Increasing global resilience to systemic risk: emerging lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
This report outlines the importance of applying a systemic risk lens to help prevent the escalation and reduce the impact of future pandemics. It also outlines a number of key reforms required within global governance systems to facilitate this change. This includes not only strengthening and integrating health agendas into governance systems but also looking more holistically to address the root causes of zoonoses spillover. Action now to address the climate crisis, protect ecosystems and reduce extreme poverty and inequality can temper the conditions that allowed COVID-19 to emerge. Putting this into action requires stepped up efforts beyond just the health sector to strengthen disaster risk reduction, prevention and resilience, and to work across traditional silos to address systemic risks. Finally, it is essential that global systems do not aim just to ‘recover’ to where they were before but instead use this crisis as an opportunity to ‘bounce forward’ and build back better.
Key recommendations include:
- Integrate a systemic lens into disaster risk
- Reform and strengthen global governance
- Strengthen multilateralism
- Create and strengthen regional partnerships
- Engage all stakeholders
- Adopt a multisectoral, multidisciplinary approach
- Leave No-one behind: prioritize a rights-based approach
