Which post covid-19 world do we want to live in ?

Remote work, reunite family, local consumption, closed borders, emphatic connections with strangers, deep collective emotions through art... Not all the covid-related experience is bad. But, have you though about the world you would like to live in after the quarantine ends up?

I used to dream 10 years ago than by this time of my life, our world would have moved far forward with renewable energies, responsible consumption, local food production, electric cars, clean oceans, plastic disappearance... Yet, the result today is that our world stay exactly the same (or even more damaged) and that our path toward my dream has remained very timid although we are well talking about collective health.

The humanitarian crisis we are living today should lead us to reflect individually: Am I up to date with the vaccines designed to prevent all kind of horrible diseases? Am I caring not to buy unnecessary plastic wrapping in my daily shopping? Am I limiting my meat and dairy consumption ? Am I recycling? Am I turning off the tap when brushing my teeth and the light when leaving a room? Am I thinking twice if I really need the gadget I just saw on Amazon ? Am I using non polluting transport? And if you are not doing any of those gestures then why ? At this point, we are well aware that those habits will definitely help us to limit air, sea and soil’s contamination and therefore improve our vital resources of water, food and air with positive impact on the whole ecosystem including ourselves !

This period clearly taught us that facing a tremendously impacting and life threatening situation, we, almost over night, shifted all our paradigms to adopt brand new habits to take care of our selves and loved ones: cooking, teaching, educating, caring, working, connecting, communicating... everything change quickly. Human kind tends to be quickly forget the learning lessons and needs experiencing by its own to understand, make conclusion and take action. Today, a third of the global population is currently leaving any kind of lock-down (absolute quarantine to stay at home recommendations): more than 2.5 billions of people (without any social class, economical power or nationality distinction) !

What our tomorrow back to routine will look like ? An old globalized over consuming and economically driven one or a new life caring and responsible one ? I personally think that this is the best moment to reflect on our current personal footprint and the one we would like to leave from now on.

I hope that this pandemic will allow us to maintain the level of empathy, we discovered in our inner selves, which blew up to the surface making people singing from their windows to spread hope and clapping respected healthcare professionals we never cared about before (not even when they strike to protest against the unacceptable condition they work in to take care about us...). I also hope we will still be able to listen to the professional experts to follow their recommendations when they shout the we should act now on the climate change. Will we be able to extend this wave of empathy to another threat for whole earth living kind: the global warming? Will the caring to ourselves and our community will be strong enough to act on the urgent need of shifting consumption habits to impact positively our environment ?

Hopefully we, citizens of the world, will do our part, in our houses and life’s. We expect from our leaders to start shaping our future taking this crisis as a brand new opportunity to see the world with a new lens: invisible to human eye doesn’t mean is doesn’t exist.