As overwhelmed medical systems and devastated communities come together to navigate the raging COVID-19 pandemic, people in India are acutely aware of the larger systemic flaws that brought us here. Communities are leading the way in extending help for people in need, as farmers feed migrant workers, homemakers cook for COVID-19-affected families, auto drivers retrofit their rickshaws as ambulances, and cyclists ferry food and medicines. These are just some examples among million of acts of solidarity and resilience.
Most conversations around the environment in the pandemic revolve around lockdowns contributing to the temporary healing of local micro-environments and urban neighbourhoods seeing the return of long-forgotten birds, and the availability of cleaner air in city centres. The irony of these pretty pictures alongside people’s suffering is not lost on us.
I can’t help but try to make sense of this moment of crisis through the lens of environmental justice. Being part of Greenpeace India, an organisation that has campaigned for nearly 20 years on climate change, the debates around vaccine inequity remind me of international climate negotiations among nations.
Just as countries around the world must work together via common but differentiated responsibilities, will the global community ensure that everyone on the planet gets a vaccine quickly without discrimination and without paying at the point of service? Can vaccination drives roll out fast enough to stop further waves of infections and new variants that affect our lives and well-being, including our livelihoods?
COVID pandemic and environment
A quick response that puts people over profit is essential to make the world more equitable. This is not just a health emergency – this is also a part of the larger climate and biodiversity emergencies. The pandemic itself and the response to it across the world has exposed our vulnerabilities and faultlines. We have to work hard if we are to address such global crises as citizens of the world.
The climate crisis is not a singular event located in a distant future but rather dynamic, non-linear and evolving. And it is here right now. As we make efforts to keep temperatures below 1.5º, we are acutely aware of what the climate crisis looks like – air pollution has claimed approximately 54,000 lives in India’s national capital alone in 2020.
Vehicles drive on a nearly empty road after India extended a nationwide lockdown to slow the spreading of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New Delhi, April 14, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Anushree Fadnavis/Files
A new paper by the ministry of environment, forests and climate change reiterated that a Covid infection may be aggravated by air pollution. This pandemic is an indication of how the global community will or won’t come together in the future to address the many climate-related crises still to come.
Presently, vaccine, therapeutics and diagnostic intellectual property rights and technical know-how are held by big pharmaceutical companies that are unwilling to share the science and technology needed to ramp up production in the Global South. This is a necessary condition for vaccines and treatments to be accessible to everyone. The knowledge developed by these companies was significantly funded by public money; it is only logical that this knowledge is widely shared for the greater good.
In addition to waiving off intellectual property rights and sharing technology on the vaccine, other ideas for cooperation to expand global vaccine production include making funding for big pharmaceutical companies conditional on their participation in the World Health Organization’s technology transfer platform, COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). The possibilities for making vaccines available to everyone are numerous (some ideas are here, here, here, here and here ).
The world must recognise that getting a patent waiver for vaccines is an immediate, necessary and most basic step to help address the emergency we are in now. We are heartened to see some rich countries like the US and New Zealand standing up in solidarity on the patent issue. The joint statement after recent India and European Union’s summit seems to be supporting global cooperation and solidarity to ensure a better, safer, sustainable, and inclusive recovery. We hope the European Union and other countries still blocking this waiver will now act on these fine words by supporting a TRIPS waiver.
The fact that production can be ramped up with patent waiver and technology transfer is just the first step. India’s universal vaccination programmes for polio, tuberculosis and other diseases have been an efficient mechanism in the past and the country needs a similar vaccination programme now. Ensuring equitable access will require further steps at the domestic level.
Our actions now, as individuals, as societies, and as governments, will determine the way we deal with our fear, anxieties and sense of uncertainty of the present times. As we reimagine and reconstitute our food systems, cities, mobility and access to basic facilities to all as we journey towards a fossil-free future, we recognise that we can build on our collective wisdom to restore, heal and connect.
Our vaccine equity call is a moment for nations to signal their willingness to be part of these journeys towards an inclusive, just and sustainable world.
Binu Jacob is Executive Director at Greenpeace India.