In the wake of COVID-19, is glocalization our sustainability future?

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic provides opportunities for a new kind of a glocalization, in which people live far more local lives than in recent decades but with greater global awareness through a connective world brain. The neoliberal version of globalization has spurred environmental devastation, economic inequality, and excessive global travel. A new glocalization should advance in tandem with reduced air travel, local production, smart growth, and greatly reduced automobile trips, among other measures. Adapted locally but with a globally cooperative ethic, these measures may be the best way to simultaneously alleviate the rapidly moving pandemic crisis and the slower moving environmental crisis.

Keywords:

• Glocalization
• pandemic
• Coronavirus
• sustainability
• climate change

As horrible as the coronavirus is, several analysts suggest that it might be an opportunity to correct a global economy that ravages the environment and spurs massive income inequality. For instance, in this journal, Maurie Cohen (2020) writes that “COVID-19 is simultaneously a public health crisis and a real-time experiment in downsizing the consumer economy.” Consistent with this characterization, carbon monoxide (CO) and other pollutants have plummeted along with carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions (McGrath 2020), birds long unheard fill the streets with song, and dolphins are alleged to be frolicking in Venice. The United States government has undertaken massive interventions to help working people, a fact that would have seemed inconceivable a few short months ago.

It is even possible that cultural values will shift away from short-term materialism toward a more socially beneficent ethic, a realization that we are all in this together. Simultaneously, and only seemingly contradictorily, we might begin to loosen our interconnected world, at least as far as physical movement is concerned, to lower the virulent spread of diseases and the environmental impacts of a world filled with air traffic and international movement of people and goods. Paradoxically, doing so in a way that protects the environment and public health will take intense global cooperation. We need a new kind of glocalization, one predicated not on economic growth but on environmental awareness and economic equity.

Such changes will not happen without conscious effort and organizing. What might a move toward a more sustainable society look like in the wake of the coronavirus? I believe it will be a society—or a network of societies—in which people really do live much more locally but think much more globally.

The key to a sustainable society may lie in realizing what the coronavirus and climate change have in common. Both crises ignore geopolitical boundaries. Both thrive in the setting created by the 1990s version of globalization, powered as it has been by neoliberalism. This amounts to free trade without much regard for the environment or labor rights, an incessant drive for economic growth, and ever-increasing global travel by tourists, businesses, and goods. Neoliberalism is also the engine that delivers the oil and coal largely responsible for our environmental crisis.

A more responsible environmental stewardship would recognize the parallel ways our short-sighted economic system accelerates both climate change and pandemics. Global studies scholar Olivier Rubin (2019) presciently argued shortly before the appearance of COVID-19,

[T]he similarities between [antimicrobial stewardship] and climate change are striking: both have adverse consequences today that might potentially turn catastrophic in the future; both risk tragedies of the commons where the benefits from antibiotics and emissions are local but the costs of resistance and climate change are global; both contain clear ethical dilemmas where some overuse a common resource (to the detriment of all of us) while others lack access to the resource; and responding to both threats includes high complexity and multiple constituencies.

For climate change, the tragedy of the commons is exploitation of the abundance of cheap coal and oil and the socio-technical systems (e.g., transportation) that we have built on both. For the pandemic, the connections are different; the commons is the whole planet and the abuse more accidental, humanity’s heedless comings and goings which do, however, have environmental consequences while exacerbating the spread of disease.

In response to these transboundary threats, Rubin makes several suggestions: polycentric, horizontal governance; sharing best practices across nations; and solving problems in local contexts. In some ways, this is already happening, albeit in a fragmentary way, as mayors and governors move to the forefront in solving problems amid a widespread pattern of failure of national and international leadership.

A society capable of surviving, and even thriving, in coming decades and into the 22nd century, will need to adapt a version of glocalization in which people live much more locally while encompassing a far broader vision of the planetary common good than we have seen thus far. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, glocalization is “the simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems.” Roland Robertson (1995), in an influential early paper, argued against a homogenizing “tendency to cast the idea of globalization as inevitably in tension with the idea of localization.” The term is often attributed to Japanese businesses, and in this context means applying local aspects to an international business, such as serving tea in a British branch of McDonald’s.

However, this definition is too narrow for our current, complex needs for a glocal system of governance. Sociologist Victor Roudometof (2015) argues that the origin of the term “glocalization” is more complex than the frequently referenced business-oriented version. He points to a 1990 exhibit in Germany that used the term “glocal” in offering “a representation of links along and across spatial scales in relationship to the goal of developing bridges relating local to regional to national to global levels for the purposes of environmental research and management.” Indeed, glocalization seems an ideal term for conceptualizing the complexities of environmental linkages, always simultaneously local and global, and sped up greatly by the actions of the human species. In any case, glocalization is too apt a term not to use in the broader context of living locally, thinking globally, which may be the only hope for a sustainable future. The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to push for a new reality.

The move toward a new reality has already begun at the city level, largely as a response to the sustainability movement. Cities are now key sites of movement toward clean energy; walking, biking, and public transit; and more efficient use and reuse of material goods; among other efforts. Two key organizations that help cities share practices and coordinate are Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI), with more than 1,750 local governments in 126 countries, and C40, which connects megacities to help fight climate change. Such networks help to provide an alternative to the long dominance of nation states, each perceived to have their own interests. The legal scholar Helmut Philipp Aust (2018) asks, “[H]ow will the balance between States as central actors of the international system on the one hand and an increasingly assertive league of cities and subnational authorities be struck?” We may be moving toward polycentric government, but clashes with national governments are inevitable. Advocates of the so-called muncipalist movement Erik Forman, Elia Gran, and Sixtine van Outryve (2020) even suggest that “many countries with an ascendant authoritarian right have turned to cities as places to consolidate, experiment, and grow.” From the United States to Turkey to Chile, populist movements at the national level are spawning a municipal reaction to the populist right and growing nationalism. Historically, municipal alternatives have been based on economic issues, while today sustainability is often at the forefront.

Even left to themselves, most city governments are often not virtuous and are subject to influence by monied interests. The C40 network, in particular, has been accused of upholding neoliberal governance, being oriented toward economic growth rather than quality of life, and reinforcing patterns of inequality (Davidson and Gleeson 2015). Alternative local visions and networks do exist, with more egalitarian philosophies, such as the Transition Towns initiative and the Citaslow movement, a network of towns and small cities that seeks to maintain local characteristics (Servon and Pink 2015).

These local movements and collaborations will not succeed without strong grassroots participation, and critique where city governance goes wrong. An ongoing populist backlash that often denies climate change makes the challenge even more difficult. And city governments may easily slide into past assumptions, particularly regarding income inequality. We are in an era of vibrant grassroots movements, from 350.org to Black Lives Matter to the Hong Kong protests for democracy. Perhaps the most notable movement today is Fridays for the Future (FFF), with its global icon, Greta Thunberg. The FFF mobilization, with its disproportionate female presence and reliance on social media, has a large number of first-time protesters, indicating the possibility of a growing base in years to come. The movement’s school strikes by youth culminated in a mass climate strike this past March 15, a month that “mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe” (Wahlström et al. 2019).

Success, as is often the case, has been mixed. Fridays for the Future is credited with supercharging Green Party electoral victories across Europe, yet has been unable to move mainstream politics beyond the limited accomplishments of the Paris Accord, already damaged by nonparticipation by the United States. During the coronavirus outbreak, such strikes are impossible, but the movement is forging forward online while rethinking its tactics. German activist Luisa Neubauer explains that, “[B]eating the coronavirus is the first thing we have to do, but the fight to save the climate can’t stop. It will continue in other ways and when this crisis is over the climate crisis will look different” (Hockenos 2020). How much the global youth movement will connect the COVID-19 pandemic with other environmental and public health risks, and in what ways it will shape future conceptions of governance and society, remains to be seen.

The rest of this policy brief covers, in an admittedly sketchy way, two major aspects of what I think our glocal future should look like: transportation and production-consumption systems.

First, we are going to need to greatly decrease air travel, both to avoid future pandemics and to reduce our ecological footprint. It was reported that on March 29 of this year, “checkpoint pass-throughs [at airports] were roughly 93 percent lower than the same day in 2019” (Eby 2020). If this signals a longer-term change, it will only help the environment. Currently, air travel produces approximately 2.5% of greenhouse gases annually, with emissions expected to at least triple by 2050, according to projections prior to the coronavirus outbreak (Tabuchi 2019). At the same time, the rapid spread of COVID-19 is almost certainly exacerbated by our proclivity for international flights. This is why our most economically vibrant global cities—New York, London, Hong Kong—were the first locales hit by the virus; from these metropoles it has been making its way into unprepared smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Air travel for professional reasons is less important at a time of technological connection. Even a small, provincial town can offer educational opportunities unmatched 20 years ago, sophisticated work is occurring from home, and business transactions occur continents apart. Just as Swedish chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen was nurtured in the cradle of online competition, knowledge no longer knows boundaries (except across the Great Firewall of China and other censorship efforts).

The pandemic makes nakedly evident the need for sustainable cities, with clean air and high-quality public health. Walking has burgeoned during the short time “normal” life has shut down, and improves health, including weight, cardiovascular conditions, and bone and muscle strength, as well as psychological state (Mayo Clinic Staff 2019). The changed mentality following the current crisis might spark new smart growth efforts, making changes to physical infrastructure more politically viable. Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods—augmented by scooters and other new mobility technologies—could further cluster residential buildings with businesses and other destinations. And we are seeing experiments in shutting down individual streets to make space for walking (Rudick 2020; Bellafante 2020), which might portend a shift in sensibilities. Telework will further shrink the need for frequent travel. Ideally, people will simply get in their cars less often and will own smaller vehicles, with more of them hybrid and electric.

The benefits of cleaner air from reduced car traffic are already evident. Indeed, high levels of fine particulates “promot[e] hypertension, heart disease, breathing trouble, and diabetes, all of which increase complications in coronavirus patients” (Gardiner 2020). This makes stark the need to reduce automobile traffic, and to drive cleaner vehicles.

Public transit, unfortunately, will suffer. The current plunge in revenue will be difficult to overcome, and people will be reluctant to crowd onto trains and buses if it can be avoided. On March 24 ridership on the New York City subway was down 87% from a year ago. Following the 2003 SARS epidemic, a survey showed 75% of regular commuters in Asian and European countries avoiding public transit (Eby 2020) and the COVID-19 pandemic is much more catastrophic. Yet the prospect of a return to traffic-jammed streets might provide some hope for new shared transportation efforts. Activists and local authorities must do what they can to encourage not just a return of buses and rail, but more of these with better rights-of-way, as soon as it is once again safe.

Radical changes in production and consumption systems are also needed. We must alter our dependence on cheap goods, cheaply produced in the countries with the lowest labor and environmental standards. Production seems likely to become more local, and more redundant. The fragility of just-in-time production has become apparent, and it seems foolish to rely on it in the future (Sarkis et al. 2020). China has come to be the source of many crucial goods, from pharmaceuticals to rare earth elements. As Lizzie O’Leary (2020) points out in The Atlantic, “[W]e’ve built a global supply chain that runs on outsourcing and thin margins, and the coronavirus has exposed just how delicate it is.” In early March, one commentator even stated, “using China as a hub…that model died this week” (Wegner 2020). In the United States, the pandemic has also fractured food chains dependent on long-distance shipments in bulk to restaurants, resulting in “widespread destruction of fresh food” at a time of shortages (Yaffe-Bellany and Corkery 2020). Clearly, a change is needed to more resilient supply networks, including local production and more diverse sources.

A team of McKinsey consultants (Pinner, Rogers, and Samandari 2020) recently argued that “addressing pandemics and climate risk requires [a] fundamental shift, from optimizing largely for the shorter-term performance of systems to ensuring equally their longer-term resiliency.” Small and local production facilities seem part of a resilient future. Technology will play a huge part. The ability to instantly move production information across continents will greatly enhance the long-predicted—but rather slow in arriving—rise of ubiquitous 3 D printing to make an array of goods, as is already happening with face shields, masks, and other emergency medical equipment (Shankland 2020). Taiwan has particularly spurred local production of medical equipment, including medical masks, hazmat suits, and drugs (Wei 2020). It seems likely that, as a reaction to the current outbreak and possible future emergencies, local production will extend to a great variety of goods. This trend, toward self sufficiency when necessary, will also provide protection from the ravages of climate change.

Moving to a new society, with local production, smaller and cleaner vehicles, greatly reduced air travel, improved public health, and myriad other changes will take global coordination. If air travel is permanently reduced, the Internet and other technology must connect us into a kind of a world brain, albeit one highly differentiated by region. Best practices will be easily shared, but local circumstances will adopt them in multiple ways. Innovation and the spread of information will occur faster than ever in human history.

We will need to innovate. We will need brilliant local leadership. Our challenges are greater than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic is only one signal that our global, materialist society is undergoing massive failure. We have had other near misses, from bird flu to Ebola, and more diseases are sure to arise (Levitz 2020). Just as individual social distancing has slowed the spread of the virus, a kind of global social distancing will be necessary to buffer against future contagions. And the much slower moving climate crisis presents an even greater threat. We must be more aware than ever of environmental health and its relationship to public health. We will need to listen to the scientists and health care professionals carefully.

The forces arrayed against such changes are formidable. The rise of dictatorial regimes and authoritarian personalities around the globe is ominous, while the worst businesses will undermine attempts at corporate social and environmental responsibility. The temptation will be strong to believe that the current episode is an aberration and that we can revert to the “old normal” as quickly as possible. In the United States, we are seeing short-term thinking and a heedless imperative to return to economic growth whatever the consequences. Only at the level of some states and cities have we seen serious, sustained responses to both the climate catastrophe and the pandemic, and then only in a patchwork, ad hoc way. To avoid a global tragedy of the commons, we will need to tie these local actions together, using our world brain in a new kind of governance. We had better learn from our mistakes. We need a swift, permanent shift to a sustainable society based on a new version of glocalization with people deeply rooted in their communities and profoundly aware of global trends and necessities. Otherwise, we are not long on this planet as a species.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).