Final Summary- Emergencies, wellbeing and social justice in the Anthropocene

The role of wider cross-cutting issues and awareness

Discussing ’emergency’, as Gale Rigobert correctly pointed out, requires thinking about the cross cutting issues involved, which did not necessarily cause the immediate disruptions that led to emergency, but play a central role, such as colonialism, social justice, and suffering. Another critical aspect is thinking about who benefits from this framing, and what impacts this framing can bring. 

Renzo Taddei alerted us to the fact that ‘knowing’ and ‘caring’ are not the same, and this has implications even for communication. Thinking about the emergency framework requires going beyond the limitations of the approach based on visibility, perception, and awareness. Care is a critical element of all social organizations. This is one important aspect that has been perpetuated by indigenous leaders. 

Another aspect, which was reinforced in Janaka Jayawickrama’s and Claudia Milena Adler’s talks, is the urgent need to break the division between human beings and nature. In response to the current humanitarian and planetary crises it is critical to empower nature, to prioritise equity and cooperation, as well as decolonise approaches and actions. 

Helena Ribeiro proposed two coordinated responses that should be interconnected to be more effective in tackling crises and emergencies, considering the current armed conflicts, and the increasing deforestation and destruction of ecosystems: (i) actions to fight for peace; and (ii) restoration, considering issues of vulnerability, social justice and environmental justice. 

Time to Act 

Lindsay Stringer reminded us of the political implications of climate emergency declarations. In particular, she emphasised the limitations of the most vulnerable groups, who have been more directly impacted by this current model of exploitation, in responding to and minimizing the impacts of accelerated climate change. The time for action is very short. 

This idea of time connects with Peter Sutoris's reflection on how this emergency framework can limit the vision of alternative futures (distraction), alternative scenarios (technological utopias), ethical problems, bringing negative impacts and implications on social justice, and effects on the amplification of societal polarization, and exclusion of the diversity of imagination. 

Thinking about the emergency framework is also critical in the responses in disaster situations, as Jon Gascoigne reminded us, based on his experiences. Considering local specificities, local voices in the design of disaster responses are key.

In conclusion

We recognize that there are different understandings of the concept of emergency. However, the most conventional definitions and the predominant technocratic framework commonly adopted in the analysis of global health security reinforce the idea that certain phenomena - such as the Covid-19 pandemic - should be characterized and addressed particularly by their degree of immediacy, exceptionality and, to some extent, by their unpredicability, and their properties of danger and threat to the survival of a particular group or community. In this framework, these phenomena tend to be permeated by excessively deterministic narratives and, not rarely, involve situations whose unfoldings are marked by authoritarian approaches to confrontation, which contribute to anti-democratic and technocratic measures, silencing other types of knowledge (local, traditional), and further oppressing minority groups. 

In this securitization bias, emergencies - as revealed by the pandemic - tend to be approached from a conflict and national security perspective, justifying extraordinary measures and invisibilizing other critical issues that, most of the time, are at the root of the problems in focus. In other words, the securitizing approach produces neglect, which in turn reproduces the vulnerability of certain groups. It even amplifies violence, exclusion, erosion of human rights, and promotion of policies of oppression and inequality, particularly for indigenous communities, minorities, and marginalized groups. 

However, we understand that emergencies are socially constructed phenomena, open to contestation, whose experiences, perceptions, and information flows about the threats at stake are shared and negotiated among individuals, social groups, and decision makers. 

In the technocratic framing, discourse of emergency as reaction predominates, in which the typical imperative is a return to pre-existing conditions. In contrast, in this socio-constructivist perspective, there is a room to accommodate a discourse of emergency as strategy, which would reinforce the unsustainability of the status quo. The framing of climate change and biodiversity loss as emergencies, in the view of Patterson et al. (2021), provide  concrete examples of this attempt to create an exception to the norm, a strategy of political intervention to make an existing situation visible. 

In the field of global health, the socio-constructivist perspective can drive robust analyses based on a critical view that, rather than simple health challenges, emergencies should be understood from broader social and political contexts and implications. They should be thought of as situations which require mobilization of states and societies to concretely address the socioeconomic determinants that are at the root of the problems, prioritizing creative and integrated approaches to governance. This approach also makes it possible to elucidate how neglect, in its multiple dynamics of omissions, obstructions and deliberate actions, constitutes a central axis in the production of emergencies, acting as a damage multiplier and as an important factor in the reproduction of vulnerabilities.

Moving Forward

Thank you once again to all our amazing panel members. The webinar has generated so much thought provoking insight into the concept of Emergency Framing and I am working with Piran White and João Nunes, and many of our colleagues who contributed to the workshop, on a collective paper to take these ideas forward. 

Checkout the full version of Gabriela’s Final Summary Session via YouTube.