With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting hard across the globe, lasting change is being created in many sectors of life and many individuals have been faced with adversity. Currently, we have been left wondering what the aftermath of this will be, when or if things will return to “normal”, and how we can prepare for and avoid this in the future. There are many questions still to be answered, but here, I examine what our world might look like in the next year from the perspective of environmental engagement.
Ultimately, we are being forced to push the capacities of modern medicine right now, with healthcare systems on the brink and researchers putting many resources into developing treatment for the virus. Seeing that this is also a zoonotic disease, originating from animals, many scientific disciplines will need to be brought together to analyze what is going on, as well as identify the most prudent pieces of future knowledge. We will need many people with diverse areas of expertise during these times. For example, COVID-19 has stressed the importance of health safety, how we will get our economy back together, and even how we can be more conscious in reducing stress on our planet. There is even an interesting journal article that discusses phone and data tracking, as we have talked about this as something we may have to do to track the spread of the virus. So, it will have to be all hands on deck this next year, and we will need a lot of people’s help.
Large gatherings have already been discouraged and will continue to be closely monitored for the foreseeable future. I believe that this will definitely remain important well into 2021 and will affect environmental engagement in a few ways. First of all, we must consider that it may not be possible to gather in the capacity that is required for discussing prevalent issues. For example, on our reconnaissance trip, we gathered in groups that totaled around 40-45 people. In the next year, we may need to consider the development of an online method of doing this. We have utilized Zoom so far, but in an engagement-style discussion, we should consider how we can make this flow smoothly and efficiently. Additionally, the question of how we can safely physically gather people will be examined this next year. If we end up progressing in our battle with the pandemic, there will still be wariness of how to do this, such as spacing people apart, dividing up into separate rooms, and more.
I think a big question that will persevere in this next year is how we can reduce stress on our planet. So far, we have seen how a mass sheltering has affected the environment. For example, this video by Future Planet details how Nitrogen dioxide emissions in Italy have significantly decreased, which is a pollutant that can cause respiratory disease. Could cleaning our environment lower our chances of facing something like this again in the future? That may depend on how we respond after we are able to move around again. Within engagement, the balance between environment and economy looms as a debated topic in the year to come. Society wants to work again, but there are also people who wonder if we will overcompensate when the time comes. It is a big question, and we will see what happens going forward.