Pandemics and climate change: lessons from the 2020 Covid-19

This chapter discusses the connection between diseases and climate change, with a focus on the Coronavirus pandemic that has spread globally in the firts months of 2020. Several reports have been warning for years about the threat for human health that might arise from the encroachment on nature, but it is only with the spread of Covid-19 that the World has started realizing how real this threat is and how much it involves the whole planet and not just some remote areas where infectious diseases are often associated with critical climatic conditions or poverty. Through Covid-19 the threat of pandemics has gone global and mediatic and more and more its connection to the mismanagement of the environment has been highlighted by scholars of different disciplines. The reflections here presented are based both on scientific literature, in particular journal articles and – due to the very recent phenomenon analysed – even websites, critical blog contributions and public debates, both in Italy and globally; and on a wide range of grey literature that has been issued by some of the most relevant institutions dealing with climate change, the environemnt and health, such as the IPCC, WHO, WWF, etc. After introducing the topic and the methodology that we have been using to address it, the chapter is divided in three main sections, being the first one an analysis of what is already known on climate change and pandemics and present some recent data on the link between this specific disease and the global change in climate patterns; the second one propose an analysis of the climatic effects that the choice of locking down, taken by many countries as a solution to contain the spread of the infection, has brought about; and finally the third part discusses the way ahead, by introducing the concept of adaptation and the role it can have in helping shaping a new form of society in the post-pandemic scenario.