ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to historic economic fallout. To protect public health and stabilize incomes, governments have implemented massive fiscal stimulus packages. These fiscal supports are crucial, though there is concern that sustainable and resilient development will be sacrificed in the rush to preserve incomes and industries. The aim of the paper is to review whether the Japanese governments' responses in terms of financial stimulus considers longer term resilience and sustainability. This paper reviews pertinent academic literature and publicly available data from governments and organisations. The research is a rapid analysis of emerging information provided by the government of Japan and other international organisations. Using the case of Japan, this paper suggests that it is possible both to protect public health and essential services, while also promoting resilience and sustainability. Japan's integrated solutions show that pandemic response can include accelerated decarbonization and resilient, sustainable development. The paper also warns also that failure to act on long-term sustainability risks increased inequality, higher opportunity costs, cascading hazards, and further retreat from planetary thinking and globalism.
ABSTRACT
2020 has become the year of coping with COVID-19. This year was to be the "super year" for sustainability, a year of strengthening global actions to accelerate the transformations required for achieving the 2030 agenda. We argue that 2020 can and must be a year of both. Thus we call for more utilisation of the health-emergency disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) framework to complement current responses to COVID-19 and the patent risk of similar phenomena in the future. To make our case, we examine current responses to COVID-19 and their implications for the SFDRR. We argue that current mechanisms and strategies for disaster resilience, as outlined in the SFDRR, can enhance responses to epidemics or global pandemics such as COVID-19. In this regard, we make several general and DRR-specific recommendations. These recommendations concern knowledge and science provision in understanding disaster and health-related emergency risks, the extension of disaster risk governance to manage both disaster risks and potential health-emergencies, particularly for humanitarian coordination aspects; and the strengthening of community-level preparedness and response.