With the world in emergency mode, N1’s ongoing series of interviews titled “World in Times of Corona” tries to provide some insight into what we are going through as a global community and where the pandemic crisis might lead us to. Apart from the impact this pandemic is bound to have on public health and global economy, many scientists are also thinking about future socio-economic models possibly spurred by the crisis.
Dr Mladen Domazet graduated in Physics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford and earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. He deals with interdisciplinary research at the Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, and is part of an international community of scholars researching the so-called degrowth model, which looks into the relationship between production and consumption necessary for a dignified life within the boundaries of our planet’s ecological sustainability.
What was the first reaction to the pandemic within the movement?
As a fan of science fiction, I have to say that nothing in the entire spectrum of that literary genre – which regularly portrays various kinds of collapse – has depicted things developing this way. We are looking at a situation of a prolonged crisis and a new state of affairs. There is consensus among people around the world who I cooperate with that we need to think about this in a gentle and considerate manner, because the situation is serious and way more far-reaching than we had previously thought, and now is not the time for generalised views.
As far as the global response is concerned, we have seen several positive things. The multilateral system still functions in some form; the entire world is listening to the World Health Organization, and we believe their words and estimates. We can learn from the example of China that the highly-automated technological system in which we live can withstand the primary shock – even though we’ve found ourselves in an extraordinary situation, people still have access to water, there is no famine, secondary diseases haven’t appeared. The system has not fallen apart, and, as terrible as this all looks, only now will we have to see how we are going to function as societies moving forward.
On top of the health emergency, we see the measures that global and European economies are taking in order to survive – governments must intervene to save liquidity and jobs…
Emergency measures are now rolling out, but there will be a lot of talk on economic restructuring and the role of the state in the future. It seems to me that there are two extreme positions. One, in which the state is used in this sense of a new neoliberal shock, so that private companies under the state’s protection will survive this, without the pressure of competition so then, for example, we have a situation where one airline is left standing, meaning we are once again creating monopolies in the hands of the oligarchy.
The other extreme is the one in which we understand the importance of the state as something that belongs to everybody and then we move on to see how we can operationalise the functioning of the society and social metabolism, in a way that we accept that biodiversity and climate stability are under serious threat, on the very brink, and we move back in order to ease the pressure.
There is a view of the new coronavirus as the result of pressure humans exert on the non-domesticated part of the planet, the world that is still wild. I wouldn’t dare yet to start some grand interpretative narratives, and I think that, right now, we must first learn how to organise individually, how to maintain our households and our local communities. In essence, that is the question of survival. Things such as viruses show that the weakest link is in fact the weakness in everybody.
The dominant narrative in this situation is in terms of public health, but global conversation has turned to the issue of availability of public health care, health care models, and investments in preventive health care.
Questions remain open in that discussion, I believe. The key issue is are we going to end up with new groups of ghettoised people, what will be the resilience, or vaccination rates, once we come up with a vaccine. One of the possible results of this crisis is the creation of a system which still won’t be completely inclusive, with increased repression against the excluded.
The extremely important common European response is still missing, we are locking down ourselves within our nation-states, some are doing a better job, and others fared worse. A good result is measured in the reduced numbers of dead and infected, but we still don’t know if re-infection is possible, if this might create new clusters of infection, we don’t have herd immunity, we don’t have a vaccine.
The story of this disease will not end once we revoke emergency measures. Everyone is gloating now that anti-vaxxers have gone silent, but they will come back because the issue we are facing concerns believing in the system. People must believe that there is a purpose, a will, a desire, and a need in being part of the system. To get vaccinated, to wash their hands. All of us must change course, so that public health can be viewed once again the way Andrija Stampar conceived it. Health is public, and so is its purpose, availability, and management.
Before the coronavirus crisis, the EU singled out becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 as a strategic goal. At the same time, we are witnessing the first result of paralysed economies which is the reduction in pollution. Is there a chance that a more radical transformation of economies will stem from this?
That’s still a long way away. European Green Deal was a mask, a way to try and show that the EU is a global leader on some issue, without jeopardising what we are living in, which is a system of globalised neoliberalism – and even if that word seems outdated these days, it still has value.
European Green Deal is a promise of green growth, and I would say that that’s not possible, because a thing either isn’t green or it cannot grow. EU’s deal does not have the word “new” in it, it’s just a green deal, it doesn’t refer (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt, it doesn’t include a broadly distributive component. The deal is techno-optimistic, telling us that once we discover all those marvels opf technology – which will all be extremely green – that they would provide jobs for all the people who are currently working in areas we no longer want to work in, such as digging and refining coal.
Perhaps we have realised in this situation that great and radical changes may be implemented without a disaster – after all, this is a much harder dress-rehearsal than for example just deciding on our own to stay home for a few weeks, or shutting down a polluting factory. We have seen examples of solidarity, but also examples of attempts to shift the burden onto those who are voiceless. It’s on us to recognise them as such, and to ask ourselves do we want them, or do we just accept them silently “as long as I’m not the one affected.” The danger of contagion teaches us that “as long as I’m not affected” doesn’t work in the long-term, the previously mentioned “weakest link.”
Is it possible that the global economic model might change course?
This will last a long time, we’re looking at risks for the global transport of goods, and – as thankless as it is to predict things – there are various scenarios, starting with the worst case in which the monster of neoliberalism rapidly rears its head with a much stronger fist of a nation-state, which no longer protects civil rights, inclusivity, or equality. In that scenario, we re-establish the old order as quickly as possible, and that may be the dirtiest scenario of all because we will have to stoke the flames of economy, and the infrastructure and the reserves are still heavily on the side of fossil fuels. Who will bother now with some solar panels when, for example, gas pipelines and thermal power plants are installed already?
On the other end of the spectrum is the scenario in which each of us realises what is more, and what is less important in life, how much did maybe those five meetings we had with other people really matter, and the economy gets reorganised in line with our survival. Crisis situations provide useful lessons in solidarity, in sharing, that not everything needs to be for profit, but then the question is whether it is possible – and if it is, how – do we keep that going?
Is it even possible, after a state of emergency, in an economic crisis and slowed-down globalisation, if there is a problem with moving goods, if an action can be launched by, let’s say the local agriculture in a way that it’s inclusive, but not by pushing a certain social class into it and telling them “Now you’re the ones who are digging, so that we would have food sovereignty,” or in a way in which someone might say “Let’s see who’s the strongest, so now you are forced, without even minimum pay, to tend to those potatoes because we need that.”
We must think about all of these things now. The middle class, which is right now trying to balance several meetings out of its bedroom, has to remember Walter Benjamin’s warning that the very idea of progress must be based in the knowledge that, for the great majority of the world, continuing as usual would be a disaster.
After all this is over, will Europe remain a continent working the same way it is working now, or should it move towards deeper integration?
The question of Europe is extremely important. We are the community of a single continent which eats the same and breathes the same and it’s extremely important to know how we will organise for energy, for food, for disease prevention. We already are a community of people with different backgrounds who, through communal, but unequally recognised work, maintain the social metabolism, maintains its health. Who is working in waste management, in hospitals, who is getting groceries for their neighbours? We are officially shutting ourselves into a competitive market of differing approaches, where, again, there is no solidarity, and on the ground the care work is spontaneously taking shape in a different way.
The trend of climate change will not slow down, the ice caps are still melting at increasing speeds, we had the warmest winter on record, and that really remains the real strategic question. What we may be able to see now is that this is not only the issue of weather conditions, reducing emissions, but also how to save a good way of living throughout the century.
Considering the global amount of unpaid labour in the care sector, which carries ten times as much value as all technological companies, today we hear calls for a new deal on care, like the European green deal, so that we would be prepared for a future in ageing societies, so that we could prepare our economies…
The concept of degrowth has been criticised for a long time for its straying away from the dominant model. Without growth, they say, there’d be no progress, we would live in recession and lethargy. What is degrowth, really?
Models and concepts of a society in which it is possible to reduce the flow of energy and material in order to ease the pressure on nature and create space for the development of those who need it, but that does not mean a reduction that would lead to bare recession. The exact opposite is true. This is the issue of the priorities of organising a society which wants a quality life. Degrowth as a whole talks about care and ecology at the same time, and we could certainly use a degrowth manifesto for the 21st century.
One of the key topics within this model is the issue of care, which has become relevant again with this crisis. Until now, this topic has been either completely hidden in our immediate communities and globally, we have failed to see in our families the degree of carrying this burden of care, who looks after the elderly, for children, who cooks, cleans, how we take care of each other. Care, on the other hand, has also been monetised, people have paid for the services of every care provider, from babysitters to patronage nurses.
At this point, I can tell from my own example that my wife and I, we used to eat in restaurants often before, and now we have to talk about which one of us will scale back on doing the work we’re paid for on a given day in order to make a healthy meal. So, there is an entire spectrum of things that go into the issue of care and some of us were only made aware of them through this crisis, not to mention those people who are sick, or a member of their family is sick, or those who live alone.
Scientists are also talking about hyper-urbanisation, a possible new model of city management, as an attempt to prevent fast transmission of zoonotic viruses and the penetration of humans into the environment…
We as a Western civilisation have, according to Jared Diamond, always had the advantage in that we slept with our goats. We actually transferred zoonotic diseases onto ourselves and mixed them, more than some civilisations which were more distanced from the animals around them. Now we all live disgustingly close to animals, in a sense that we crammed a large number of them into horrible living conditions for the purpose of a “more efficient” food production, and, on the other hand, as a civilisation we are entering deeper and deeper into wildlife areas.
Considering that there are now seven billion of us, we have to find a way to stay within the space we understand and can mostly control, and, on the other hand, stop any further pressure on the wilderness, even though we will run into it from time to time. Humans are taking up about three quarters of productive land areas, I don’t know the exact number for the sea surface in terms of fishing, but the impact is significant. So, we are omnipresent, and that Anthropocene story of us as the horrific physical force from the perspective of the urban needs to be reduced for sure.
Many are writing about the changes and, from the pressure of organised agro-business of mass farming of plants and animals, the change towards local production, which would lead to dietary changes. Conditions must be created so that we will not create pools from which another new and unknown disease will jump out at us, but pools in which we get exposed and change more softly and more often. In a way, we must once again sleep with goats and legumes…
How much will this pandemic deepen global inequality?
The worst scenario is the one about which we don’t talk all that much, but one we are secretly afraid of, and that is what will happen once the pandemic spreads to global south. So far, the disease has, due to the nature of movement of goods and people, actually struck from China, the factory of the world, at the consumerist global north.
But what will happen when the coronavirus flares up in Africa? Right now we have to think that, if we had engaged our solidarity at our front door, on our hallways, our neighbourhoods, our state, then we must widen it, make it international. When this is all over here, are we going to send our respirators and leftover masks to where they are needed, or are we going to wash our hands of it and say – there is nothing I can do over there, thank God, here it’s all over.
The issue of the pandemic is one in which we must understand that we are one planet, that viruses travel the globe indiscriminately, just like the winds and the temperature and the rising sea level, so let’s all act together because we must all be together. If I can act together with my neighbour with whom I hadn’t got along in the past ten years, then I can act with strangers in faraway countries.
Mentally, we are not in the state of transformation. In science fiction, when there’s an epidemic, it’s usually covered in a single chapter, victims are killed, corpses are removed, and the new state of affairs begins immediately after. It can be like this or like that, but the narrative begins immediately. We don’t have a situation like that. Novels have adopted an easier version in which everything is over quickly.
We, on the other hand, once the quarantine is over, must ask ourselves what is life. Is it an app on your phone which leads us from home to our workplace so that we can get work done, where there is no talk on the working conditions, no collective. Is it a place where you get your weekly groceries delivered to your front door? Is our life going to remain that same flat line, so near a social death of sorts, and so much more dystopian than what Orwell had imagined? Orwell’s Wilson ended up running to hidden spaces, had secret lovers outside the system, wrote poetry. We still haven’t made it far enough up the hill to see as far as we need to.
