COVID-19: A Systemic Analysis with Fritjof Capra

Yuval Noah Harari discussed the big issues that the pandemic has brought to the surface in an extremely detailed article for the Financial Times: the roles of technology, surveillance, privacy and trust, global cooperation, and nationalism. And despite being published before the COVID outbreak, the latest book by Jared Diamond, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change is also highly pertinent to our current situation. Others too numerous to name have also added their voice to the humanity-wide reflection on this (almost) unprecedented crisis.

The Lesson of Gaia

For this reason, we’ve decided to inaugurate the Food Talks, a new format at Terra Madre Salone del Gusto. The first reflection is delivered by Fritjof Capra, a physicist, activist, and author of many international bestsellers, who has devoted a great part of his work to the Gaia hypothesis. He is suspicious of an overly-simplistic interpretations which cast Covid-19 as some external enemy.

Indeed, according to Capra we are not being punished by Gaia with Covid, but rather we are being taught a lesson. “With the Covid pandemic, Gaia has presented us with valuable, life-saving lessons. The question is: will we have the wisdom and the political will to heed these lessons? And will we apply them to the climate emergency? Will we shift from undifferentiated extractive growth to regenerative qualitative growth? Will we replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources for all our energy needs? Will we stop excessive mass tourism and instead revitalize local communities? Will we replace our centralized energy-intensive system of industrial agriculture with organic, community-oriented, regenerative farming?”

In the overall picture, humanity is both victim and cause of the crises it faces. It’s a scenario that goes beyond healthcare, and regards society as a whole and indeed all Earth’s ecosystems. Capra invites us reflect on the necessity of “collective, cooperative actions” and an ethical approach focused on the common good: there’s no other way to overcome the obstacles we face.

And as the stories of solidarity around the world which we’ve shared in recent months, prove: we are capable of saving ourselves, and the planet.

by Silvia Ceriani, [email protected]

Cover image by Basso Cannarsa.

FRITJOF CAPRA IS A PROTAGONIST OF THE FOOD TALKS, A NEW AND FREELY ACCESSIBLE FORMAT OF TERRA MADRE SALONE DEL GUSTO. EACH GUEST HAS TEN MINUTES TO EXPLORE THEIR THOUGHTS ON THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, AND THE FUTURE WE WANT FOR IT. THE FULL FOOD TALK WITH FRITJOF CAPRA WILL BE RELEASED ON OCTOBER 9, ALONG WITH THE OTHER EPISODES IN THE SERIES.