Covid-19 and the Environment
The world faces an unprecedented moment of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing humanity’s resilience to the limit and has significantly impacted the wider social, economic and environmental fabric of our world. This urgent healthcare emergency has once more put long-term sustainable development on the agenda, according to the Sustainable Development Goals.
CENN believes that civil society organisations and volunteers have a critical role to play in supporting community action and ensuring that those who are most often marginalised are not left behind during this challenging time. With this in mind, CENN along with up to 500 other organizations, has joined the joint civil society statement on COVID-19 calling for solidarity in the face of the global pandemic.
COVID-19 has taught us all vital lessons about the world we live in and exposed cracks in our systems. CENN has been actively involved in COVID-19 responses with communities on the ground and has been closely monitoring the environmental impact. It becomes increasingly clearer that Climate and Environmental justice should be a priority on everyone’s agenda.
We understand that the world cannot go back to the way things were prior to the pandemic and Georgia is no exception. Any economic stimulus must ensure that the economy of the future is sustainable and just, that moves subsidies away from fossil fuel industries and creates millions of sustainable jobs. As the UNSG and others are saying, we need to ‘recover better’ at a time when there is a major risk that we go back to business as usual and lock in high carbon emissions and infrastructure.
CENN’s actions in response to COVID-19
Increased need for joint community action for sustainable development
In response to the global COVID-19 solidarity movement, we compiled important lessons we observed during this pandemic and the changes we are working towards. Some recent examples from CENN activities include working on air pollution, developing a green budget, as well as various community-based initiatives in terms of a rapid response to COVID-19, including providing WaSH items to the most vulnerable groups.
New research published in the journal Science of the Total Environment has found that long-term exposure to air pollution may be “one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus” around the world. As the study’s authors put it: “Poisoning our environment means poisoning our own body, and when it experiences a chronic respiratory stress, its ability to defend itself from infections is limited.” In response to this, in May 2020 CENN, with the support of UNEP, began providing support to the Government of Georgia in order to harmonize Georgian legislation in regards to vehicle emission standards with EU requirements. The new emission standards aim to protect the health of the public and the environment from the harmful effects of transport emissions.
The global pandemic has also clearly shown that we cannot afford to ignore sustainability when planning new policies and redistributing scarce resources. Better policy coherence is essential for an effective and efficient response to the challenges that we as a humanity are facing today. With this goal in mind, since February 2020, CENN in cooperation with the Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Committee under the Parliament of Georgia, began working on a Green Budget Project. The project aims at identifying challenges in terms of budgeting environmental priorities in Georgia, and preparing recommendations for 2021 budget procedures, thus creating the first precedent of an environmentally responsible budget in Georgia.
The coronavirus pandemic and its consequences has increased the need for joint community action in support of the most vulnerable members of society. In response to the urgent demand, CENN through its ongoing projects (EU-supported project “Water for the Poor”, EU-ENPARD supported projects in Keda and Tsalka, and Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) funded project “Sustainable Forest Management for Rural Development”) has organized various COVID-19 response activities throughout Georgia. As a result, a total of more than 1000 beneficiaries, including large families, socially vulnerable people and older people living alone were provided with disinfectant solutions, masks, and other personal hygiene items to protect against themselves against the virus. The beneficiaries were from Kvemo Kartli (a quarantine zone) and high mountainous regions of Georgia and villages in Kakheti. In addition, in partnership with CENN’s Local Action Groups (LAGs) in Keda and Tsalka municipalities, launched a COVID-19 rapid response project and based the activities on community needs. It is important to note that LAGs established under the EU-ENPARD programme based on the LEADER approach enable local people to make decisions concerning local socio-economic, cultural, and environmental issues.
Building back better
The SDGs provide a roadmap for the future we want to see, and this pandemic has taught us that policy coherence and a focus on the pledge to Leave No One Behind is absolutely critical. COVID-19 is yet another example that no single stakeholder alone is able to solve the problems that we as humanity are facing. CENN is committed to the multi-stakeholder approach and hereby states its readiness to further cooperate with the government as well as the private sector in achieving long-term sustainability. We are ready and committed to build back better, guided by the principles and the commitments in the Sustainable Development Goals of universality, collaboration, human rights, interconnectedness and to leave no-one behind.
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