There is no such thing as a free lunch
The initial successes of command and control of natural resources come with a costs that are usually never acknowledged. Over time, the composite result is increasingly less resilient and more vulnerable ecosystems, more myopic and rigid institutions, and more dependent and selfish economic interests all attempting to maintain short-term success. We need to work with the complexity of nature, not subjugate it.
Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize so as to retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks – to have the same identity. Resilience is the ability to cope with shocks and keep functioning in much the same kind of way.
Could we, in the name of curing the current big corona crisis, end up accelerating the next big crisis, brought on by environmental decline?
Governments are wedged between their own policies and the politics: they don’t want to increase spending and can’t be seen to water down existing standards, yet remain frustrated by the processes that those standards bring with them.