Environmental Governance after Coronavirus Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a global health crisis.

It is expected to lead to lasting changes in various policy areas - including health, mobility, trade, industry, finance, and sustainability. We are in a formative moment which we call the Coronavirus Crisis (CVC). Like any moment of shock and dislocation in history, CVC does and will make deep structural changes possible.

This research project explores how global sustainability governance is influenced by CVC and how it will be reimagined and rearranged in its aftermath.

We focus on the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development of the UN and its efforts to implement the Sustainable Development Goals.

Specifically, we map the changes in the practices, discourses, and imaginaries of global sustainability governance following CVC. The chosen project approach is transdisciplinary, where key stakeholders are co-producers of the research. Not only do they provide input on priorities and conceptions, but also participate in writing policy recommendations.

Together, we investigate the new priorities, synergies, and trade-offs in sustainability; how recovery, improvement, and social transformation is (re)imagined; and what the ultimate future sustainability goals should be in a post-CVC global society.Section I: research aims and questions, the survey of the fieldSection II: project structure, theory, methods, deliverablesSection III: societal value, communication with end-users Section IV: budget specification