Experts urge world to adopt anticipatory governance to combat crisis like COVID-19

Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-10 00:50:46|Editor: huaxia

ISLAMABAD, April 9 (Xinhua) -- As the world is grappling with the current unfolding crisis of COVID-19, experts from various countries urged the world to adopt anticipatory governance to improve the level of planning and preparedness to combat such problems in the future.

It is very important to be thinking about the next horizon and beyond to encourage stakeholders to be better prepared for future surprises, said Puruesh Chaudhary, a Pakistani futurist and president of non-governmental organization AGAHI in an online discussion among notable experts on the topic of scenarios for a post-pandemic future on Thursday.

"Futurists for long have been raising signals around how pandemics could affect the world. Today, when almost 2.5 billion people are in some form of lockdown, what is important to understand is that the stakeholders should demand the need for anticipatory governance to improve the level of preparedness," Chaudhary said.

Nobody can predict the actual outcome but leaders need to make decisions and implement strategies, said Pero Micic, a German professor and chief executive officer of FutureManagementGroup AG.

"A solid way to navigate in times of maximum uncertainty is to map the possible scenarios as corners of the possibility space and thereby challenge and improve the assumptions that underlie our decisions," the professor said.

During the discussion, Tanja Hichert from the Center for Complex Systems in Transition, Stellenbosch University in South Africa said that until the vaccine for COVID-19 is discovered and distributed effectively, the economic and socio-political consequences of the pandemic will be massive.

"We also know that the economic consequences of the crisis affect poor and vulnerable communities more heavily. To prevent further dire consequences in the long term, decision-makers must take these knowns into account now, despite the fact that there are no easy choices," Hichert added.

Experts also expressed the need to create local, national and international pandemic planning departments with input from departments of defense, environmental and health security units as well as the civilian medical community and create community resilience committees to periodically meet and improve plans.

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