Executive Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tremendously difficult for many people across the globe. What was initially viewed as a health crisis affected societies to their core, many of which were already grappling with the devastating effects of climate change, as well as other challenges such as political instability and conflict.

While each of these crises has its own identifiable causes, the increasingly interconnected nature of our world means that these shocks or hazards — and the knock-on effects from them — cannot be viewed in isolation.

Indeed, the number of record-breaking disasters witnessed over the past years and their cascading effects across sectors and borders have illuminated those interconnections as never before. Similarly, interconnections became very visible when COVID-19 started to spread around the globe. The unfolding pandemic prompted a range of policy measures to limit the spread of the virus and avoid health systems becoming overwhelmed. Yet the effects of these measures, including stay-at-home orders and shutdown of public life, while highly important to prevent health system collapse and reduce COVID-19 fatalities, hit the most vulnerable the hardest. Underlying vulnerabilities such as poverty, precarious jobs in the informal economy, lack of access to education and, structural gender biases were exacerbated by the pandemic.

This report sheds light on the complexity of risks in a highly interconnected world, and presents lessons for risk management. Focusing on COVID-19, it shows how, through the interconnectedness of societies and the underlying vulnerabilities within them, the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic have revealed the systemic nature of risk. Through a case study approach, it demonstrates how the pandemic triggered a multitude of impacts far beyond the direct health crisis, including joblessness, debt, civil and domestic violence and the derailment of their children’s education, among many others. In many locations, women suffered disproportionately, whether as a result of bias in employment patterns or other pre-existing gender biases in society. Drawing on insights from different case studies across the world, this report also offers lessons from the pandemic for understanding risk more systemically, and presents recommendations for risk management moving forward.

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“This report sheds light on the complexity of risks in a highly interconnected world. Providing lessons from COVID-19, it reminds us of the importance of better understanding the interconnectedness of societies and the underlying vulnerabilities within them.”

Michael Hagenlocher, Associate Academic Officer & Lead Author of the Report, UNU-EHS

Five locations, six cross-cutting lessons

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Locations in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Togo were selected to learn about the many different effects of COVID-19 in different geographic and societal contexts. In all cases, the research revealed clear domino effects that cascaded through communities, sectors and systems, exacerbating pre-existing risks and creating new ones.

The research in Guayaquil, Ecuador, provides insights into how COVID-19 overwhelmed a densely populated, overcrowded urban area. It also shows how a location’s dependence on global trade creates and reinforces vulnerabilities. In the Sundarbans, India, the concurrence of COVID-19 and a tropical cyclone created cascading risks that lead up to worrying long-term effects. In Cox’s Bazar, in neighbouring Bangladesh, pre-existing social inequity in a highly fragile setting is the backdrop to understanding the pandemic’s effects in the world’s largest refugee camp. The research in the Maritime region of Togo highlights the rural-urban and national-international interlinkages of COVID-19 in a regional Sub-Saharan context with high levels of poverty. And in Indonesia, COVID-19 led to interconnected challenges on multiple fronts: collapsing health systems, grave impacts on the economy and associated ripple effects on debt, poverty and inequalities, as well as on emergency response to other hazards that occurred amidst the pandemic.

The research in these locations allowed for the identification of a number of cross-cutting lessons:

1. COVID-19 and the measures to combat the pandemic have cascading effects throughout societies

Nearly all the measures implemented to address COVID-19 have had a domino, or cascading, effect through societies and economies, impacting livelihoods, gender, education, and political and social dimensions.

2. COVID-19 reinforces pre-existing vulnerabilities

COVID-19 has made life even more difficult for people already facing challenging circumstances, such as those living in poverty, working in unsecure jobs and children who experience abuse or neglect at home. It worsens inequality and injustice throughout society.

3. Dependence on global networks has a big impact at the local level

In a world that has steadily globalized in recent decades, many locations are highly dependent on global networks. For example, port cities dependent on global trade, particularly those in developing economies that heavily rely on the income they generate, ground to a halt during COVID-19, resulting in widespread impacts on livelihoods and unemployment at local levels.

4. Measures to combat the pandemic have disparate effects on women and girls

Increased exposure to COVID-19 through work settings, widening gender pay gaps, an increase in domestic violence and increased instances of child marriages: all of these have been experienced by women and girls in our case studies.

5. Access to and quality of education was severely affected and the full extent may only become apparent over time

Education is another aspect of daily life that has suffered significantly as a result of COVID-19 restrictions. The pandemic has had particularly severe effects on educational opportunities of children in lower income settings.

6. Risk communication and coordination have been a significant challenge for authorities, which has resulted in less effective risk management

Dealing with a global pandemic requires effective coordination and communication among actors, from national governments and multilateral non-governmental organizations down to local authorities.

As societies were faced with a highly dynamic and unprecedented situation, decision makers across the spectrum at times struggled with communicating the risks, as well as with coordinating the response to the pandemic.

New ways to approach risk

Many parts of the world are still grappling with COVID-19 and the human tragedy of its effects is still, unfortunately, playing out. Yet, lessons from the pandemic can already be taken away to strengthen risk management in the future.

COVID-19, and the systemic nature of risks revealed throughout the pandemic, have expanded our understanding of risk by drawing attention to the reality that hazards can emerge from outside as well as within the system. In addition, exposure can be indirect, meaning that effects can be felt in places that are not directly affected by the hazard, but could end up being impacted as a result of interdependency and interconnectedness. Finally, the vulnerability of one system can also turn into a hazard or shock for other systems.

Some key lessons stand out for developing a new approach to risk management, taking into account a “whole of society” view of systemic risk.

Zooming in on interconnections

One is to join the dots on interconnections. Understanding how things are connected with each other in systems deserves more attention. The cascading effects originating from COVID-19 made it possible to spot the interconnections that exist in many such systems and to assess whether a system is functioning as intended.

Understanding cascading effects

A second point is the possibility to identify the trade-offs implicit in policy measures. We have seen that several measures to combat COVID-19, such as school closures, stay-at-home orders or travel restrictions, have had widespread cascading effects. This highlights the need to assess and evaluate possible trade-offs and cascading effects involved in introducing such measures, because they can have unexpected repercussions and can exacerbate existing societal vulnerabilities.

Systemic recovery

A third is to focus on processes for systemic recovery while leaving no one behind. The interconnected nature of systems presents an opportunity for positive turning points, by creating positive – as opposed to negative - cascading effects. For example, some policy measures designed to reduce COVID-19-related risks produced additional positive outcomes on top of reducing the direct health risk. More attention should be paid to such policy measures in risk management, which can include job creation following the provision of financial assistance from governments, charities and NGOs, or advances in digitalization following stay at home orders.

Today’s interconnected world is an evolving system, and disastrous events are often the results of systemic failures. The findings presented in this report point towards a deeper understanding of systemic risks, how they trigger other hazards and shocks, often in unpredictable ways. Managing these risks needs to be properly embedded in how policymakers, planners and other stakeholders approach risk management. This will create more resilient, equitable and prosperous communities and societies globally.