Nature, Health, and Geopolitical Crises

The twenty-first century has witnessed an escalation of global shocks, including COVID-19, decimation of biodiversity and forests, and the global financial crisis, in addition to rapid climate change. Understanding these risks is fundamental to dealing with them effectively. In that context, climate change represents an extraordinary rift between scientific knowledge and policy actions to tackle the problem. A basic realisation in the era of climate change is that if natural disasters were once considered as pure acts of nature, global warming signifies that they are partly human-induced. Therefore, they can no longer be considered one-off occurrences, but rather part of a pattern that must be influenced by policy. The principal action on climate change is achieving net zero carbon by phasing out humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels and mobilising financing to enable a low-carbon transition.