Circularity to Restore the Earth Photo by Sushobhan Badhai/ Unsplash / 22 Apr 2021 Inger Andersen, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Environment Programme In these trying times, when we talk about resilience, most people’s minds turn to how to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is true that the pandemic brought a lot of suffering. Millions of people have died. The global economy contracted 4 per cent in 2020. Livelihoods have collapsed, with an estimated 120 million pushed into extreme poverty last year. But resilience goes far beyond COVID-19. This pandemic is but one symptom of our planet’s ailing health. Today, on International Mother Earth Day, we have to think hard on how to radically alter our relationship with nature for the better. Today, we have to turn our minds to solutions to the three planetary crises that threaten our collective future. The climate crisis. The biodiversity and nature crisis. The pollution and waste crisis.