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Apocalypse Now? Initial Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic for the Governance of Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks

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Apocalypse Now? Initial Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic for the Governance of Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks journal of international humanitarian legal studies 11 (2020) 295-310 brill.com/ihls Apocalypse Now? Initial Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic for the Governance of Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks Hin-Yan Liu, Kristian Lauta and Matthijs Maas Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract This paper explores the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic through the framework of exis- tential risks – a class of extreme risks that threaten the entire future of humanity. In doing so, we tease out three lessons: (1) possible reasons underlying the limits and shortfalls of international law, international institutions and other actors which Covid-19 has revealed, and what they reveal about the resilience or fragility of institu- tional frameworks in the face of existential risks; (2) using Covid-19 to test and refine our prior ‘Boring Apocalypses’ model for understanding the interplay of hazards, vul- nerabilities and exposures in facilitating a particular disaster, or magnifying its effects; and (3) to extrapolate some possible futures for existential risk scholarship and governance. Keywords Covid-19 – pandemics – existential risks – global catastrophic risks – boring apocalypses 1 Introduction: Our First ‘Brush’ with Existential Risk? All too suddenly, yesterday’s ‘impossibilities’ have turned into today’s ‘condi- tions’. The impossible has already happened, and quickly. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, both directly and as manifested through the far-reaching global societal responses to it, signal a jarring departure away from even the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/18781527-01102004Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 12:13:00AM via free access <UN> 296 Liu, Lauta and Maas recent past, and suggest that our futures will be profoundly different in its af- termath. Such profound shock cannot but demand reflection and reassess- ments of how society, policy,1 and scholarship comprehend and respond to crisis; in this sense, the pandemic can also prove a fertile moment. In this pa- per, we will explore the myriad of lessons that we can learn from Covid-19 for the governance of so-called ‘existential risks’ – a class of extreme risks that threaten the future of humanity.2 At the outset, we note the distinction between ‘global catastrophic risk’,3 and its extreme subset of ‘existential risks’. A ‘global catastrophic risk’ refers to a threat that is global in scope, catastrophic in intensity, and (often) uncertain (but nonzero) in probability;4 existential risks are an extreme subset of global catastrophic risks. Thus, existential risks are disasters that threaten ‘to cause the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or to reduce its quality of life (compared to what would otherwise have been possible) permanently and drastically’.5 This distinction matters: scholars have long recognized the threat from ‘global catastrophic biorisks’,6 urging that the mitigation of such pandem- ics should be a global priority. Given that humanity has survived the plagues of the past, however, natural pandemics and many other ‘natural’ hazards may have only a low probability of ever bringing about full and terminal extinction or even ‘irreversible societal collapse’, and therefore would not qualify as ‘true’ existential risks.7 1 For a discussion of new, reconceptualised approaches to biosecurity governance, see Sam Weiss Evans et al, ‘Embrace Experimentation in Biosecurity Governance’ (2020) 368 Science 138. 2 Nick Bostrom, ‘Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Haz- ards’ (2002) 9(1) Journal of Evolution and Technology <nickbostrom.com/existential/risks .html>; Nick Bostrom and Milan M Cirkovic, Global Catastrophic Risks (1st edn, Oxford Uni- versity Press 2011); Nick Bostrom, ‘Existential Risk Prevention as a Global Priority’ (2013) 4 Global Policy 15. 3 Bostrom and Cirkovic (n 2). 4 Nick Bostrom and Milan M Cirkovic, ‘Introduction’, Global catastrophic risks (Oxford Univer- sity Press 2011); cf Nathan Alexander Sears, ‘Existential Security: Towards a Security Frame- work for the Survival of Humanity’ (2020) 11 Global Policy 255, 256. 5 Bostrom, ‘Existential Risks’ (n 2) 381. 6 Nancy D Connell, ‘The Challenge of Global Catastrophic Biological Risks’ (2017) 15 Health Security 345; Megan J Palmer et al, ‘On Defining Global Catastrophic Biological Risks’ (2017) 15 Health Security 347. 7 Andrew E Snyder-Beattie, Toby Ord and Michael B Bonsall, ‘An Upper Bound for the Back- ground Rate of Human Extinction’ (2019) 9 Scientific Reports <www.researchgate.net/publi- cation/334769066_An_upper_bound_for_the_background_rate_of_human_extinction>; Seth D Baum et al, ‘Long-Term Trajectories of Human Civilization’ (2019) 21 Foresight 53; see journal of international humanitarian legal studiesDownloaded from11 (2020) Brill.com09/27/2021 295-310 12:13:00AM via free access <UN> Apocalypse Now? 297 It is clear that the collective failure to prepare for and respond to Covid-19 – despite ample warnings – demonstrates the lack of preparedness for globally catastrophic risks. This in turn suggests general under-preparedness for ‘truly’ existential risks. The overarching aim of this paper is to extract lessons from the Covid-19 experience for the governance of existential risk. Given the brev- ity of this paper, we present a necessarily cursory argument that covers a lot of ground even as events continue to unfold. Thus, our aim here is to indicate the paths that existential risks scholarship can, and should, proceed in the wake of Covid-19. We will first elaborate upon the direct lessons for existential risk governance, with reference to the international legal framework by treating Covid- 19 as a ‘first’ case. We then proceed to contextualise these lessons by examining their generalisability. Finally, we ask how Covid-19 and its responses might change both the risk and governance landscape and what lessons we might draw for the futures of existential risk governance. 2 The Case of Covid-19: Failure of International Institutions and Lessons for Existential Risks Responses Covid-19 has brought the world to a standstill. Rarely has a hazard so effec- tively and profoundly impacted lives and livelihoods on a global scale. Thus, Covid-19 appears to be a key test of our present institutional setup that deals with risks, both in organisational and legal terms. Institutionally, the World Health Organisation (‘who’) is responsible for the global response to pandemics with reference to the International Health Regu- lation (‘ihr’). The ihr was originally adopted in 1969 to replace the Interna- tional Sanitary Regulations, and was last modified in 2005 at the Fifty-eighth World Health Assembly.8 The ihr aims ‘… to prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease’.9 The ihr is mainly a coordination and information sharing mechanism, impos- ing obligations to notify other parties of potential public health threats emerg- ing within one’s jurisdiction (see Articles 5–8). One of the innovations of the also Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Hachette Books 2020). 8 World Health Organization, International Health Regulations (2005) – Third Edition (who 2005) (‘ihr’). 9 Ibid art 2. journal of international humanitarian legal studiesDownloaded 11 from (2020) Brill.com09/27/2021 295-310 12:13:00AM via free access <UN> 298 Liu, Lauta and Maas 2005 regulation was a general obligation to take particular safeguards relating to ensuring sufficient preparation of public health response capacities (see Article 13), decision-making, and communication. The burden of the actual response, however, remains with the parties. The ihr outlines eight core capacities that contracting parties need to keep up and strengthen, and evaluates and tests these capacities regularly (see ihr, Annex A).10 The burden of, and to a wide extent the decisions inherent in, the actual response, however, again remains with the parties (see Article 3(4)). More practically, a number of concrete decisions must be based on particu- lar grounds or procedural steps: according to Article 43(2), any additional health measures must be based on ‘(a) scientific principles; (b) available scien- tific evidence of a risk to human health, or where such evidence is insufficient, the available information including from who and other relevant intergovern- mental organizations and international bodies; and (c) any available specific guidance or advice from who’.11 Beyond this core institutional mechanism, however, the pandemic obvi- ously engages diverse disputes within other regimes of international law, rang- ing from human rights to trade law, and from peace and security law, to the law of development finance.12 The ongoing Covid-19 response seems to indicate that this global system has largely failed. At a broad scale, many states, including the US,13 Denmark,14 10 Ibid annex i. 11 Ibid art 43(2). 12 See Armin von Bogdandy and Pedro Villarreal, ‘International Law on Pandemic Re- sponse: A First Stocktaking in Light of the Coronavirus Crisis’ (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (mpil) 2020) 2020–07 <papers.ssrn.com/ abstract=3561650> accessed 8 April 2020; see also Morten Broberg, ‘A Critical Appraisal of the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (2005) in Times of Pandemic: It Is Time for Revision’ (2020) 11(2) European Journal of Risk
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