Responding to COVID-19 and our relevancy for the future.
In late 2019, a novel virus was discovered in Wuhan, China. At the time, little was known about how this virus would impact the world, but as 2020 progressed, it became clear that this virus was going to lead to a dramatic change in how the world functions and how we will have to adapt to the future.
COVID-19 has had immediate impacts on human health as well as having long term impacts on society such as supply chain collapse and growing debts across multiple scales. These effects are compounded in poor communities who will likely bear the brunt of these mounting costs.
In order to move forward from the disruption this virus has caused, it is time to refocus on far-sighted solutions to biodiversity loss, planetary health, rural poverty and restoring the integrity of social-ecological systems.
Planet Indonesia highlights a potential solution to mitigating the negative effects of COVID-19 is cross-scale community-based conservation. Holistic community-based conservation has the potential to both lessen the current impacts of COVID-19 while also creating community resilience to social, economic, and public health shocks. Fully participatory community based-conservation potentially offers a preventative solution, as it is ultimately positioned to create healthy sustainable relationships between society and nature conservation.
For decades, conservationists have believed that human societies and the environment were of two separate entities and had to be managed independently. With this mindset, human development and conservation outcomes seemed to be at odds. This caused conflict between national policy makers and communities which often lead to local populations being deprived of resources or displaced altogether.
Planet Indonesia has implemented many new operating procedures to follow preventative protocols during the pandemic
By investing in community-led conservation systems, we believe initiatives see more success when involving communities in all stages of the process such as identifying solutions to evaluating outcomes. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted both the importance, and the historical failure, of conservationists’ ability to adopt a ‘systems’ approach. By understanding the dynamic interactions between natural systems and societal advancement, the beginnings of holistic conservation approaches that not just address biodiversity loss but also improves local governance, places a strong focus on local participation and engagement, and acknowledges that socio-economic hardships faced by resource users are diverse and must be addressed for the sake of human well being.
To remain relevant in a post COVID - 19 world, we must both evolve our theoretical understanding and our direct implementation of community-based conservation models where participation by locals is viewed as both a means to reaching a goal and a goal itself. Without the adaptation of holistically using these models, the world will continue to experience similar pandemic-like events, especially as climate change, pollution, exploitation and our human population puts pressure on the very ecological systems that support humanity.
Community members practicing social distancing, wearing masks, but eager to continue working with Planet Indonesia’s community-led programs
We are at the very beginning of a “conservation revolution,” but to move forward quickly, would require organizations to design, implement, and scale in new ways; donors to support longer multi-year partnerships where learning and failures are continually iterated upon; a movement from multi-national to local implementers; and an overall paradigm shift where conservation as a field now requires integration with other sectors.
This crisis has highlighted failures in our field as well as new opportunities to deliver impactful solutions to repair systemic unsustainable relationships between society and nature.
This article was adapted from a piece written in the journal of Tropical Conservation Science where our Executive Director stressed the importance of community-led conservation as a tool to combat the impact of covid-19 and prevent future outbreaks.