The coronavirus pandemic has people throughout the world pondering how humankind should respond to a public health crisis. While individual countries are managing the crisis with varying degrees of success, we can all agree that the Covid-19 pandemic is commanding the international community’s attention. By contrast, it is much harder to get the world to care about the long-term public health crisis unfolding in the West African Sahel.

A suspect in the transmission of Covid-19 to humans, pangolins are the most trafficked animal in the world despite the ban on trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). Currently on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), pangolins are armadillo-looking mammals found in Asia and Africa but are more closely related to cats and dogs. Humans hunt them for their scales used in traditional medicine and the fashion industry and for their meat, which is considered a delicacy. Asian pangolins have become critically endangered, and poachers have turned to trafficking African species, most destined for China and Vietnam. According to TRAFFIC, a leading non-governmental organization working on wildlife trade, twenty tons of pangolins are trafficked each year, putting them on the fast track to extinction. 

The rhetoric of war is all around us during the Covid-19 pandemic, from the World Health Organization to historical takes. More critical assessments note that this war, like others, will hurt the most vulnerable. In a recent essay, feminist political scientist Cynthia Enloe takes issue with this rhetoric, pointing to the historic ways in which wars have led to “racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic practices.” Whether or not war rhetoric is helpful at this crucial moment, the current pandemic should be a wake-up call to expand what investments we consider essential to our national security, how we value work, and who gets called a hero.

“The only certainty is uncertainty,” Pliny the Elder reportedly said. Though all historical times are full of uncertainties, some seem more so than others. This is one of those times.

A major slowdown of the Indian economy was brewing and completely spilled over when I got to India in September 2019 to start my dissertation fieldwork on Indian women construction workers’ experiences and conceptualizations of Human Security. Wages stagnated. Consumer spending fell. Construction, real estate, and other industries were sent reeling. Construction workers’ livelihoods were teetering on the brink. Uncertainty became the backbone of their existence.

It’s clear that the virus that causes Covid-19 travels freely. It needs no visa, having breached many points of entry. Experts at Imperial College London estimate that “in the absence of interventions, Covid-19 would have resulted in 7 billion infections and 40 million deaths globally this year.” Now is the time for governments to get ahead of the curve and respond to the emergency. It’s time to take a whole-of-government approach to strengthen testing at points of entry and institute mass testing at various points as South Korea did.

As the global climate changes, climate-related security risks are making the existing political, social, and economic challenges even more complicated. The 230 million people who live in the Horn of Africa are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change such as droughts and floods. Political fragility and transnational complexities make water governance a matter of regional high-level politics as well as geopolitical tensions. In short, sustainable water governance is critical for achieving resilient peace.

As we have seen over recent weeks, the impact of Covid-19 has caused unprecedented disruption, deaths, and confusion in developed countries. The public health capacity of countries such as the United States and UK has been overwhelmed.