COVID-19, now for nearly 2 million deaths worldwide, emerged because of habitat encroachment and destruction. Meanwhile, the last decade was the hottest on record, while events like hurricanes and raging wildfires increased in frequency and intensity because of climate change. Air pollution now 9 million people every year. The concrete, metal, plastic, bricks and asphalt we produce now weighs more than all on our planet. 

Climate Change Will Impact the Human Rights of Millions

READ MORE

In our oceans, two-thirds of commercially harvested fish species are overexploited. By 2030, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. Coastlines are eroding, and cities are sinking as sea levels rise. Mangroves and reefs that ordinarily protect them are either being cut down or are dying from climate-induced changes like rising sea temperatures. Because of the greenhouse gasses pouring into the atmosphere every day, our planet is heading for a 3˚C to 5˚C rise in global temperatures that will wreak havoc on our health, wealth and world. 

Living out of balance with the environment is culminating in a pressing existential crisis. Instead, imagine waking up every morning in 2021 with the intention to make peace with the planet. Each of us can be the change we need by pushing our leaders in the public and private sectors to be better stewards of the Earth. With that in mind, here’s my New Year’s resolution. These are the four actions I will ardently advocate leaders take to help us all make peace.

Go Green

Investing in green infrastructure can solve our energy and infrastructure needs while restoring biodiversity, which has suffered over recent decades. Nature-based solutions such as using dunes and marshes to protect our coastlines shield us equally or better than sea walls. Simultaneously, these can help us meet Paris Climate Agreement targets by reducing global atmospheric carbon emissions by up to one-third. It is cheaper to build a renewable energy power plant than it is to operate an old coal one. We won’t just see benefits for our health and environment. Such investments come with substantial financial opportunities. The UN estimates that green technologies can create at least 18 million jobs worldwide.

Pay Your Fair Share

We need to connect global finance with climate risks. 2021 will be an excellent year for financial markets to finally start aligning investments with their actual costs and benefits to people and the planet. Companies across the globe will soon be required to disclose their climate risks to the public. It starts on the London Stock Exchange in January 2021. In March, the EU’s new disclosure regulations on sustainability come into force. The incoming US administration is heading in the same direction.

I say put the costs of planetary destruction and pollution where it belongs — on those who cause it. To get out ahead of what’s assuredly coming, companies should start the new year by investing in climate risk disclosures and environmental, social and corporate governance actions. For those who don’t proactively get on board with this movement, 2021 and 2022 could prove to be a tougher slog than it needs to be. 

Be Nicer to Your Neighbors

We share this planet with a rich tapestry of wildlife. But biodiversity is in crisis, and we need to help. We can do this by increasing the number and size of nature reserves, helping endangered species recover and by supporting sustainable nature-based livelihoods like fishing and forestry. The good news is that these kinds of investments do double duty by combating climate change while bolstering species. For instance, forest restoration helps reduce carbon emissions: A single tree can sequester 4 kilograms of carbon annually. 

Our human neighbors could use some similar kindness. Low-lying island nations are bearing the brunt of climate change, and some are sinking before our eyes. Yet less developed countries have few resources to meet these challenges, and adaptation funding only makes up 20% of all climate funding. Even in the most advanced nations, we choose to leave many communities behind. Social equity and environmental justice must be part of our New Year’s resolution.

Lose the Excess Carbon Weight

2021 is an ideal year to lose those atmospheric carbon dioxide love handles. To get on that diet, nations must agree on a timeframe and plan to become carbon neutral. The UK, China and several other countries have already made the pledge, but this has to be an all-in agreement. Our ability to create viable COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year should give us confidence that, once we put our minds to it, we can find workable solutions to our energy and societal needs that don’t require us to burden the planet with more CO2 pollution. 

There are many ways business leaders and governments can make peace with the planet in 2021. But there’s also plenty we can do as individuals. I intend to make peace with the planet by choosing wise and compassionate actions, from how I spend money to which places I visit and what leaders and causes I support. Aligning action with intent will build inner peace and a better world. Peace, after all, comes with choosing to do what is right.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post 2021 Is the Year to Make Peace With Our Planet appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A New Social Contract Amid a Crisis

READ MORE

The pandemic has exposed a severe divide between science and various ideologies. On the one side are those who trust in the scientific community’s ability to produce evidence-based, reliable solutions to crises and societal issues. On the other are those who either cherry-pick select findings expedient to their beliefs or political agendas, who pose false dichotomies such as science versus the economy, or, worse, those who deliberately promote fake news and conspiracy theories about scientific results.

Scientists-Citizens

This divide is by no means a new phenomenon. It is all too familiar to anyone who has observed the science and politics of climate change, nuclear energy or vaccines, for example. What is different today is the wholly unprecedented speed and intensity with which the divide has manifested itself during the COVID-19 crisis. Things have become even more complicated as the pandemic hit a world destabilized by a rapid decline of long-cherished institutions and political values, of legitimacy and good governance, as authoritarianism and extremism continue to rise.

Typically, scientists have been caught in the middle as the controversies around , the veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases advising the Trump administration on the pandemic, and others reveal. As professionals, scientists take no joy in the fact that their models and projections have, for decades, forecast climate change impacts, catastrophes and pandemics, while their results have gone widely ignored or opposed. As the goes, “Every disaster movie starts with a scientist being ignored.”

Still, within the scientific community, 2020 has been heralded as a scientific renaissance driven by the fight against the novel coronavirus. In less than a year, scientists and physicians have sequenced the virus, developed multiple promising vaccines and learned a great deal about the behavior and treatment of COVID-19. According to Science Magazine, by one , the coronavirus literature published since January 2020 has reached more than 23,000 papers and is doubling every 20 days, making it one of the largest proliferations of scientific literature ever.

The question is, how does this undeniable success help bridge the divide? The problem is not that scientists are poor communicators, though that may be a legitimate criticism at times. There simply is little evidence that information per se leads to any transformational social change. For instance, engaged scientists have put themselves on the front lines of the climate debate. Today, the number of virtual panels to communicate the latest scientific findings on the coronavirus is skyrocketing. Rather, scientists and non-scientists alike need to understand the pivotal role scientists play as citizens of our societies.

The Idea of Social Learning

So, what else is required to bridge this facts-versus-post-truth divide? How can societies heal and become resilient to the threats of authoritarianism and anti-science ideology? Earlier, we called for a new social contract among citizens and between citizens and their governments based on the principles of truth, equality, shared responsibility, solidarity and legitimacy. We called it the “glue” that binds nations and societies together, particularly in times of crisis. While a new social contract between citizens and their governments is a prerequisite for solving complex global crises, social learning provides the catalyst and process for humanity to change the current divisive and destructive path.

Social learning, a coined by Albert Bandura, emphasizes the role of the contextual social environment as a driver of behavioral change. It includes rational elements such as cost-benefit calculations and material incentives but focuses more on an iterative learning process that includes observation, imitation and modeling as drivers. Attention and motivation are central to the process, while emotional intelligence, empathy and compassion were recently added to the cognitive elements of social learning described by Bandura.

Historical evidence indicates that social learning works and has been transformational on various scales. The abolition of slavery in the US and its civil rights movement in the 1960s, or the transformation of Germany into a bedrock of democracy and freedom after World War II, are historical examples that illustrate how successful and powerful social learning can be. Those transformational examples all involved large-scale social movements that were catalyzed by social learning processes and led to a radically different “new normal.”

Recent examples involving scientific evidence include the manner in which smoking bans were implemented across the globe. A change in the social acceptance of smoking occurred in part due to “shaming” based on the effects of second-hand smoke. Today, smoking-ban policies are considered a major public health success due to the effects of social learning.

Similarly, significant breakthroughs in interventions targeting the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa or the 2013-15 West African Ebola epidemic were reached through social learning tools to overcome counterproductive rituals or myths by engaging doctors, patients, relatives, community leaders, spiritual leaders, policymakers and the media alike. Engaging scientists, stakeholders, community members and decision-makers in solving environmental issues such as endangered species protection, nature conservation or water management has also proven effective at local and national levels.

A Renewed Social Contract

Common to the above examples is an initial approach that builds on a social contract binding all parties as equal citizens in a joint endeavor toward establishing (or reestablishing) a declared common good such that every participant agrees to engage with the community and commits to furthering the common good. This contract must include the participants’ empowerment and a clear shared understanding of essential rules, norms and values.

On that basis, the social learning process can be successful in changing norms, attitudes and behaviors for the better. Leadership, empowerment, empathy and the sharing of best practices are important and lead to the co-production of new knowledge and behaviors. In these situations, because scientists participate as citizens and co-learners, the public’s fears concerning the implications of scientific findings are mitigated and higher levels of trust are created without disrupting the social fabric of a community.

The responsibility to build public trust in science does not just lie with scientists alone but with all citizens. As much as we advocate for scientists to engage with their communities, we equally advocate for non-scientists to engage in a better understanding of science so that the entire citizenry can co-create solutions based on evidence and societal needs and values.

A sense of cautious optimism has emerged that provides the opportunity for societies to engage in social learning. There is no time to lose. Our world is battling two global crises simultaneously — the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change — during a period of rising authoritarianism. This is the time for leaders and citizens to start implementing transformative processes that will lead society forward and prevent a return to an even more divisive dark age.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Social Learning Can Help Transform Crisis Into Opportunity appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The divide has manifested itself in myriad ways, through anti-mask protests, arguments that the coronavirus — which causes the COVID-19 disease — is either a hoax or created by Bill Gates or the Chinese military, or proclamations about untested or potentially deadly “treatment regimes.” The divide is fueled by the rhetoric of politicians and interest groups who use social media to make unscientific claims or attack science in order to promote their political agendas, having little regard for whether the outcome will lead to a resilient, fragile or collapsing society.

How Will COVID-19 Change Our World?

READ MORE

These issues, generally defined as science versus ideology, have long been present throughout history. Historians of science point to Galileo’s battle with the Roman Catholic Church, the Darwinian evolution debates, reoccurring vaccination arguments, Trofim Lysenko’s purge of geneticists or the recent Ebola crisis as situations where scientific facts clashed — sometimes disastrously — with cultural values, subjective belief systems or political ideology.

Once again, the safety of citizens, the validity of our institutions and the viability of our social and economic structures hinge on how we cope with this dangerous polarization. If left unresolved now, these issues will fester and grow as mighty barriers to successfully addressing this and future existential crises such as the next pandemic or climate change.

A Better Understanding of Science

The approach of distancing science from public discourse because it must remain an independent source of expertise, while well-intentioned, does not work. Certainly, scientific findings must remain untainted and uninfluenced; however, scientists are citizens and part of their communities. Engaging scientists in a conscientious and compassionate discussion within the community — through a process of social learning — is critical.

To be effective, this must start with a better understanding of science and more effective communication of its findings. Science is a process deliberately designed to reduce uncertainty and identify risk. These are exactly the elements we need to understand in order to manage a pandemic or the threats associated with climate change. Scientific ideas or hypotheses are proposed and repeatedly challenged by testing. Eventually, on an evidential basis, ideas are rejected or accepted and continually refined. It is this dynamic and “ever-questioning” nature of science that has moved knowledge forward. Today’s facts may be disproven and replaced by new facts. 

This evolving aspect of science unfortunately provides opportunities for populists and other opponents to selectively choose “their facts” or to reject scientific evidence in total because of what seems contradictory or unsettled. As an example, improved knowledge as to how the coronavirus spreads led the World Health Organization (WHO) to change its directive on the use of masks in June. Many saw this not as the rapid advance heralded by scientists, but as evidence of confusion and inconsistency in science. This presented an ideal opportunity for protests against the use of masks and dismissal of scientific evidence by interest groups.

By contrast, nine months into the pandemic, most scientists see this time as a golden age of rapid breakthroughs in applicable knowledge and technology. We are witnessing an unprecedented global concerted scientific approach to beating the coronavirus, which includes the development of a vaccine.

Many scientists are baffled by what they see as a rejection of scientific facts by the public and politicians. However, policies such as lockdowns and mandatory mask-wearing, while effective at containing the virus in the short term, are seen as repressive by many because they come with a huge price tag, including unemployment and cascading economic collapse across the globe. Reactive policies, even when based on science, are unsustainable whether in a pandemic or managing climate change. Long-term solutions require a commitment to investing in prevention, preparedness and resilience building. This must include realigning the tensions between science and ideology.

Social Context

Social learning is a tool that can help us resolve those tensions and lead us toward a more resilient future. Social learning defines learning as a cognitive process that takes place in a social context. To tackle the public health crisis and other global threats like climate change, the context here must include scientists, citizens and policymakers working together. By learning from each other, we can develop solutions that are scientifically rigorous but co-produced collectively and therefore integrated into community values and needs.

Whether it is the pandemic or climate change, the communication and engagement of science through social learning offers a pathway out of the science-ideology divide and should be rapidly embraced. We do not have time to waste because the future of the people and the planet is literally on the line. All sides must be willing to do something novel: engage in this process of group learning for resilience.

*[This article was submitted on behalf of the authors by the Hamad bin Khalifa University Communications Directorate. The views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Scientists’ Social Engagement Is Needed to Stem the COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on 51�Թ�.