We need to be more connected

Far from COVID-19 proving that globalization is a failed experiment, it proves the opposite. It shows that globalization needs to be stronger. It shows that we need more connectivity. It shows that we need to harvest the goods of globalization while stopping the bads.

When we think of globalization, we should not only be thinking about financial flows or trade flows, we should be thinking about the spread of ideas travelling more rapidly than ever in the past. We see globalization happening in the digital space that is soaring, with something like 10 times the level of digital flows this month as compared to a year ago. We see globalization in the worldwide response to Black Lives Matter with protests in over 100 countries within one week. We’ve seen this in the past with the spread of the #MeToo movement, of human rights, of democracy around the world.

In many respects, the world has never been more connected than it is today. We are now focused on the news reports of how COVID-19 has spread from Wuhan to every corner of the globe. We’re also aware that to resolve this we need a global response. We need a vaccine and we need the collaboration of scientists around the world. We’re going to need much more global collaboration to stop the next pandemic, which could be even worse than this one. There’s no wall high enough that will keep out the threats posed by pandemics, by climate change and by the other great threats we face for our future. But what high walls will keep out is the technologies, the export opportunities, the imported goods and services, the finance, the people, skills and, most of all, the ideas and the will to co-operate.

So, we’re in grave danger that by turning our back on globalization, we turn our back on each other and we enter a cold war, 2.0. Globalization has brought more progress to more people, more quickly, than any process in history.

Over two billion people have been lifted out of poverty over the past 40 years. But globalization has not only brought progress. It’s endemically also very bad and ugly.

In my 2014 book, The Butterfly Defect, I predicted that a pandemic would happen and lead to the next economic crisis. That’s because my understanding of globalization is that it spreads bads as well as goods. The super spreaders of the goods, like airport hubs, are also the super spreaders of the bads. We don’t resolve this by stopping globalization, we resolve it by working together.

This pandemic could have been stopped if we had worked together, if we had resourced the World Health Organization effectively, if we had worked with international institutions to stop pandemics. Just like climate change can be slowed, and we can move to zero carbon. And just like poverty can be overcome. What we need more of is globalized politics: working together to stop the threats, to harvest globalization and ensure that it’s more inclusive and benefits everyone in the world.