Sri Lankan president continues to entrench autocratic rule

K. Ratnayake

Media reports have confirmed that the Sri Lankan defence ministry has stationed thousands of soldiers in up to 16 schools in Colombo and in other areas, including the North and Central provinces. The soldiers were dispatched to Colombo on Monday, during the all-island curfew.

This week M. M. Ratnayake, an additional secretary to the education ministry secretary, revealed that the schools would “serve as lodging for the Armed Force personnel who are deployed for duty from distant areas.” The comments were in response to a Facebook post by Akila Viraj Kariyawasam, the education minister in the previous United National Party (UNP)-led government, who said the schools are to be used as quarantine centres.

Yesterday, retired Major General Kamal Gunaratne, the current defence ministry secretary, also denied schools were being used as quarantine centres. There was a huge influx of soldiers, he said, because they had been recalled from leave and the armed forces needed additional camps to accommodate them. Gunaratne did not explain why most of the soldiers were dispatched back to Colombo.

Last week the army deployed its Quick Action Battalion to bolster existing security force operations at Colombo’s main entry points. The battalion was reportedly needed to prevent coronavirus victims entering the capital.

None of the parliamentary opposition parties, including the UNP, has challenged President Rajapakse or the military hierarchy as to why such large numbers of soldiers were brought to Colombo. These parties, like the Rajapakse administration, depend on support from the military, and are reluctant to criticise its actions.

Nor have they questioned why the government has deployed the military, replacing police, for the “external security” of parliament, even though the secretary of the parliament himself insisted parliament’s security is usually conducted by the police.

These moves raise the danger that Rajapakse, who has the closest ties to the military hierarchy, is putting troops in place that could be used to mount a coup. He is already in breach of the constitution regarding the holding of general elections. All of this is taking place under guise of combating the pandemic.

Instead of challenging Rajapakse, the main opposition parties on Monday issued a 10-point appeal to the Sri Lankan president urging him to reconvene parliament and offering their support. The appeal, which was signed by the UNP, its breakaway group Samagi Jana Balavegaya, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the Tamil National Alliance, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the plantation unions’ parties, was released on the same day as the troops were being sent to Colombo.

The letter urged Rajapakse to “respond positively to this offer of responsible cooperation” which was made “without any strings.” It added: “We are prepared to lend our support to the government in parliament… so that the governance of the country can proceed properly and lawfully” and according to the constitution. The opposition parties even promised not to draw any salaries for their service.

While it did not sign the appeal, the JVP, along with the other opposition parties, has backed the government’s actions in previous all-party meetings and also called for a reconvening of parliament.

Rajapakse has ignored Monday’s 10-point appeal, indicating that he will maintain his extra-constitutional agenda. Last week he told the media: “Whatever the cause may be, I have no hope of reconvening the old parliament.” He then accused the opposition parties of attempting to “create a constitutional crisis.”

Using the abject capitulation of the opposition parties, Rajapakse is systematically preparing a power grab and rallying support from the military leadership. Far from opposing the moves towards autocratic rule, the opposition parties are offering their support.

Despite their tactical differences, the overriding concern of both Rajapakse and the parliamentary opposition is the rising social anger of workers and poor over the ruling elite’s deepening attacks on jobs, wages and living conditions.

Last week, former parliamentary speaker Karu Jayasuriya warned party leaders not to create “another crisis” by demanding the reconvening of the parliament. Only the Supreme Court, he said, could rule on constitutional issues and that he would only respond to such a decision.

Amid this deepening political crisis, the number of coronavirus infections in Sri Lanka continues to rise, inching towards 700 or almost double the figure reported a week ago and despite very few people being tested. Like governments all around the world, however, Colombo is attempting to claim the pandemic is not very serious or that there are falling numbers of people being infected.

Yesterday, the National Institute for Infection Diseases (IDH), Sri Lanka’s only premier hospital for coronavirus treatment, admitted that its 140-bed capacity was full. The facility’s pitifully low capacity highlights the neglected and rundown level of healthcare in Sri Lanka. Even after coronavirus infections began being reported, Colombo refused to allocate adequate funds to restructure and expand existing hospitals or build new treatment centres.

Following their imperialist masters in the US and Europe, the Indian and Sri Lankan governments are demanding the reopening of the economy and for employees to return to work.

Sri Lanka capitalism is mired in a deep crisis. Yesterday, Moody’s international rating agency said Sri Lanka faced “simultaneous domestic and external shocks” that impact on its “fragile fiscal position, as indicated by widening budget deficits, a growing debt burden and weakening debt affordability.” It predicted that its debt to GDP ratio would soon reach 100 percent.

Yesterday the Central Bank’s fund-raising sale of $US68 million denominated bonds ended in failure. Only $18 million in bonds were purchased. Last week, one economist calculated that the Central Bank would print 8 billion rupees to “boost” the economy.

Big business continues to demand the government provide massive financial assistance. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce wants 350 billion rupees or 3.5 percent of GDP in total financial assistance. Several companies have told the trade unions they will not pay workers’ salaries for three months. Fearing the eruption of mass struggles by workers, the unions have issued pathetic appeals to Rajapakse for support.

Last week, Rajapakse told private sector management that they should only recall a third of their workforce. Nothing was said about what would happen to the wages and jobs of the remaining workers.

Last November, Rajapakse promised the ruling elite that he would establish a “strong and stable” government to deal with the mass working-class opposition that shattered the coalition government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. But weeks after Rajapakse became president, plantation workers, miners and teachers launched protest strikes. These were followed by ongoing demonstrations outside his office in central Colombo by some of the 15,000 sacked by his government.

Rajapakse’s preparations to take on the working class was spelled out by his defence secretary in early March. The government, the defence secretary said, had merged “military and civil capabilities through ‘Integrated Contingency Planning’ to enable the military to work alongside civilian first-responders in order to mitigate the impact of disaster situations, workers’ strikes and civil unrest, and take the lead if necessary.”

Rajapakse is using the pandemic disaster to tear up constitutional norms and the rule of law in preparation for a presidential dictatorship. Step by step, the so-called opposition parties are encouraging Rajapakse’s anti-democratic agenda.

Spain ends confinement, moving to “new normal” as COVID-19 cases rise

Alejandro López

On Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced his government’s plans for a gradual end to COVID-19 confinement measures in Spain, even as new infections mount. The return-to-work policy is part of the criminal drive of the international financial aristocracy to resume production and send workers back to work, risking the health and the lives of thousands.

On Tuesday evening, Sánchez outlined his government’s plan under the name “Transition Plan to a New Normal.”

“The only target is to reach the new normal,” he said, claiming that his plan consists of an “asymmetrical, gradual and flexible” de-escalation.

The plan was developed by the “Coronavirus Management Technical Committee.” Chaired by Sánchez, it included four deputy prime ministers, six ministers and four senior officials of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and of the petty-bourgeois populist Podemos party. From now on, Sánchez declared, this committee will be called the “De-escalation Technical Committee,” as if the raging pandemic were over.

People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, Sunday, April 26, 2020 (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The plan sets four stages for lifting lockdown measures, without setting clear dates. It begins on May 4 and lasts until the end of June. Sánchez explained that phase 0 will begin on May 4. It involves reopening small businesses such as restaurants that can offer takeaway and hairdressers. Customers will have to call and make an appointment to be able to buy products.

Phase 1 will allow “the partial reopening of small businesses under strict safety measures, but not large shopping malls, where big crowds could form.” Restaurants will open terraces without exceeding 30 percent of normal capacity, and hotels and tourist apartments, excluding common areas, will open also. Churches will open at 30 percent of usual capacity. Retail premises will select times dedicated to serving people over 65, who are at special risk from COVID-19.

In Phase 2, restaurants will be able to open indoors, at a third of normal capacity and with service only at tables. Cinemas, theatres, auditoriums and exhibition halls will also open, limited to one third of their capacity. Indoor cultural performances will be possible but limited to fewer than 50 people and less than a third of normal capacity.

Schools will not fully reopen until September.

In Phase 3, general mobility and transport will be made more flexible. In retail premises, capacity will be limited to 50 percent and a minimum distance of two metres between people will be imposed. In restaurants, there will be further easing, and beaches may be open.

Sánchez said that “By the end of June, as a country we will be in the new normal if the evolution of the epidemic is under control in all territories.”

The “New Normal” is not based on science, nor on mass demands to lift confinement, but on the reckless drive to operate business as usual and extract profits from workers amid a pandemic. Millions more workers, who have sheltered at home due to the lock-down, will now be forced to return to work. Millions more are being told, incorrectly, that it will be safe to be outside.

Sánchez claimed, “If we have to choose between prudence and risk, we opt for prudence. … Science still doesn’t know a lot of things about this virus. As such, we are facing something that we don’t know, and that is why we have to be cautious.”

This is a political lie: the PSOE-Podemos policy has nothing to do with “prudence” or being “cautious.” The truth is there is no need to lift confinement when the pandemic is nowhere near controlled.

Spain has suffered the world’s third-highest death toll after the United States and Italy. After more than six weeks of lockdown, the Health Ministry reported 301 more COVID-19 deaths and 1,308 new infections yesterday. In total, Madrid has identified 210,773 infections via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, and 23,822 people have died. This makes Spain the second country with the highest number of cases after the US, which has about a third of the global total, according to Johns Hopkins University data, with a million infections.

The Spanish government even failed to protect health care workers at the forefront of the struggle against COVID-19. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reports 20 percent of registered coronavirus cases in Spain are health care workers.

Significantly, the so-called “De-escalation Technical Committee” has admitted that it has still not come up with indicators to assess the “de-escalation” of the disease.

Yesterday, Fernando Simón, an epidemiologist serving as director of the Centre for Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Health Ministry and the only scientist in the Committee, said de-escalation “will not be based on unique indicators and predetermined thresholds,” as it depends on “many factors.”

Acting as Sánchez’s propaganda machine, the press has uncritically parroted the “new normal” thesis. Typical in the liberal media are articles such as “When can I go to a friend’s house? And visit my parents? This what we know of the new social life” (El País), or “This is how de-escalation will be in different stages for bars, restaurants and beaches” (Público) or “Seeing family or friends, having a beer or going to the beach: when can you start doing these things in de-escalation?” (Eldiario.org). El País also worries about “How Spain’s coronavirus lockdown could be endangering wildlife.”

The Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and social-democratic General Union of Labour (UGT) unions, which enforce the PSOE-Podemos’s criminal back-to-work policy, supported Sánchez’s latest measures. Mimicking his words, CCOO General Secretary Unai Sordo said: “The return to activity should be governed by prudence to prevent a rebound in COVID-19.”

A UGT statement declares that “once the magnitude of the health crisis we face subsides, as it seems in the last days, we should proceed to returning the activity of those production processes that are still paralysed, in order to mitigate, as far as possible, the damage that this pandemic is causing to our economy.”

As usual, Podemos was the biggest cheerleader of the policy. Podemos parliament spokesperson Pablo Echenique described the plan as “prudent and sensible” and hailed it for going “in the right direction.”

These forces speak not for the working class, which they are recklessly endangering, but for the financial aristocracy. Yesterday, Spain’s main stock exchange rebounded 3.21 percent and crossed the 7,000-point threshold it had fallen through earlier this year.

On the other side stand workers, who oppose reckless lifting of confinement measures. A poll published by El País reported that 59 percent of those asked thought that the lockdown should be maintained as it is for the time being.

Sweden forced to admit significant under-counting of coronavirus deaths

Jordan Shilton

Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare released figures Tuesday revealing that the death toll from the coronavirus has been underestimated in public figures. This came as total infections in the country of 10 million passed 20,000 yesterday, with almost 2,500 deaths.

The discrepancy is due to the Public Health Agency’s policy of only counting deaths following a positive COVID-19 test confirmed by a laboratory. However, the National Board of Health and Welfare noted that as of 21 April, only 82 percent of the deaths it linked to coronavirus had a positive lab test. Assuming that this difference has persisted over the last week, there would have been approximately 400 more deaths from the virus than the 2,462 officially recorded yesterday by the Public Health Agency.

This significant under-counting of deaths is not to be explained by an error, but is the direct product of the Swedish government’s “herd immunity” strategy. Unlike its Nordic neighbours and other European countries, Sweden avoided imposing a general lock-down and even delayed for some time the issuing of limited social distancing guidelines. Gatherings of up to 50 people are still permitted, and shops, restaurants, schools, and non-essential businesses of all types remain open.

People chat and drink in Medborgarplatsen, Stockholm, Sweden, Saturday, April 4, 2020 (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

As a result, the population has been subjected to a reckless experiment that some scientists have likened to playing “Russian roulette.” Even taking the lower official death toll as a point of comparison, the death rate in Sweden dramatically exceeds neighbouring countries. In Norway, for example, which has a population approximately half the size of Sweden’s, 7,660 cases and 206 deaths have been recorded. Sweden therefore has a death rate more than five times higher than its neighbour per head of population.

The refusal to impose strict social distancing measures is stretching the health care system to its limits. At Tuesday’s daily briefing, Johanna Sandwall, crisis manager at the National Board of Health and Welfare, stated that across the country, intensive care units have 30 percent spare capacity. However, she acknowledged that in some areas, there was zero spare capacity. Asked where these were, she refused to answer.

Stockholm has been the hardest hit region, recording close to 8,000 cases and over half of Sweden’s total deaths. The virus has run rampant through the capital region’s elderly care homes, with residents accounting for half of all deaths in the Stockholm region.

In a revealing remark, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, who leads the daily press conferences on COVID-19, justified Sweden’s strategy by arguing that it is necessary to have a controlled spread of the virus, rather than preventing it from infecting the public. Although he claims the authorities are not consciously pursuing a “herd immunity” policy, that is the logic of this approach.

Last week, the Public Health Agency was forced to correct a blatant error in its figures. Tegnell claimed on Monday, 20 April that Stockholm was just weeks away from “herd immunity,” claiming one third of the region’s population had already been infected. Several days later, the Public Health Agency revised this figure down to 26 percent, which remains highly speculative given the dearth of coronavirus testing.

Expert criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis continues to grow. On 12 April, 22 scientists from numerous research institutes and universities published an article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper urging the closure of all cafes and schools. Using data from the three days leading up to Easter weekend, they showed the impact of the government’s failure to take decisive action. On April 7-9, they wrote, “10.2 people per million inhabitants died of COVID-19 each day in Sweden, in Italy the figure was 9.7, in Denmark it was 2.9, in Norway 2.0 and in Finland 0.9.”

Additionally, the article called for providing proper protective equipment for health care workers dealing with the elderly, and mass testing for medical staff.

The horrific consequences of the authorities’ failure to implement such measures emerged last week, when a 39-year-old nurse died after contracting COVID-19 from a patient at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge.

Sonja Aspinen, an elderly care nurse in Nynäshman, south of Stockholm, said the lack of equipment has helped spread the virus throughout care homes. “There has not been a will to test us systematically, at least in those places where I have worked. Even there have been people with symptoms, but they have not been tested,” she told Euronews.

Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan Löfven acknowledged that “preparedness has not been good enough” for the pandemic, but placed the blame on previous governments for creating a shortage of resources in health care and social services.

The right-wing Alliance coalition government, led by Frederick Reinfeldt between 2006 and 2014, doubtless implemented many regressive reforms, including a vast expansion of private sector involvement in public services such as education and health care. But for Löfven and the Social Democrats to wash their hands of responsibility for the growth of inequality in Sweden and the decimation of public services is thoroughly cynical. Göran Persson’s Social Democrat-led government was instrumental in laying the basis between 1995 and 2006 for the Alliance’s privatisation drive.

After the 2008 economic crisis, Löfven, as head of the powerful IF Metall trade union, struck a deal with Swedish employers to enforce shorter working hours and pay cuts. Anders Weihe, chief negotiator for Sweden’s industrial employers’ association, commented approvingly on Löfven at the time: “He doesn’t look for battles and conflict, but for solutions.”

When Löfven came to power in 2014 leading a minority Social Democrat-led government with the Greens, he concluded a pact with the four Alliance members—the Moderates, Centre Party, Liberals, and Christian Democrats—to stay in power. The deal involved Löfven’s Social Democrats enforcing the Alliance’s budget in 2015, and gave the right-wing parties veto power over subsequent Social Democrat spending plans. This reactionary move, marking a decisive shift to the right in Swedish politics, was portrayed as necessary to block the rise of the far-right Sweden Democrats.

After the 2018 parliamentary election, Löfven took this cooperation a step further when he reached an agreement with the Centre and Liberal parties to vote for him as Prime Minister.

Predictably, in light of this record, the main focus of Löfven’s government during the coronavirus crisis has been to protect the wealth of Sweden’s banks and big business. The government made available a 300 billion kronor (€27 billion) package of tax deferrals for big business, while the Swedish central bank rolled out a 500 billion kronor loan programme for businesses. The central bank has cut interest rates to zero for investors.

The vast majority of loans do not support small businesses, but allow major corporations to restructure at the expense of the working class. A typical example is Scandinavian Airlines, partially owned by the Swedish and Danish governments. Just two weeks after Stockholm unveiled a €455 million bailout fund for airlines, of which more than €200 million is to go to Scandinavian Airlines, the company unveiled plans to lay-off 1,900 full-time workers in Sweden. The job cuts are part of a broader cost-cutting programme that will involve the elimination of 4,900 jobs across Scandinavia.

On 14 April, the Labour Board projected that unemployment could hit 10 percent by the summer. This would surpass the 8.6 percent jobless rate reached in 2010 following the global financial crisis.

The wave of layoffs was facilitated by the Unionen trade union, which concluded an agreement with the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise in March allowing employers to slash working hours for or impose temporary layoffs on around 500,000 workers. The deal provided for the government to pay up to 90 percent of a worker’s previous wages. However, the uptick in layoffs shows businesses are using this scheme above all to restructure their operations.

One of the largest employers to take advantage of the scheme was truck maker AB Volvo, which placed all of its 20,000 staff on the temporary lay-off scheme in late March.

Prime Minister Philippe announces premature end of the lockdown in France

Alexandre Lantier & Anthony Torres

Tuesday afternoon, in the wake of last week’s announcement by the European Union (EU) of a general policy of ending the coronavirus lockdown, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe presented his project for the end of the lockdown in France in the National Assembly. The plan proposes to reopen schools on May 11 and an overall return to normal in workplaces not essential to the fight against the disease. The Assembly voted 368 to 100 in favour of the plan, with 103 abstentions.

The end of the lockdown announced throughout Europe and in France in particular is premature and will have disastrous consequences. China lifted the containment of Wuhan, the first epicentre of the COVID-19 virus, on April 8, two and a half months after the start of that city’s lockdown—and when no more new cases were recorded there. France has waited only six weeks to lift the containment. Some 23,785 new cases were recorded yesterday in Europe, including 2,638 in France, and the epidemic is not at all under control on the continent.

Given the virulence of COVID-19, scientists warn that the end of strict health measures will result in an outbreak of new infections. German virologist Christian Drosten has given interviews to the British and Belgian press to warn of the danger of a new epidemic overwhelming already overcrowded hospitals. “I regret what has been happening in the last few days. We are on the verge of losing our lead over the disease completely,” said Drosten, who regretted the “political and economic pressure to return to normal.”

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, second left, presents his plan to exit from the lockdown at the National Assembly in Paris, Tuesday, April 28, 2020. (David Niviere, Pool via AP)

Drosten added, “I’m afraid the breeding rate will increase again, and we’ll be facing a second wave. ... Tanker trucks full of disinfectant will be on the streets, as this will be the only desperate measure [able] to fight the virus.”

These fears are confirmed by the analysis of biostatistician Chloé Dimeglio, from the laboratory of the University Hospital of Toulouse, based on a model of the pandemic. She says the containment has saved more than 100,000 lives in France: “At present, we count about 22,000 deaths. First, we compared the actual mortality to that obtained through our model, they are comparable. So, we looked at what the model would have given if there had been no containment. According to our model, we avoided more than 100,000 more deaths.”

Andrea Ammon, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Solna, Sweden, told El Pais: “I know that in January, when the Chinese locked down Wuhan and the surrounding towns, I was told that it would be impossible in Europe. At that time, we had 20 cases. At that time, if we had introduced tough control measures, we would not have stopped the spread of the disease, but the peak would have been much lower.”

In his presentation, Prime Minister Philippe brushed aside these warnings to insist on a rapid return to work. While admitting he was launching “an end to the lockdown that is as expected as it is risky,” and that “collective immunity is not enough,” he claimed that “the prolonged halt in the production of entire sections of our economy” presented France with the “risk of collapse.”

In fact, if the lockdown has caused difficulties for workers, it is because of the reactionary policy of the EU, and the inaction and lies of the French government. The EU and the European Central Bank have given €2,290 billion [US$2.49 billion] to the recovery plans, but as after the 2008 crash, they want to give almost all of this money to the banks, while workers and small businesses receive little or nothing, and temporary workers go hungry. As for the Emmanuel Macron government, it has long covered up the shortage of masks due to its refusal to order them before the pandemic and its claim that COVID-19 was just another flu.

The lockdown itself, which was endorsed by workers in mid-March, was adopted only in the face of an international wave of wildcat strikes and walkouts, especially in Italy and the United States. Now the governments, and behind them the financial aristocracy, which is being showered with public funds by the EU, are hoping to force people back to work in the midst of the pandemic, with no regard for human lives.

Philippe insisted that at the end of containment the virus would still be present: “We will have to live with the virus ... it’s not a good thing but it’s a fact.” He announced a strategy based on the three-part plan, “Protect, test, isolate.” Each element of this plan is a political fraud.

For protection, Philippe said that “wearing a mask in certain situations” would be added to the usual “barrier gestures” to limit the spread of the virus. But the government has been saying since the beginning of the pandemic that wearing a mask was not useful—essentially because it had allowed strategic stocks of masks to run out in order to make possible its tax gifts to the rich. Now, it is proposing that individuals make their own cloth masks, which do not guarantee an optimal obstacle to the virus, because the more efficient FFP2 masks are not accessible.

Philippe had the dishonesty to say that his government had screened massively at the beginning of the epidemic when the very first cases occurred. In fact, France is one of the countries that has detected the least: 7,103 tests per million inhabitants, 2.5 times less than the USA and more than 4 times less than Spain, Italy and Germany. Macron disregarded the WHO’s urgent calls for mass screening of the population. But a screening strategy—now possible thanks to the mobilization of public laboratories demanding the government authorize them to perform testing—is useless if it does not go hand in hand with a strategy to isolate and treat the cases that are discovered.

It will be next to impossible to organise the isolation of patients and new cases in view of the government’s plans. While admitting that the French are afraid to take public transport, Philippe claimed it would be possible to enforce prevention measures. But if the government organises a return to work, the rush to use transport will make any attempt to maintain the minimum distance of two metres between passengers meaningless.

According to Philippe, those who test positive for COVID-19 will have to choose between being isolated at home, “which will result in the confinement of the entire household for 14 days, for obvious reasons,” or in a place made available to them, such as a hotel requisitioned by the government.

Having admitted that the children are spreading the virus, the government will nonetheless reopen schools starting May 11. According to Philippe, “the reopening will be gradual from May 11, on a voluntary basis throughout the country. Classes will have a maximum of 15 pupils, and several health measures will be put in place, including the provision of hydro-alcoholic gel. The crèches will also be reopened with groups of up to 10 children.” All shops, except restaurants and cafes, will also be allowed to reopen on May 11.

Philippe again stressed that his policy was closely coordinated with the trade unions.

Workers cannot trust the policy of the government and the union apparatuses, which is made up of repression, lies and gifts to the rich. In order to give themselves the best chance of avoiding a second epidemic wave, workers must see to it that containment is extended. But this requires a political mobilisation to expropriate the vast sums of money stolen by the EU to finance the banks and turn them into the financial, food and medical aid needed to make containment tolerable for workers and small businesses.

This requires first of all the organisation of workers, independently of the unions, to exercise their right to walk out on a massive scale to avoid situations where they are forced to work in conditions that will spread the disease.

IDEX Accelerator Virtual Fellowship 2020 for Young Social Intrapreneurs

Application Deadline: 3rd May 2020

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Online

About the Award: Given The Current Global Public Health Issue Around COVID-19, IDEX Has Decided To Suspend All In-Person Engagements For The Interim And Will Only Be Offering The Virtual Fellowship Program At Present.
The IDEX Accelerator & Global Fellowship Program was founded on the idea that by investing in the future generations of leaders who are passionate about leading high-impact careers, we can regenerate local economies and build stronger communities around the world.
IDEX mission is to create the next wave of “social intrapreneurs” who will support, lead and advance the work of socially-focused enterprises around the world. Social intrapreneurs are becoming key actors in the race towards a new kind of economy.
The six-month fellowship is centered around 1:1 coaching, monthly mentoring workshops, curated readings, professional development challenges and relationship building with like-minded professionals that will last a lifetime.
The ideal candidates

• Are willing to embrace ambiguity head on, seek opportunities to learn and share your experiences with others.
• Have the willingness and ability to quickly adapt and work in resource constrained environments – this means you don’t complain if wifi goes down or power goes out for a few hours.
• Are seeking a self-directed fellowship experience where you are provided support and coaching but must also rely on your own creativity and grit to make the most out of your experience.
• Thrive in a start-up environment.
• Have had professional successes and failures that you’ve learned from and can apply to new situations.
• Have a passion for social enterprise and improving the quality of life for under-served or under-resourced communities.
• Have a strong desire to engage in an intense professional development experience- this means you love to learn through people, experiences and self-reflection.
• Are committed to making an equity investment of time, energy and capital into your own personal growth and professional development.
• Have patience, empathy and a sense of humor because laughter makes everything better.

Type: Fellowship, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Candidates must possess the minimum qualifications to be eligible for the IDEX Fellowship:

• Have a Bachelor, Masters or Graduate Degree (in any field) prior to start of program
• Ability to perform in a high pressure environment
• Be proficient in English (both written and spoken)
• Can obtain an India Business visa for a minimum of six months
• Have a minimum of 1 to 3 years of professional work experience
• Have excellent listening and communication skills (written and verbal)

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: IDEX provides partial scholarships for select fellows seeking to participate in the IDEX Accelerator program. Funding is merit-based and awarded to the most promising candidates who demonstrate a commitment and passion to continue working in the social enterprise sector post fellowship. This application is open to all global applicants.

Duration of Fellowship: July – December, 2020

APPLY NOW

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Africa Plant Nutrition Scholarship Program 2020 for African Students

Application Deadline: 30th April, 2020.

About the Award: The Award will be made directly to the student. No specific duties will be required of the recipient.
The Award will be granted independent of any assistantship, scholarship, or other award that the student currently holds.

Type: Masters, PhD

Eligibility: Graduate students are eligible if they are:

1. Currently attending a degree-granting institution located in Africa.
2. Candidates for M.Sc., M.Phil., or Ph.D. degrees, who are currently enrolled in a program of graduate study as of the application deadline. Applicants who have already completed their degrees are ineligible.
3. Students in the disciplines of soil and plant sciences (including agronomy, horticulture, ecology, soil fertility, soil chemistry, crop physiology, environmental science, and other areas related to crop nutrition) are encouraged to apply.
4. Past winners of the Award are not eligible.

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be Taken at (Country): African countries

Number of Awards: 10

Value of Award: USD $2,000 each.

How to Apply: The application is only available on-line here at www.apni.net/scholar-apply

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

India’s poor: Caught between Hunger and Covid 19

Shah Hussain

A few weeks back, a heart wrenching short video thronged internet, displaying a man scooping and collecting milk hurriedly, in a container that was spilt on a road, while a pack of stray dogs were drinking the same milk. This scramble between the man and the dogs sent shivers down the spines and visualized the unheard pangs of destitute in India going hungry, adding to the crisis of Coronavirus Lockdown. The place, where this incident took place, is just some six kilometers away from the historical monument, the Taj Mahal. This particular incident stands as a symbol of millions of famished people left without food, and are thus in dire Straits, more miserable than ever.

Lockdown : The only vaccine

The whole world is under a strict lockdown, as has been forced by the Global pandemic, which seems not holding back anytime soon. The global pandemic has proven to be another quiver in the arrow, thus adding to the already existing woes of the world.  Over 3 million positive cases of coronavirus have emerged, while the total number of deaths have crossed 200000 globally. When Coronavirus set it’s foot in India, being the 2nd most populated country in the world with a population of over 1.3 Billion, having a suboptimal health infrastructure, and struggling with umpteen shortcomings, India was forced to observe a country wide lockdown in order to halt the wave of mass spreading of the virus. With no vaccine in hand, the whole world including India was left with the only viable option of massive lockdown despite the untoward economic and social ramifications in coming. On 22 March, 2020, a fourteen hour voluntary public curfew was enforced in India and the 21 day nationwide lockdown was ordered on 24 March, 2020, when the total number of confirmed positive coronavirus cases was nigh on 500. Considering the no – holding back of the pandemic, India extended the nationwide lockdown on 14 April, till 3 May.

Poverty in India

For a country like India, the lockdown, on one hand has halted the community spread at large while on the other hand, it has severely affected the already wobbling Indian economy. Consequently, millions of poor have been driven into hunger and penury. In India, more than 800 million people are considered poor. Not only this, India is home to the largest number of hungry people in the world. Moreover, over 200 million people are food insecure. In the 2019, Global Hunger Index, India was ranked 102’nd out of the 117 qualifying countries, portraying the gravity of the hunger crisis in the country. Worsening the plight of the poor, amidst the Coronavirus lockdown, millions of people, including daily wagers, migrant workers and laborers have been left most vulnerable. The International Labour Organization (ILO) in it’s report fears that over 400 million workers in the informal economy in India are at a greater peril to sink deeper into poverty, during the pandemic crisis.

Migrant workers crisis

After the enforcement of complete lockdown, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers thronged Anand Vihar Bus Terminus, on the Delhi-UP Border, to head back to their homes after being rendered homeless and jobless. The Government ordered the blockade of entries and sealed the borders, thus preventing the exodus. “We fear hunger will kill us, before coronavirus” was the tagline, palpable on the faces of these impoverished workers caught between the hunger and Coronavirus. So far, many migrant workers have lost their lives during the lockdown. Despite the arrangements made by the government, local administrations, and Samaritan groups, the number of destitute is overwhelming and are struggling to feed themselves. Unfortunately in many places, the police has resorted to unacceptable violence. Fears of mass starvation hangs over millions, due to the absence of a healthy policy on the poor, by the government. Similar incidents took place in Mumbai, Kolkata and other parts of India. People residing in villages, mostly earn hardly enough to make their ends meet. Rickshaw drivers, daily wagers, laborers, local vendors, milk sellers, and those doing other daily chores are without work now, thereby driven into extreme poverty.

Too little, too late

Lately, the Indian government announced a 1.7 trillion relief package for the poor, making an attempt to tackle the poverty and food crisis hit by the lockdown. The proposed package constitutes about 1% of the country’s GDP. However this seems to be not enough. Activists and economists are of the view that this relief package may exclude millions. The predicament lies in the non availability of documents, registrations with schemes, faulty Adhaar systems, and unequal distribution. The poor implementation on ground is yet another challenge. Nobody denies the fact that poverty is a grave challenge for India and given the magnitude of the challenge, it cannot be eliminated in one go, however the communal, biased and pompous policies of the Modi government have proliferated the gap between rich and poor. The grandiose and hyperbolizing speeches in “Man Ki Baat” fails to act on the ground, and continues to be-fool and flatter the right wing only.

The Government’s Pomp and Show

The worsening condition of farmers and increase in the number of suicide cases, inefficient implementation of GST and demonetization, fake promises, mere slogans, hate cultivation underlies some of the dead in the water policies of Indian government, primarily responsible for the dwindling condition of those in penury. The Indian Premier built a world’s tallest statue of Sardar Vallabhai Patel at a whooping cost of almost 3000 crore ($430 Billion). On the other hand, over 1500 farmers threatened to drown themselves, during the unveiling of ghe Statue of unity over the 12 crore unpaid dues for selling their sugarcane to the  already closed Sardar Patel Mill. Indian farmers in unison have been struggling to make their ends meet as the Indian economy continues to plummet while the country’s premier fiddled away the national wealth at the cost of spurring the poverty. The only thing India managed well was the Trump’s India visit. The Modi government spent over 100 cores , to host his short visit to India. Though shameless, as well as an act of violation of human dignity, a wall was built in Ahmedabad to keep Trump’s eyes off the slum settlements. Furthermore over 45 families, living on the encroached road for over two decades, were forced to evacuate their homes. All this was done to meet the objectives of hiding India’s poverty and perhaps making the POTUS believe that India is more developed than the US. Contrary to the expectations, the world could not resist laughing at this absurd window dressing of India. The government cited that funds was not a constraint for the event. Ironically , this is the same country, where over 20 crore people go to bed hungry every night. The same government has given India a 45 year-high unemployment rate.

Long Story Short

Whether it’s Covid 19 or not, the sufferings never go on holidays, for a poor man. Given the predicaments being brought by this global pandemic, it has only mushroomed his existing calamities, thereby jeopardizing his survival. Who will kill him first, hunger or the novel Coronavirus, however remains a  question mark. May God be with them!

Global Arms Race

Naveed Qazi

In mid April 2020, a report issued by the United States State Department called “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments (Compliance Report)” raised concerns that China might be conducting nuclear tests with low yields at its Lop Nur site, in violation of its Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) undertakings.

The U.S. report also claims that Russia has conducted nuclear weapons experiments that produced a nuclear yield, underlying the CTBT. Russia and China have rejected the U.S.’s claims. With growing rivalry among major powers, the report harbingers a new global nuclear arms race, which would mark the end of the CTBT that came into being in 1996.

In search of a political diplomacy, it was in March 2020, when Donald Trump recently agreed to a proposal that China should join for a new round of arms control talks, along with four other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The goal, according to government officials, is a tripartite agreement among China, Russia, and the United States, to limit nuclear weapons.

In a three-way agreement, it would be unrealistic to presume that Washington or Moscow would keep the same number of weapons as China. It would also be unrealistic to believe that China would accept unequal limits. That’s why China has rejected in participating in any three-way agreement, citing large differences in nuclear weapon levels. But, in the scenario of global arms race, Beijing’s ambitious plans for new enrichment and recycling capacities, capable of producing material for nuclear weapons, in order to achieve parity with United States and Russia, could no longer be undermined.

Currently, there are strategic mysteries surrounding Chinese behaviour, in the global arms race, which include its unclear doctrine for using nuclear weapons, and its rising capacity to make nuclear explosives.

Despite China not having a strike first nuclear policy, it will soon, however, deploy a nuclear triad of strategic land, sea and air launched nuclear system, similar to the United States. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency projects that China’s nuclear warhead stockpile may double by 2030. It is also investing in intercontinental ballistic missile, which may be filled with hypersonic glide vehicles that travel at high speeds on random trajectories, making them difficult to intercept on missile defense systems.

With its enrichment capacity of making an additional fifteen hundred warheads each year, it would enable Beijing to achieve parity with United States in just ten years. In addition to that, China plans to buy another plant from France that would produce enough plutonium for a further sixteen hundred warheads per year. All this signifies that China could be a serious contender in the global arms race. On top of that, China may also join Russia in accelerating the arms race in space, given its ground-based lasers, anti satellite missile, and robot satellite killer operations. As of now, security experts believe that its anti-satellite operations greatly contradict its official no strike first policy.

When Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was drafted in 1987, the world was a small place. As the treaty was withdrawn in 2019, due to Russia’s development of new weapon classes including missiles such as 9M729, and China not being covered in its scope, there is a dire need to address various emerging concerns of threats and national security the United States is facing in a volatile global political environment.

As per reports by the Guardian, the Trump administration may withdraw the United States from the Open Skies Treaty, in fall of 2020. The treaty allows for short-notice, unarmed, observation flights over the territory of treaty parties to collect data on military forces and activities.

The New START treaty will also expire soon. That’s why, President Donald Trump is also proposing an extension of New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, an agreement initially signed in Moscow in 2010: it limits USA and Russia to fifteen hundred fifty deployed nuclear warheads, and seven hundred deployed delivery systems. There are talks that under the upcoming treaty extension, Russia’s new Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle could be counted along with other Russian nuclear weapons.

Conversely, if New START expires and doesn’t go through, there would be no legally binding, verifiable limits on the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, for the first time, since 1972. The risk of unrestricted nuclear competition, would lead to even more agitated U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship.

However, the inclusion of hypersonic weapons, in a possible upcoming extension of New START treaty, will raise concerns of ‘invisible arms’, which cannot be intercepted by defence systems. In 2019, China became the first country in the world to publicly announce deployment of hypersonic weapons, when its DF-17 missile featured in the National Day military parade. However, in comparison to Russia’s Avangard, DF-17 is a low tech one, which can travel at a speed of Mach 6.

If tensions were to spike over Taiwan or the South China Sea, for instance, China might be tempted to launch preemptive strikes with conventional hypersonic weapons that could cripple U.S. forces in the Pacific Ocean. China’s military sees its hypersonic weapons as an ‘assassins mace’, a folklore term for a weapon that gives an advantage against a better-armed foe.

The U.S., on the other hand, has also resumed hypersonic missile development under Donald Trump, after his predecessor Barack Obama suspended the program, but the U.S. is yet to announce the full-scale development of its own weapons. At the present, its Department of Defense is pouring in more than one billion U.S dollars into hypersonic research. Currently, the Pentagon has nearly a dozen programs tasked with developing and defending against the new breed of weapons. In 2019, the Pentagon awarded two multibillion-dollar hypersonic weapons contracts to Lockheed Martin.

According to news agency Tass, Moscow could also arm its new warships with hypersonic weapons, and retrofit its existing vessels with the missiles. If realised properly, the move could become a game changer in the global arms race. For Russia, it might be a hedge against future U.S prowess, especially at shooting down its ICBMs.

Margaret Kosal, an associate professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology, in the U.S., has different opinions though. She recently said: ‘the hypersonic technology would not become a game changer because evidence suggests the technology would not replace nuclear weapons as the most effective strategic deterrence tool’.

It means hypersonic weapons might increase the cost of war, but none of the three major powers would likely use them as a pre-emptive strike tool, and might continue to enhance their nuclear technology. The countries, associated with making hypersonic weapons, could also work to avert a potential crisis, by agreeing not to arm them with nuclear weapons. As a diplomatic reaction, the hype surrounding hypersonic weapons will also generate enough interest to ensure productive discussions, and increased Track I and Track II diplomatic efforts, both bilaterally and trilaterally

With regards to INF treaty, the United States believes that Russia broke it decades ago, when it deployed multiple ground launched cruise missiles with the ability to strike critical European targets. Russia, on the other hand, insists that U.S. withdrawal of the treaty is a part of a larger ploy to weaken norms surrounding the use of nuclear weapons.

In August 2019, the U.S. test of the country’s first post-INF Treaty missile called BGM-109 Tomahawk, a variant of the BGM-109G Gryphon, had Russia and China rattled, with each nuclear-armed rival, warning that the U.S. was igniting a great power arms race. The U.S. military conducted its first flight test of a conventional ground launched missile banned under I.N.F treaty, two weeks prior to its expiry.

The I.N.F treaty was meant to eliminate the presence of land based nuclear missiles, and medium range arsenals between 500 km to 5,500 km from Europe. The treaty’s expiration, however, enables U.S. to resume development of its own medium range, land based arsenal.

According to Frank Rose, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance: ‘the INF’s demise is the latest installment in a larger story – and it means the collapse of the U.S.-Russia bilateral strategic stability framework’.

In order words, it is an open invitation for an arms race, which will also enable countries such as Russia to spend money on updating and amplifying its weapons systems. There are already announcements of new Russian weapons including a nuclear torpedo, and a nuclear powered cruise missile.

The Beginning of the End for Oil? Energy in a Post-Pandemic World

Michael T. Klare

Energy analysts have long assumed that, given time, growing international concern over climate change would result in a vast restructuring of the global energy enterprise. The result: a greener, less climate-degrading system. In this future, fossil fuels would be overtaken by renewables, while oil, gas, and coal would be relegated to an increasingly marginal role in the global energy equation. In its World Energy Outlook 2019, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that, by 2040, renewables would finally supersede petroleum as the planet’s number one source of energy and coal would largely disappear from the fuel mix. As a result of Covid-19, however, we may no longer have to wait another 20 years for such a cosmic transition to occur — it’s happening right now.

So take a breath and, amid all the bad news pouring in about a deadly global pandemic, consider this: when it comes to energy, what was expected to take at least two decades in the IEA’s most optimistic scenario may now occur in just a few years. It turns out that the impact of Covid-19 is reshaping the world energy equation, along with so much else, in unexpected ways.

That energy would be strongly affected by the pandemic should come as no surprise. After all, fuel use is closely aligned with economic activity and Covid-19 has shut down much of the world economy. With factories, offices, and other businesses closed or barely functioning, there’s naturally less demand for energy of all types. But the impacts of the pandemic go far beyond that, as our principal coping mechanisms — social distancing and stay-at-home requirements — have particular implications for energy consumption.

Among the first and most dramatic of these has been a shockingly deep decline in flying, automobile commuting, and leisure travel — activities that account for a large share of daily petroleum use. Airline travel in the United States, for example, is down by 95% from a year ago. At the same time, the personal consumption of electricity for telework, distance learning, group conversations, and entertainment has soared. In hard-hit Italy, for instance, Microsoft reports that the use of its cloud services for team meetings — a voracious consumer of electricity — has increased by 775%.

These are all meant to be temporary responses to the pandemic. As government officials and their scientific advisers begin to talk about returning to some semblance of “normalcy,” however, it’s becoming increasingly clear that many such pandemic-related practices will persist in some fashion for a long time to come and, in some cases, may prove permanent. Social distancing is likely to remain the norm in public spaces for many months, if not years, curtailing attendance at theme parks and major sports events that also typically involve lots of driving. Many of us are also becoming more accustomed to working from home and may be in no rush to resume a harried 30-, 60-, or 90-minute commute to work each day. Some colleges and universities, already under financial pressure of various sorts, may abandon in-person classes for many subjects and rely far more on distance learning.

No matter how this pandemic finally plays out, the post-Covid-19 world is bound to have a very different look from the pre-pandemic one and energy use is likely to be among the areas most affected by the transformations underway. It would be distinctly premature to make sweeping predictions about the energy profile of a post-coronavirus planet, but one thing certainly seems possible: the grand transition, crucial for averting the worst outcomes of climate change and originally projected to occur decades from now, could end up happening significantly more swiftly, even if at the price of widespread bankruptcies and prolonged unemployment for millions.

Oil’s Dominance in Jeopardy

As 2019 drew to a close, most energy analysts assumed that petroleum would continue to dominate the global landscape through the 2020s, as it had in recent decades, resulting in ever greater amounts of carbon emissions being sent into the atmosphere. For example, in its International Energy Outlook 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy projected that global petroleum use in 2020 would amount to 102.2 million barrels per day. That would be up 1.1 million barrels from 2019 and represent the second year in a row in which global consumption would have exceeded the notable threshold of 100 million barrels per day. Grimly enough, the EIA further projected that world demand would continue to climb, reaching 104 million barrels per day by 2025 and 106 million barrels in 2030.

In arriving at such projections, energy analysts assumed that the factors responsible for driving petroleum use upward in recent years would persist well into the future: growing automobile ownership in China, India, and other developing nations; ever-increasing commutes as soaring real-estate prices forced people to live ever farther from city centers; and an exponential increase in airline travel, especially in Asia. Such factors, it was widely assumed, would more than compensate for any drop in demand caused by a greater preference for electric cars in Europe and a few other places. As suggested by oil giant BP in its Energy Outlook for 2019, “All of the demand growth comes from developing economies, driven by the burgeoning middle class in developing Asian economies.”

Even in January, as the coronavirus began to spread from China to other countries, energy analysts imagined little change in such predictions. Reporting “continued strong momentum” in oil use among the major developing economies, the IEA typically reaffirmed its belief that global consumption would grow by more than one million barrels daily in 2020.

Only now has that agency begun to change its tune. In its most recent Oil Market Report, it projected that global petroleum consumption in April would fall by an astonishing 29 million barrels per day compared to the same month the previous year. That drop, by the way, is the equivalent of total 2019 oil usage by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Still, the IEA analysts assumed that all of this would just be a passing phenomenon. In that same report, it also predicted that global economic activity would rebound in the second half of this year and, by December, oil usage would already be within a few million barrels of pre-coronavirus consumption levels.

Other indicators, however, suggest that such rosy predictions will prove highly fanciful. The likelihood that oil consumption will approach 2018 or 2019 levels by year’s end or even in early 2021 now appears remarkably unrealistic. It is, in fact, doubtful that those earlier projections about sustained future growth in the demand for oil will ever materialize.

A Shattered World Economy

As a start, a return to pre-Covid-19 consumption levels assumes a reasonably rapid restoration of the world economy as it was, with Asia taking the lead. At this moment, however, there’s no evidence that such an outcome is likely.

In its April World Economic Outlook report, the International Monetary Fund predicted that global economic output would fall by 3% in 2020 (which may prove a distinct underestimate) and that the pandemic’s harsh impacts, including widespread unemployment and business failures, will persist well into 2021 or beyond. All told, it suggested, the cumulative loss to global gross domestic product in 2020 and 2021, thanks to the pandemic, will amount to some $9 trillion, a sum greater than the economies of Japan and Germany combined (and that assumes the coronavirus will not come back yet more fiercely in late 2020 or 2021, as the “Spanish Flu” did in 1918).

This and other recent data suggest that any notion China, India, and other developing nations will soon resume their upward oil-consumption trajectory and save the global petroleum industry appears wildly far-fetched. Indeed, on April 17th, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country’s GDP shrank by 6.8% in the first three months of 2020, the first such decline in 40 years and a staggering blow to that country’s growth model. Even though government officials are slowly opening factories and other key businesses again, most observers believe that spurring significant growth will prove exceedingly difficult given that Chinese consumers, traumatized by the pandemic and accompanying lockdown measures, seem loath to make new purchases or engage in travel, tourism, and the like.

And keep in mind that a slowdown in China will have staggering consequences for the economies of numerous other developing nations that rely on that country’s tourism or its imports of their oil, copper, iron ore, and other raw materials. China, after all, is the leading destination for the exports of many Asian, African, and Latin American countries. With Chinese factories closed or operating at a reduced tempo, the demand for their products has already plummeted, causing widespread economic hardship for their populations.

Add all this up, along with a rising tide of unemployment in the United States and elsewhere, and it would appear that the possibility of global oil consumption returning to pre-pandemic levels any time soon — or even at all — is modest at best. Indeed, the major oil-exporting nations have evidently reached this conclusion on their own, as demonstrated by the extraordinary April 12th agreement that the Saudis, the Russians, and other major exporting countries reached to cut global production by nearly 10 million barrels per day. It was a desperate bid to bolster oil prices, which had fallen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year. And keep in mind that even this reduction — unprecedented in scale — is unlikely to prevent a further decline in those prices, as oil purchases continue to fall and fall again.

Doing Things Differently

Energy analysts are likely to argue that, while the downturn will undoubtedly last longer than the IEA’s optimistic forecast, sooner or later petroleum use will return to its earlier patterns, once again cresting at the 100-million-barrels-per-day level. But this appears highly unlikely, given the way the pandemic is reshaping the global economy and everyday human behavior.

After all, IEA and oil-industry forecasts assume a fully interconnected world in which the sort of dynamic growth we’ve come to expect from Asia in the twenty-first century will sooner or later fuel economic vigor globally. Extended supply lines will once again carry raw materials and other inputs to China’s factories, while Chinese parts and finished products will be transported to markets on every continent. But whether or not that country’s economy starts to grow again, such a globalized economic model is unlikely to remain the prevailing one in the post-pandemic era. Many countries and companies are, in fact, beginning to restructure their supply lines to avoid a full-scale reliance on foreign suppliers by seeking alternatives closer to home — a trend likely to persist after pandemic-related restrictions are lifted (especially in a world in which Trumpian-style “nationalism” still seems to be on the rise).

“There will be a rethink of how much any country wants to be reliant on any other country,” suggests the aptly named Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t think fundamentally this is the end of globalization. But this does accelerate the type of thinking that has been going on in the Trump administration, that there are critical technologies, critical resources, reserve manufacturing capacity that we want here in the U.S. in case of crisis.”

Other countries are bound to begin planning along similar lines, leading to a significant decline in transcontinental commerce. Local and regional trade will, of course, have to increase to make up for this decline, but the net impact on petroleum demand is likely to be negative as long-distance trade and travel diminishes. For China and other rising Asian powers, this could also mean a slower growth rate, squeezing those “burgeoning middle classes” that were, in turn, expected to be the major local drivers (quite literally, in the case of the car cultures in those countries) of petroleum consumption.

A Shift toward Electricity — and a Greater Reliance on Renewables

Another trend the coronavirus is likely to accelerate: greater reliance on telework by corporations, governments, universities, and other institutions. Even before the pandemic broke out, many companies and organizations were beginning to rely more on teleconferencing and work-from-home operations to reduce travel costs, commuting headaches, and even, in some cases, greenhouse gas emissions. In our new world, the use of these techniques is likely to become far more common.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is, among other things, a massive experiment in telecommuting,” observed Katherine Guyot and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution in a recent report. “Up to half of American workers are currently working from home, more than double the fraction who worked from home (at least occasionally) in 2017-2018.”

Many such workers, they also noted, had been largely unfamiliar with telecommuting technology when this grand experiment began, but have quickly mastered the necessary skills. Given little choice in the matter, high school and college students are also becoming more adept at telework as their schools shift to remote learning. Meanwhile, companies and colleges are investing massively in the necessary hardware and software for such communications and teaching. As a result, Guyot and Sawhill suggest, “The outbreak is accelerating the trend toward telecommuting, possibly for the long term.”

Any large increase in teleworking is bound to have a dramatic dual impact on energy use: people will drive less, reducing their oil consumption, while relying more on teleconferencing and cloud computing, and so increasing their use of electricity. “The coronavirus reminds us that electricity is more indispensable than ever,” says Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA. “Millions of people are now confined to their homes, resorting to teleworking to do their jobs.”

Increased reliance on electricity, in turn, will have a significant impact on the very nature of primary fuel consumption, as coal begins to lose its dominant role in the generation of electrical power and is replaced at an ever-excellerating pace by renewables. In 2018, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2019, a distressing 38% of world electricity generation was still provided by coal, another 26% by oil and natural gas, and only 26% by renewables; the remaining 10% came from nuclear and other sources of energy. This was expected to change dramatically over time as climate-conscious policies began to have a significant impact — but, even in the IEA’s most hopeful scenarios, it was only after 2030 that renewables would reach the 50% level in electricity generation. With Covid-19, however, that process is now likely to speed up, as power utilities adjust to the global economic slowdown and seek to minimize their costs.

With many businesses shut down, net electricity use in the United States has actually declined somewhat in these months — although not nearly as much as the drop in petroleum use, given the way home electricity consumption has compensated for a plunge in business demand. As utilities adapt to this challenging environment, they are finding that wind and solar power are often the least costly sources of primary energy, with natural gas just behind them and coal the most expensive of all. Insofar as they are investing in the future, then, they appear to be favoring large solar and wind projects, which can, in fact, be brought online relatively quickly, assuring needed revenue. New natural gas plants take longer to install and coal offers no advantages whatsoever.

In the depths of global disaster, it’s way too early to make detailed predictions about the energy landscape of future decades. Nonetheless, it does appear that the present still-raging pandemic is forcing dramatic shifts in the way we consume energy and that many of these changes are likely to persist in some fashion long after the virus has been tamed. Given the already extreme nature of the heating of this planet, such shifts are likely to prove catastrophic for the oil and coal industries but beneficial for the environment — and so for the rest of us. Deadly, disruptive, and economically devastating as Covid-19 has proved to be, in retrospect it may turn out to have had at least this one silver lining.