There has been much fatuous talk worldwide about what we might learn or change as a result of COVID-19.  It is clearly possible that some might take the events of the past months (and the undefined time ahead) to reflect on potential lessons. 

However, it is obvious from the insistent demands to reignite our economy (definitely not to be confused with our society) and for a return to ‘business as usual’, that reflection is far from the minds of many.

Once again, we seem determined to plunge headlong into the same mad frenzy of growth and consumption as if our very lives depended on it, and damn anyone or anything that gets in the way.  It is already abundantly clear that the quality of life, even in this tiny corner of the world, is fast going down the toilet.

We have known for a long time that we live in a world where there are "winners" and there are "losers" and, so long as we perceive ourselves to be among the "winners" then all is OK.  Except by now, some of us (but not enough of us) have begun to suspect all is not well with this ‘normal’.  Increasing inequalities worldwide and locally, officially sanctioned criminality, extremist environmental destruction etc. highlight what we intuitively know - even "winners" are quickly becoming "losers".   

For example, the pandemic came at precisely the same time when food security worldwide and international food systems were already under strain. Conflict, natural disaster, climate change, and the arrival of pests and attendant plagues on a transcontinental scale preceded COVID-19 and were already undermining food security in many contexts. These realities have been highlighted by a number of very recent reports from the UN, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Wildlife Fund.

One core message is clear from such reports, and it's nothing we didn’t already know – our relationship with nature is badly broken and our obsession with economic growth at all costs is toxic.  Once again, the science reports that all is not yet lost but that the reckoning is in full view. There is much that we can and must do.

A woman looks out the door of a chemical bathroom cabin before taking a shower at an area provided for homeless people to take a shower and eat amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Medellin, Colombia. Photo: AFP

In recent days and weeks, we have seen the close connections between industrialised food (especially meat) production and the current pandemic. Meat processing plants and food markets are being forced to close in many locations due to serious COVID-19 outbreaks.  Simultaneously, farmers have been burying perishable produce or dumping milk as a result of supply chain disruption and falling consumer demand.  As a result, many people in cities worldwide (to say nothing of the world’s poorest people) struggle even more to access needed fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat and fish.

And non-industrialised farmers continue to struggle to make a decent livelihood.

Prior to the pandemic, more than 820 million people worldwide were already ‘chronically food insecure’ and current trends indicate that some 135 million people are now at crisis level. That number could double by the end of the year. 

It is estimated that the pandemic could push an additional 49 million people into extreme poverty in 2020 alone.  This is likely to lead to a rapid increase in the numbers acutely ‘food or nutrition insecure’ in the coming three to four months.

But, to quote a well-known demagogue, these human beings are just life’s "losers". 

Intuitively and viscerally we all know that it doesn’t have to be this way.  There is nothing immutable, inevitable and unavoidable about our current growth models and projections.  Each of us is acutely aware of different dimensions of the damage being done to our families, communities, societies and the planet.  There are obvious and practical alternatives, most of which we are already familiar with. 

Yet, we remain emotionally resistant to those changes urgently needed and in thrall to an obsolete and past its sell-by date model of development.  Refusing to learn, we appear to uncritically endorse the same old, same old.