COVID-19 and the crisis of national development

A vendor selling meat to customers at a market in Beijing in January 2020. Image: Getty, Nicolas Asfouri / AFP
A vendor selling meat to customers at a market in Beijing in January 2020. Image: Getty, Nicolas Asfouri / AFP

The global practice of monetising ecosystems to further national economic development has laid fertile ground for the COVID-19 pandemic and others like it.

COVID-19’s rapid move from warning sign to global pandemic has yanked the spotlight onto a number of questions humanity has been uneasily avoiding for years. Beyond the human-focused ones like how to keep a global economy running when flights are shut down, it has also drawn attention to the human exploitation of ecosystems as national assets, which compels the human–animal interactions that probably made the virus infectious to humans in the first place.  Continue reading here.

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30 Mar 2020