What impact is corona virus having on the worlds climate and with planes grounded Industrial Production reduced and emissions decline are there lessons the pandemic can teach us about living with nature moving forward this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program im Richelle Carey and yes capital is one of the worlds most polluted cities but its guys have turned blue and many people can see the himalayan mountains for the 1st time and Italys Venice canal water is so clear fish can easily be seen all this is an unexpected upside of the Coronavirus Crisis and its proves Global Air Quality can be dramatically improved and fast the changes been created by lockdowns that have grounded flights and shut down factories but environmentalists warn it could be only temporary climate talks have been delayed to dexter because of the outbreak and its fair countries could prioritize human and economic welfare before that of the environment many are questioning whether the world will just go back to business as usual when it recovers from this pandemic lets hear what japans environment minister had to say all jews are good. If we give priority unconditionally to economic recovery while neglecting the environment it would virtually mean the death of the paris accord goes with no one at the Environment Ministry disagrees that the economy is important we just would like to behave in a way that the environment will never be left. Behind. The delusional. Since cup 26 has been postponed we now have enough time to make a 2nd nationally determined contribution before the summit with the newest data and facts japan takes this postponement as a positive development and will strive to create the situation where we can take part in cup 26 with our heads held high so lets have a look at how much air quality has changed during the lockdowns and the us capital new delhi has seen a 70 percent drop in both nitrogen dioxide pollution and tiny socalled p n 2. 5 particles and china Carbon Emissions dropped by almost 20 percent between february and march and they use emissions how fallen below 60 percent compared to levels before the crisis fossil fuel pollution dropped by 30 percent in the northeast of the u. S. In march. Lets bring in our guest now from paris france washroom a professor of environmental geo political and migration dynamics at the paris and to toot of Political Studies from printing ismene a room on environmental lawyer and coordinator of Climate Change program at the 3rd World Network and from new delhi our nabucco c. E. O. Of the council on energy and vironment and water thank you all for joining me. Francis said when talking about the pandemic he said i dont know if these are the revenge of nature but they are certainly natures responses what the world is going through now and what role has how we treat the planet played in the spread of this pandemic as you see it francoise. I would assume you played the originals of the virus are to be found in a discussion of biodiversity does that the simple fact that why now to a coming closer to man settlements i actually makes it easier for the virus. From then email to demand and actually about 3 quarters of the new emerging Infectious Diseases that we see with humans are also knows meaning that this means transmitted from animals but this being said even though there is a lot of things that we can say about the origin of the virus and the need for the better by a diversity in order to protect us from make i think we shouldnt be. Saying that this is a revenge of nature and that we should i think back then choose not to imagine that this is a message that nature is spending it that virus is no good for a while and will do no good for the climate for nature of a bio diversity so i would worry or sell against that side of the readies because at the end of the day i think thats the funding that might have diverted in consequences for the climate and for the environment that last minute your thoughts on this what role as is what we have done and are doing to the planet played in the spread of this pandemic. Well buckley of course it was due to the way like trade. For my own organization in the national that i belong to which is friends of the of believe weve been for a long time calling in the end to white like trade the consumption of wildlife meat. And so this is a case of. Crossing of the species barrier from the wild to the human population and given the fact that we are living in such a globalized world so much of actual and so much of you get connected now as the we which the impact of the coronavirus unfold the joey show that in this globalized world. The impacts. Severe that they process all boundaries all barriers and no countrys sped so this is a lesson for us and i think the popes message in terms of maybe the wrong use the what revenge but actually no actually no d it means that it doesnt make clear irises just wants most of us to francoise to be clear the pope said i dont know if these are the revenge of the h. Or he he didnt really like that language but i think he was just trying to draw. Connectedness between our actions and the result but revenge as a is a strong word but carry on. But i think the the call that i mean the point about the world being so connected globally and the ramifications be so severe just one country starting with one crisis and that in many 100 to be a Global Crisis i think thats the lesson for ozone novel what would you say about the connection between our actions. Our actions toward the planet and what is happening now. 1st of all what we do to the planet will eventually come back. And affect us whether we use the world like revenge or not i think nature what it does of course correct and what we were doing was veering it off the course the violation of biodiversity limits the violation of human wildlife separation the violation of the kind of food habits that we seem to have propagated not all of these will eventually result in some kind of course correction thats the 1st thing but the 2nd thing is not just what we do to the planet and what planet does back to us but what is it that we will end up doing to each other and that is what this crisis is kind of playing out for us on most of the experiment at a global scale that if we dont fix the nature of our lifestyles the patterns of our production of consumption the ways in which we understand the syncretic relationship between humans and the rest of the ecosystem we will have a situation where our own systems our economic systems our social systems our political systems im going to get severely strained and the current pandemic is just the start of something. That might unfold into much larger dimensions than before seen so far for as well were you surprised at how immediate and drastic some changes were to the environment once there was this big time out on all of this pollution. Well i wasnt really surprised these are things that we knew from or from others and from studies but obviously does crazes is also i kind of real Life Experience of the influence of human activities on the climate and more globally and beyond rome and i was more surprised at the best of reaction from the governments and i think that a great lesson here is that when we face an imminent danger after all we are able to dig drastic ready and extremely costly measures to prevent ourselves from that danger another question we need to ask ourselves is why we so much more of fred after growing our virus than we are of Climate Change or of biodiversity loss i had a great point mean people that talk about Climate Change often try to use the word emergency and some people do and some people dont but obviously the world and governments are reacting this way to the pandemic because it is seen as an emergency. Do you think that this might finally get people to understand that Climate Change is also an emergency. Well i think yes i think we have a beer belly we live totally unprecedented time and i think for one the positive impact if you can call it that is that many people around the i mean theyre around where we are in my part of the world. Or normally during this time would be subject to severe trends boundary as thats not happening this time around. Rivers. And so the irony is somebody said is that this is the time you should be reading clean air but we have mosques on so i think the awareness has as as come in the sense that we have to deal with we cannot wait for pandemics and emergencies that we have to respond in the right time and have the right policies in place and they agree with the the previous speaker from india in relation to reexamining the Production Systems and the consumption bet and how everything is out of sync and we have been in this days wanting it to be the mother at this given that we cannot live the way we have been living and we have to change dramatically and i think many people have also discovered that if you now families are sitting together eating together the booking to get the plane together things that they never did fall. So in a sense to be a rediscovering what it means to live in a community that is really communal rather than flying around all the time all consuming all the time and rushing around as if there is no limit. To what we do i think there are some very important lessons. Ok. Let me bring you in on this because this is certainly are not exposed to revealed is the right word but its shown what can happen when there is the political will to do something and that certain Political Parties that you are for example even the republicans democrats getting together in the u. S. To agree on a 1200. 00 a month stimulus its not a lot and there may need to be more but this time theres a time that you never would have seen certain parties doing the things theyre doing do you see this as a moment that governments and politicians might end up pleasantly surprising you well im not surprised. Because the nature of the of the crisis is so evident and so here and now that the extent of the response i mean some countries have acted foster some about too late but in general the extent of the response is not surprising what would be an open question still is whether we let the crisis go to which and obviously no one would wish maass human suffering to get ourselves to come on a far sign when positions on our own are stupor of inaction so what is it that will move us from responding to the correct arent crisis won this time that we need a systemic change and i think that is about what is it that we want to avoid because when we think about what is it up to do we have them whether at a National Level or a True International goes here sions we always ask each other well why dont you act 1st and then i luckily why dont you contribution money 1st and then i will contribute later and we end up in this inertia of inaction whereas if we changed our focus to merge a risk lens. Issues that have very low probability but i have if it came true a catastrophic impact then our focus entirely changes to work what is it that you want to avoid you want to avoid that makes you want to avoid extreme weather events you want to avoid major crop losses you want to avoid major water stress when we begin to put our minds to words that then what you see as a current response might actually become more systemic reform no we will not act in a way that is entirely only a subset of them so things because we are all having a common interest in avoiding a common disaster press well you would hope that the country is the richer countries would lead on Something Like this i mean with Climate Change pandemics and such are are much more difficult on on poor countries on poorer communities laura says he says but we have not seen that obviously particularly with President Trump in the u. S. We have not seen the u. S. Taking the lead on this who can and will living up i also would like to hope that this would be a kind of turning boeing to do away with thing about Climate Change or about the enrolment at large but im afraid that were missing out a fundamental point here and thats gone is that the virus is not the climate these are very different programs from one another and we cannot just hope that we could really get the same measures against them and change as the ones that we did against different a virus against the virus we can hope that the measures we take to predict the west out when it will have an immediate effect for ourselves for Climate Change this will be a long term effect a big thing people we dont know very often and in that sense latches is not a crisis they will be no return to normal there will be no vaccine against Climate Change the level will not come down temperature levels will not come down there will not be a kind of cross crisis time Climate Change is in the river not about transformation. One of the 1st and the reason why we accept drastic measures against a corner virus is because we know that they will not last 3 months because we know that there will be a return to nominate somebody with climate not be a return to normal and therefore we need long term measures that we can sustain in the long run ok and therefore i think we shouldnt make the mistake of thinking that we can do exactly the same destination that youre doing right now under said ira not by saying is sorry you kind of want to get going to get in there many day doesnt make a good point that its easier to get people to buy in to these current restrictions because we know at some point its going to end it may be a few months we dont really know how long and youll be youll see the results because the results will be that you survived and hopefully your family survive approaching Climate Change is a little bit different as a not i agree and i disagree if you use the language of Climate Change then yes we end up thinking only about our children and our grandchildren and then we say well im going to wait out weirded out a little bit longer and see what happens even though i profess interest in my grandchildrens welfare but if you use the language of Climate Risks which is very much here and now there are farmers in india were suffering of because the plant i mean change today there are there are communities along the course around the world including where it comes from which are getting up acted right now by of course still are i mean the ingress of sea water. So when we start applying a risk lens then we see that yes while we were all there all all those that were right about in the climate are irreversible as fronts i was saying but the restaurants need not be something that i can only think about 30 years from now we can actually begin to organize ourselves around the immediate actions that are needed. At the National Level international but but to committee at the Community Level dream dreams resilient ok to focus on adaptation ok let me ask mina about that though many of the types of things that the type of change that our novice talking about doesnt require citizens and voters and communities to put pressure on leaders to do something. Well certainly i think you started by talking about you know donald trump and the Democratic Party getting together on the get of the stimulus package and the recovery i think that if we use the stimulus and recovery for the wrong places of business as usual for instance if were going to be bailing out the Oil Companies or the Oil Companies and so on and carry on with business as usual this is really shot to mention sightedness what we should be doing at least the rich countries where the money is available that they should be moving to. You know sustainable consumption sustainable cut Production SystemsRenewable Energy and not bail out the corporations that have been destroying the world and that have led to the prices multiple prices not just bend the Health Crisis but the environmental and the Climate Crisis the drivers are quite similar for developing countries though i think the challenge is much more greater because a recent study by the un has already shown that the response requires 2. 00 trillion dollars for developing countries to cope now where you have very limited budgets developing countries are not going to be able to do the Climate Response as a 1st step they will have to respond to the quality the poverty the basic needs the health and so on so you do require Global Cooperation of and im president of scale like a global Marshall Plan but i dont see that happening in the trump era but it has to be a different kind of Global Response which responds to the flow 1st because the people who are who are bludgeoned by the crisis the Health Crisis and all of the crisis of the poorest so now they are faced with debt load and in developing countries and they are not going to be able to talk about climate or talk about all the good of the. Although the risk is that but its surely its that clear cut piece of lack of resources so i must be i might find names of the massive scale apart from trillions needed to help the hope with the unprecedented impacts right now so is that about one hour of press was when were talking about that the amount of money that it would take to make this systemic change is this about convincing businesses that this is actually in their best interest. Well money is if you see an issue any border dimension but i think