As we try to understand the new world that is being created after the pandemic, the new world struggling to address the climate crisis and the new world order to emerge with the war in Ukraine, we find ourselves like Ptolemy 19 centuries ago and the cartographers of 500 years ago trying to map the unknown lands.

When denoting these unknown territories, they used to write "Hic sunt dracones", "here are dragons".

What are the dragons that we have to face in our post covid world, in our world where we have to change our lifestyle, consumption and production models to tackle the climate crisis and the turbulence as we move from a unipolar to a multi-polar world?

The post-covid world

In the post-covid world we are creating new supply and value chains where globalization becomes regionalization, as we re-shore and near shore economic operations and products that had been transferred to far away lands that were cheaper and more competitive.

This adjustment will be painful but will create new opportunities and it does not have to be a zero-sum game where different continents close themselves off to each other and turn their backs on each other.

This is neither desirable nor realistic. Regionalization and globalization can complement each other if they are managed well and through cooperation, rather than conflict.

The climate crisis

The climate crisis has to be managed well as it can turn into a geopolitical crisis if it leads to the collapse of countries whose livelihood is still based on fossil fuels, if old energy is phased out before replacing it with new energy and if countries and citizens are not helped to make the required transition.

There will be a backlash if the measures needed to be taken to deal with the climate crisis are seen more risky and threatening than the climate crisis itself, which is ravaging the planet with drought, extreme weather, wildfires, flooding, rising sea levels ...

The Ukraine war

The Ukraine war, although a restricted to one country militarily, is having and will have regional and global security, political and economic consequences that will be felt long after the war comes to an end.

There are around 40 different conflicts going on in the world at the moment, but the Ukraine war is where a major nuclear power is involved directly and which is more dangerous for the whole planet.

All bound to each other

The world has become so small that we have become each other's neighbours. The German Thomas Schutte has sculptures called 'United enemies' where we have two pairs of men, who hate each other and want to get away from each other, but cannot as they are bound to one another with rope.

Even as enemies we need to find ways of working together, not because we love our enemies and wish them well, but because we need to survive. Even our selfishness and narrow interests dictate that we cooperate with our enemies. At the least, we need to find a way to coexist peacefully.

Cooperative security

Forging cooperative security depends on dialogue. The security architecture that we need to build in every region of the world must be built on the principles that, however difficult and painful compromises are, neighbours must find ways of living together, not threaten each other, to respect each other's sovereignty, right to choose their own political and economic system and seek their own security arrangements without undermining the security of others.

The alternative to painful compromise and agreement, is much more painful catastrophe.

To live like a human being

Mikhail Bulgakov, a brilliant writer, born in Kiev but living and writing in Moscow said: "I don't have any special talents, just an ordinary desire to live like a human being." We still live in a world where millions are being denied this basic desire: through wars, oppression, poverty and inequality. The war in Ukraine is making this worse as it pushing up the prices of energy and food that risk plunging more millions into poverty and the whole world into a new global recession.

No 'People, Prosperity, Planet' without Peace

This is not a world where on one side we have saints and on the other side we have sinners. We are all sinners to one extent or another, seeking redemption.

In Bologna last summer at the Interfaith Meeting, we agreed on a Parva Carta pledging ourselves: We must not kill each other. We must rescue each other. We must forgive each other. We concluded that for people to prosper and for the planet to be saved, the three Ps of People, Prosperity and Planet must be complemented by Peace. Without Peace everything falls apart.

 

By Evarist Bartolo, former Foreign Affairs and Education Minister