Lessons from Lockdown the Possibilities of Immediate Change
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Lessons from Lockdown The possibilities of immediate change A case study report on rapid transition and the climate, ecological and economic emergencies The possibilities of immediate change 1 CONTENTS 2 Introduction: Pandemic lessons for the climate, 37 Unnecessary travel? The return of breathable ecological and economic emergency air and rethinking transport in a crisis Case studies 45 Culture cures - from passive consumers to active producers, how crisis restrictions open 6 When behaviour changes overnight - from opportunities for creative culture shifts staying-at-home, to smoke free air and switching sides of the road 52 How does your city grow? Lockdown illuminates urban farming and gardening’s potential 14 The great nature rebound - how nature steps up when people step back and both benefit 58 Rethinking work - the sudden end of the regular 9-to-5 working day? 21 Converting industry - how rapid transition happens in crises and upheavals 63 Conclusion: reset and building back better 29 Inspirational crisis-leadership by whole 64 Additional resources communities – goes way beyond heroic individuals 65 Endnotes Introduction: Pandemic lessons for the climate, ecological and economic emergency Key lessons • Pandemics reveal the ability of more sustainable behaviour – such governments to respond at speed as avoiding unnecessary travel and scale and rapidly shift economic – they could be encouraged to priorities to put public health and become the new norm, and made the public interest first. A clear part of the broader response to the understanding of risk can lead to climate emergency. much faster, coordinated responses to an emergency. When communicated • Pandemics and the threat of to the public it can explain and justify them change business-as-usual policy changes that otherwise might overnight. Governments mobilise appear challenging and therefore not huge resources to tackle the problem gain support. and compensate for its impacts. At the same time, people depend • Rapid, physical mobilisation of on the civil and public domains for resources can happen alongside advice, protection, health services quick shifts in behaviour. People can and the whole infrastructure of change their daily habits very quickly, response. Expectations around and adapt to new social norms. how we travel, work and entertain ourselves shift, and we quickly learn • Where adaptations and behaviour to behave in ways that minimise risks changes reveal possibilities for of transmission. Cover photo: istockphoto.com Lessons from Lockdown 2 Flying to attend a conference, for example, As some of the latest climate research might swiftly be replaced by holding points to a growing gap between action an event online. In the midst of the commitments on the climate emergency coronavirus alert, airlines internationally and what the science says is needed, and experience significant falls in passenger a much shorter time in which to act, three bookings that are set to drop still further lessons on rapid transition stand out from as people opt not to fly. Reactions to global pandemic responses: the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, in China have led to emissions reductions in • A clear understanding of risk can lead different industrial sectors ranging from to much faster, coordinated responses 15%–40%. What if plummeting levels of air to an emergency pollution gave publics a lasting taste for cleaner air, could it shift expectations and • Rapid, physical mobilisation of open up new possibilities for change? resources can happen alongside behaviour change. People can change their daily habits very quickly, and Comparing pandemic responses to adapt to new social norms action on climate is more than a simply theoretical exercise. Both require • Where adaptations and behaviour communicating the urgency of action changes reveal possibilities for more and simple advice on what to do. With sustainable behaviour – such as pandemics, public health bodies have avoiding unnecessary travel – they learned the importance of providing quick, should be encouraged to become clear information across multiple platforms the new norm, and made part of the from text messages to newspapers, online broader climate emergency response. and broadcast media. The spread of On May 8, 1980, the 33rd World Health diseases too is strongly linked to global Assembly officially declared the world heating. One difference that argues free of smallpox,1 which killed between for even more vigorous action on the 300–500 million people during its 12,000 climate emergency is that, whilst health year existence. Granted, this was almost authorities are constantly on alert for two centuries after Edward Jenner new pandemics, they cannot know in published his hope that vaccination could advance the precise nature of the threat annihilate the disease, but it was due and must race each time to develop a specifically to public health programs vaccine, the climate crisis and its solutions carried out in a relatively short period have been well known for a long time. from 1959–1977. This is still considered Inadequate action on the climate could the biggest achievement in international even be described as something like public health. In recent years, the global knowing the cure to COVID-19, and failing community faced the new threat of HIV, to manufacture, distribute and treat which has killed 36 million people to people with it. Even though necessary date.2 Today, in most countries, the HIV climate actions require more than rolling virus can be controlled using a cocktail of out a vaccine, they are well known and drugs to prevent AIDS developing, thanks understood. to cooperation between governments, The possibilities of immediate change 3 health agencies and companies enabling for the average American plummeted by the production of generic drugs. The issue a dozen years in a single year.3 There now is ensuring that poorer people have were no vaccines or anti-viral drugs – the access to the medical help that can save first licensed flu vaccine did not appear them. Since 1995, death rates from HIV until the1940s. But by the 1950s, vaccine have dropped by 80%. manufacturers were routinely producing vaccines that would help control and The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 prevent future pandemics. Flu vaccines marched inexorably into peoples’ lives are now produced quickly in response to from late 2019 and they started to notice new strains. This has been made possible sniffles, coughs and spluttering as a thanks to international cooperation potential threat rather than a seasonal coordinated through the World Health nuisance. What can we take from this and Organisation (WHO), bringing together earlier pandemic responses that might research, funding and feet on the ground prove useful for the even bigger, systemic to carry out the necessary programmes of climate challenge? The STEPS Centre work. pointed out that big social-environmental problems perhaps need more plural, Similar coordination on rapid transition locally-sensitive approaches that do could be mobilised on the ground through not necessarily sit comfortably within a range of international agencies; instead, an ‘emergency’ mindset. Yet in many countries have been left to come up with emergency situations, local communities their own ways of reaching the aims are often ‘first responders’ and their of the Paris Agreement. The rhetoric of responses are diverse. Managing international cooperation heard at global pandemics and the climate emergency summits, can be contradicted by the both require an enabling large-scale reality on the ground where inefficiencies framework for effective local action. arise in sharply competitive markets, with And, there is still much to learn from the companies struggling for space in the collaborative global approach to public market. Policy on climate change is being health that is seen in sharp focus at times done via ad-hoc approaches involving of pandemics. From analysing the actual elements of international cooperation, dangers versus hype, and calculating voluntary compliance, and faith in the risk of taking any particular strategy, positive outcomes. In the absence of a to encouraging the wider population on body having jurisdiction over the global board to take preventative action without environment with corresponding legal creating panic, there is much to discover. enforcement authority, the international community has abdicated management We have coped with pandemics in the of the world’s environment to a system of past and are better equipped than ever pledges based on trust in well-meaning 4 to cope with similar future events. In 1918, states. the “Spanish Flu” pandemic infected over a third of the world’s population Pandemics cause governments to prioritise and killed 20–50 million; life expectancy and decide what is most important – Lessons from Lockdown 4 economic growth or human life, fulfilling This report brings together lessons from a dream to travel or looking after our the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic most vulnerable people. With the current ranging across our transport and food viral threat, governments have sought to systems, working life, arts, culture and delay the spread even as we accept we consumerism, nature, the logistical cannot stop it entirely, in order to protect challenges of achieving rapid change, older people, who are more likely to die mutual aid and leadership during crises from its effects. When facing illness, we by communities. It reveals that – despite understand instantly how important it is to some lamenting the apparently impossible protect and prioritise life; yet we have not scale of action needed to reverse climatic taken steps with similar urgency in the face upheaval – people demonstrate they can of our climate crisis. Partly this is the result do just that. They can act rapidly, using of more easily understood cause and the best information at the time, and effect leading to action, and generally focus effort and resources with laser-like well-developed public health procedures accuracy where they were needed. The which are permanently braced for crises, same can be done in the challenge of even if these too can be sorely tested by preserving a habitable climate.