘building back better’? ..................................................................................... 4 Transition to cleaner energy production, decarbonising the economy ....................................5 Strengthened green industries and creation of new jobs .....................................................7 Reduced social and economic inequalities, building societal resilience to climate change .......... 8 Protection and restoration of the natural environment ......................................................9 The role of the third sector ........................................................................................10 Further information ..................................................................................................11 Example eNGOs working to ‘build back better’. 12 References .............................................................................................................13 About the Environmental Funders Network (EFN) EFN is collaborating to secure a truly EFN does not hold funds, consider or make sustainable and just world, fit for people and grants, or advise fundraisers. Please do not send nature. Our mission is to increase financial funding requests to EFN as we cannot respond support for environmental causes and to help to them. Funders interested in joining EFN or environmental philanthropy to be as effective finding out more about the network should as it can be. Our members are funders, mainly contact us at [email protected]. This report, based in the United Kingdom, who pursue these along with other EFN publications and resources aims at home and overseas. As their network we relevant to environmental philanthropy, is will work inclusively, efficiently, transparently, available on the Resources page of our website: accountably, and to high standards of social and www.greenfunders.org/resources. environmental responsibility. About this report The Environmental Funders Network is (NPC). Liz works within NPC’s Research and grateful to Liz Gadd for writing this and the Consulting team as a Senior Consultant, and other philanthropy briefings in the ‘COVID-19 works with charities and funders to improve and the environment’ series while on furlough their effectiveness and efficiency. leave from her role at New Philanthropy Capital Cover image © Campaign against Climate Change 2 2 COVID-19 AND A GREEN RECOVERY What is ‘building back better’? Globally, two thirds of citizens believe that Sooner or later we will find a the climate change crisis is as serious as the COVID-19 crisis and feel that if their “vaccine for the coronavirus. But there governments do not act now to combat climate is no vaccine for climate change. 1 change, they will be failing their citizens . And Therefore [we] need a recovery plan as discussion builds on what happens next, 94% of the UK population say that they do not designed for the future. want to return to the same type of economy as URSULA VON DER LEYEN, EU COMMISSION” PRESIDENT before the pandemic2. The slogan ‘build back better’ is a banner for Many third sector bodies are coming together post-pandemic green economic stimulus to highlight these issues, including the Build packages that include social policies to address Back Better coronavirus recovery campaign6 inequality. For many, the demands build upon and via calls to government coordinated by the ‘green new deal’ concept, promoted in the Climate Coalition7 and New Economics a range of countries since the 2008 global Foundation8. financial crisis3. The world may not have been Environmental issues played a key role in ready for this change in 2009, but many believe causes of the COVID-19 pandemic and therefore the moment is now right4. There are variations are addressed in the goals for recovery. Our in the demands for change between countries unsustainable patterns of consumption led and groups. However, the similarities are well directly to COVID-19 though habitat destruction captured by the Green New Deal UK’s definition and our encroachment on nature (probably of ‘a world free from poverty, insecurity, and including the illegal wildlife trade, although climate breakdown, where everyone lives this has not yet been proven), then our high fulfilled, healthy lives’5. Common goals within levels of global air travel spread the virus faster the build back better and green new deal than we could contain it. Air pollution (as well debate are: as, potentially, hormone disrupting chemicals • Transition to cleaner energy production, in food and consumer products) made us decarbonising the economy more vulnerable to COVID-19’s worst effects by • Strengthened green industries and creation weakening our immune systems. In this way, of new jobs COVID-19 effectively highlights why we need to restore nature and decarbonise our economy – Reduced social and economic inequalities, • while, having put such a catastrophic spanner building societal resilience to climate change in the works, giving us the imperative to address • Protection and restoration of the natural our economic system. environment For all of the suffering and sacrifice people have endured during this health “crisis, it has provided us with a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform the way we live, travel and work – tackling the health, climate and nature crises all at the same time…If we fail to get this right, we may never get another chance. JOHN SAUVEN, CEO OF GREENPEACE UK ” 3 COVID-19 AND A GREEN RECOVERY Transition to cleaner energy production, decarbonising the economy Decarbonisation is the leading demand from Evidence is clear that global temperature proponents of green recovery packages. rises must be kept below 1.5°C by 2030 if we We need to achieve a net-zero economy are to avert catastrophic climate change. by mid-century if we are to meet the 1.5°C Decarbonising our economy will help us avoid global warming limit agreed in the 2015 Paris global devastation in the form of sea level Agreement9. Net-zero means that we ensure rises; increased storms, floods, droughts and that any remaining carbon emissions are heat waves; and widespread decimation of balanced by absorbing an equivalent amount biodiversity on land and sea. from the atmosphere. The goal is to minimize During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen the worst effects of climate change, which an unprecedented fall in emissions (more result from increasing levels of greenhouse than during any previous war and more gases in the atmosphere (chiefly carbon-based than six times greater than during the 2008 emissions like carbon dioxide). Increasing financial crisis10). The International Energy levels of greenhouse gases are primarily Agency estimates we will have reduced our caused by our burning of fossil fuels and emissions by 8 per cent this year11. To meet our degradation, conversion and removal of climate targets, we would need to sustain healthy habitats like forests, to make way for this level of emissions reduction every year agriculture and to produce products like timber this decade – the United Nations estimates and cellulose. at a rate of 7.6 per cent each year12 – however © Gretar Ívarsson, Nesjavellir Power Plant 4 COVID-19 AND A GREEN RECOVERY maintaining the current lockdown measures is, before20. Such concerns are well founded, as of course, unsustainable longer-term. Instead, after the 2008 financial crash a 1 per cent fall in to reduce emissions, we need to break our emissions in 2009 was followed by a near 6 per dependence on fossil fuels. The COVID-19 cent rise in 2010 as a result of the conventional pandemic provides governments, businesses, stimulus packages deployed 21. This is why and communities with an unprecedented organisations such as the Climate Coalition, opportunity to do things differently as we representing 140 organisations and over 22 rebuild. million members, have called for bailouts of polluting industries to be conditional on action The drumbeat for a green recovery is getting plans to contribute to the UK’s moves toward louder and coming from many directions. In net-zero and the 1.5°C global warming limit. addition to wide third-sector calls for change13, Additional calls to action include prioritising over 150 global corporations have urged investment and reskilling in renewable energy, world leaders to lead a net-zero recovery from energy efficiency and zero carbon transport COVID-19 14, 200 health sector organisations infrastructure, alongside investment in the representing at least 40 million health workers transition to a UK land use and farming system from around the world have written to the G20 that is positive for nature, climate and human seeking a green recovery package15, and, in the health. Such calls sit alongside an awareness of UK, a cross-party group of MPs has called for the impact our decisions have on vulnerable an extra £30 billion to aid green recovery from countries and communities worldwide and COVID-1916. Even Boris Johnson has said that ‘we associated calls to collaborate and act at home owe it to future generations to build back better’17. and abroad.22 However, environmental gains are far There is a health angle to decarbonising the from guaranteed. For example, polluters economy that the pandemic has rendered all are campaigning against green recovery
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