1. Making the COVID-19 crisis a real opportunity for environmental sustainability
- Author
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Annegret Haase, Erik Gawel, Paul Lehmann, Johannes Schiller, Robert Lepenies, Mariana Madruga de Brito, Daniela Thrän, Matthias Groß, Sebastian Strunz, and Danny Otto
- Subjects
Green recovery ,Health (social science) ,Sociology and Political Science ,Geography, Planning and Development ,010501 environmental sciences ,Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law ,01 natural sciences ,03 medical and health sciences ,Politics ,0302 clinical medicine ,Momentum (finance) ,Narrative ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Nature and Landscape Conservation ,Sustainable development ,Global and Planetary Change ,Window of opportunity ,Pandemic ,Ecology ,Policy mix ,COVID-19 ,Subsidy ,Sustainability transitions ,Sustainability ,Note and Comment ,030221 ophthalmology & optometry ,Business ,Economic system - Abstract
An optimistic narrative has gained momentum during the first year of the pandemic: the COVID-19 crisis may have opened a window of opportunity to “rebuild better”, to spur societal transitions towards environmental sustainability. In this comment, we review first evidence of individual and political changes made so far. Findings suggest that economies worldwide are not yet building back better. Against this background, we argue that a naïve opportunity narrative may even impair the progress of transitions towards environmental sustainability because it may render green recovery measures ineffective, costly, or infeasible. Based on these observations, we derive conditions for green recovery policies to succeed. They should consist of a policy mix combining well-targeted green subsidies with initiatives to price emissions and scrap environmentally harmful subsidies. Moreover, green recovery policies must be embedded into a narrative that avoids trading off environmental sustainability with other domains of sustainability—and rather highlights respective synergies that can be realized when recovering from the COVID-19 crisis.
- Published
- 2021