Raúl Montenegro, who received the Right Livelihood Award “for his outstanding work with local communities and indigenous people to protect the environment and natural resources” and who is the coordinator of the RLC Campus Córdoba, has written an essay on the two pandemics which we are faced with today; COVID-19 and Climate Change.

CORONAVIRUSES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS: THE TWO PANDEMICS

We did not learn the lesson of the Spanish flu either the SARS CoV. Can we avoid the next pandemic?
by RLC Campus Córdoba coordinator and Right Livelihood Award Laureate Raúl Montenegro

We say that there is a pandemic when a microorganism like the COVID-19 virus simultaneously affects several countries. Humanity faces today a viral pandemic that began in November-December 2019 in China. A growing and cumulative environmental pandemic is also developing throughout the biosphere. Climate Change is just one of its perceptible consequences. In both cases, ignorance about the functioning of natural ecosystems and biodiversity has a negative impact, but also the existence of irresponsible governments, increasingly less sustainable lifestyles and corporations that seek profit at any health, social and environmental price. While the viral pandemic has been accumulating exponentially more infected and more deaths, the environmental pandemic that affects without exception all the countries of the Earth accumulates hundreds of thousands of silent victims that no one accounts for, and does not create –yet- panic scenarios. The visible viral pandemic and the silent environmental pandemic define these days one of the worst crises faced by humanity.

Read the full essay here.