The Coronavirus is changing the global landscape in ways which we do not yet realise. Its ripple effects will continue to spread outwards for years to come - such that we will never know of where history would have taken us otherwise.

Globalism as we know it today has taken a beating unprecedented since the fall of the Soviet Union - and it has taken this beating at a particularly vulnerable time. Populist politicians have increasingly been using globalism as a bogeyman, painting the neoliberal order as the ultimate threat to the well-being of nations. Donald Trump, during his Presidential campaign, famously stated: “We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism”. The question going forward will be how we rebuild our economies and how we navigate a world changed fundamentally by this pandemic. Should we rush to rebuild the old world order? Is that even possible, and furthermore, is it desirable?

The appeal of some populist politicians is the challenge they pose to a status quo which is failing many people. There can be little doubt that the neoliberal world order of the past few decades has created prosperity for many; but at the same time, inequality is rising and wealth is being increasingly controlled by the elite few. In turn, these global corporate elites are preventing social mobility by locking in their wealth.

They do this by buying out politicians and destroying those who refuse to submit to their whims. They hide their money in offshore accounts, while sabotaging political campaigns that seek to close the loopholes which let them roam free. The fossil fuel industry, for example, spends billions in fighting renewable energy, so as to protect its cash cow. Fake science is promoted on an industrial scale so as to slow down policy makers from responding to the threat of climate change. At the same time, after the last financial crisis, the ideas of trickle-down economics and austerity have been increasingly challenged. Therefore, it seems to me that the neoliberal world order and its brand of globalism have worn out their welcome, and it is indeed time for something new. Where I differ from the populists is that instead of promoting a return to extreme nationalism, I appeal for the creation of a new global system, which learns from the ideological successes and mistakes of the past.

One unexpected benefit of the Coronavirus is that governments are taking measures they would never have imagined beforehand. The idea of a Universal Basic Income, whereby every citizen gets a certain amount of money from the government every month regardless of circumstances, has gained traction after being promoted by Andrew Yang in the US Presidential race recently - and also because of the Coronavirus forcing governments to pay its citizens as the economy slows down.

Its proponents argue that it is sustainable economically because once citizens have money in their hands, they spend it, and thus they keep the economy circulating, even growing; all while returning money to government in the form of taxes thanks to the growing number of transactions. I will not go further into the merits or challenges of Universal Basic Income - I simply wished to illustrate that there are ways we can innovate which have been made easier by this hiccup in the global economic system. Rather than just put out fires during this time, we should be looking to new solutions during this difficult time.

This week, Amsterdam embraced a new economic model - a so-called 'doughnut model', as a response to the Coronavirus crisis, based on a book by Kate Raworth from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. Much like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, she divides the model into rings, starting with people's basic needs, and extending outwards to include the planet's ability to sustain us. Her model offers a way of prioritising the direction the economy should be taking, while addressing people's actual needs. One is similarly reminded that in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern aims to replace GDP as a measure of a country's success - by replacing it with a well-being index, whereby happiness and life satisfaction becomes the goal of the economy. In Malta, we should be able to understand this very easily, when we see our environment and heritage destroyed around us, making us miserable for the sake of the economy. Therefore, perhaps the old world order has really outlived its usefulness, especially given that it has been driving us towards a climate catastrophe. The way forward should be a global effort to update our thinking, update our systems and to collaborate to achieve a new paradigm. It is not going to be easy - but nothing worth fighting for ever is.