UN: May See ‘New Normal’ On Other Side Of 5-Year Global Depression

From COVID-19 to climate disruption, from racial injustice to rising inequalities, we are a world in turmoil.

At the same time, we are an international community with an enduring vision – embodied in the United Nations Charter, which marks its 75th anniversary this year. That vision of a better future —  based on the values of equality, mutual respect and international cooperation —  has helped us to avoid a Third World War that would have had catastrophic consequences for life on our planet.

Our shared challenge is to channel that collective spirit and rise to this moment of trial and test.

The pandemic has laid bare severe and systemic inequalities both within and between countries and communities.  More broadly, it has underscored the world’s fragilities – not just in the face of another health emergency, but in our faltering response to the climate crisis, lawlessness in cyberspace, and the risks of nuclear proliferation.  People everywhere are losing trust in political establishments and institutions.

The emergency is compounded by many other profound humanitarian crises: conflicts that are continuing or even intensifying; record numbers of people forced to flee their homes; swarms of locusts in Africa and South Asia; looming droughts in southern Africa and Central America; all amid a context of rising geopolitical tensions.

In the face of these fragilities, world leaders need to be humble and recognize the vital importance of unity and solidarity.

No one can predict what comes next, but I see two possible scenarios.

First, the “optimistic” possibility.

In this case, the world would muddle through.  Countries in the global North would engineer a successful exit strategy.  Developing countries would receive enough support and their demographic characteristics – namely, the youth of their people – would help contain the impact.

And then perhaps a vaccine would appear in the next nine months or so, and would be distributed as a global public good, a “people’s vaccine” available and accessible to all.

If this happens, and if the economy starts up progressively, we might move towards some kind of normality  in two or three years.

But there is also a second, bleaker scenario in which countries fail to coordinate their actions.  New waves of the virus keep occurring.  The situation in the developing world explodes.  Work on the vaccine lags — or even if there is a vaccine relatively soon —  it becomes the subject of fierce competition and countries with greater economic power gain access to it first, leaving others behind.

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