Lessons for recovery from COVID-19

While some nations are still grappling with surges of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, other nations are on the cusp of early recovery placing a momentous significance on the need for a plethora of stakeholder collaboration. This is especially relevant for an island nation such as the Maldives. 

The 2019 Asia-Pacific Disaster Report in highlighting this identifies four distinct hotspots where fragile environments are converging with critical socio-economic vulnerabilities to create potential cascading crises. One of those spots is identified as SIDS - Small Islands Developing States.

Hence, as the Maldives recovers from the biggest, and most treacherous waves to hit her economy so far, it is vital to learn lessons from other countries and international institutions, in order to sustain this recovery. 

1. Revisiting policies and plans

The pandemic has been a wakeup call to many sectors. It has necessitated revisiting policies and plans, to rewrite them, to manage recurring hazards and address the future dual threats of biological hazards such as COVID-19 and climate related disasters. According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) the focus of the refreshers must be to examine the existing prevention and preparedness measures, addressing the challenges of response trade-offs and preparedness, compounded vulnerabilities of those most at-risk, coordination and collaboration as well as front line worker needs.

For example; in May 2020, the Government of Japan revised the Disaster Management Basic Plan at the meeting of the Central Disaster Management Council (Japan’s national platform for DRR) which is headed by the Prime Minister. Among a number of revisions, there were two new elements related to COVID-19.

2. Targeting vulnerable and marginalised populations

The UNDP, in their 2020 estimates, suggest that more than 251 million people will be forced into poverty by the pandemic. The vulnerable and the marginalised sectors of the community are more at-risk during disasters. This is because they are the ones who live in precarious conditions, high-risk areas and depend on informal jobs and irregular incomes. Therefore, adversities hit harder on these groups of people, endangering their livelihoods. 

In a majority of communities, these vulnerable and the marginalised groups are the elderly, children, women, persons with disability, informal workers, migrant workers and minorities. Inequities has further aggravated the impact of COVID-19 on these vulnerable populations due to lack of social security and limited coping mechanisms at their disposal. The International Recovery Platform (IRP) has documented the adverse socioeconomic impacts on these groups which has resulted in a dangerous downward spiral. Thus, IRP recommends that there is an urgent need to prioritise and to understand the vulnerability of individuals, communities and societies which then can then feed into the long-term recovery planning.

3. Multi-sector and multi-stakeholder collaboration

The UNDRR in Japan has recommended nations adopt a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach in the COVID-19 response and recovery. This place the centre of attention of recovery to a multi sector and multi stakeholder collaborative approach. In order to build back better, there has to be a synergistic alliance to develop appropriate strategies and develop resilient measures. 

A whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to rebuilding can facilitate opening up of business opportunities, creating new positions, providing training, and shaping institutional frameworks in the short term and potentially attract investors in the long term.  Understanding sectoral interdependencies would be critical as these would inform the areas where stakeholders can complement one another, and add value to initiatives building on their area of focus and expertise.

For example; in both Syria and Lebanon healthcare governance is highly fragmented, but frontline medical workers have been crucial in ensuring that responses to COVID-19 are coordinated. In Idlib, the civil society-led health directorate has taken the lead in coordinating a COVID-19 task force through which NGOs, international agencies, volunteer rescue workers and opposition groups are implementing COVID-19 preparedness, response, and early recovery activities for its besieged population, half of whom are displaced.

4. Investing in pandemic preparedness

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in United States, the world has monumentally underestimated the risks to life and livelihoods, at least in terms of policy outcomes. As this pandemic has proven, nation states, irrespective of population, GDP or development, the resources pledged for preventing and responding to pandemics, have been utterly inadequate. While it is implausible to precisely prepare for the impacts of pandemics, it is plausible to produce estimates for the probability and potential impacts. Hence, is it not surprising that the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 prescribed that investments and advances made in COVID-19 ‘can and should be sustained for longer-term preparedness’. After all, the consensus among leading epidemiologists and public health experts is that threat from infectious diseases is growing. 

Nations must prepare for the multiple complexity of risks in a pandemic as well as its cascading and compounding risks. It requires a collaborative approach to strengthening disaster management systems in view of pandemics. The UNDRR recommends risk management approaches with;

5. City-level preparedness

In the paper, ‘Building resilience against biological hazards and pandemics: COVID-19 and its implications for the Sendai Framework’, researchers explored the importance of city level actions, especially at urban areas which are key in pandemic response as evident with the high concentration of COVID-19 cases. The researchers argued that in order to accelerate urban preparedness, focus must be lie on;

6. Science, technology and innovation

The UN’s Economic and Social Council’s two-day forum held in May 2021 released a statement saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has exhibited the significance of science and technology for the well-being of global populations. Furthermore, it was also stressed that advances in these fields are necessary not only to recover better from the crisis, but also to address other global challenges, such as poverty, inequality and climate change. One of the keynote speakers, Tanzanian Professor Julie Makani emphasised the need to harness the power of science, technology and innovation.

This is a call for all nations, researchers and institutions. While the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) will bring together experts to explore how science, technology and innovation (STI) can contribute to a sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, later this year COP26, the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will also focus heavily on this area.

Moving forward

According to UNCTAD, this pandemic has snowballed into much more than a public health crisis. The stalling of the global economic activity has had acute socioeconomic consequences which have been unutterable, resulting in the greatest global economic downturn in a century. In the longer-term, the pandemic’s socioeconomic consequences are likely to outlast the pandemic, particularly for the most vulnerable, disadvantaged groups that have suffered disproportionately from the impacts of the pandemic.

Consequently, as the world is on a learning trajectory, slowly yet steadily trying to recover, there is a need to test the strength and efficacy of these lessons. It necessitates the development of robust cooperation mechanisms across all stakeholder groups, breaking local boundaries to address this globally shared challenge.

There has been no time the like the present to be aggressive and proactive in the response to build back better — and it should start with local policy actions that align with current, and historic, global realities when it comes to similar catastrophic shifts.