COVID-19, Human Security, and Global Leadership

Abstract

The need for coordination and integration of human benefit knowledge, as well as application in policy, continues to grow. Numerous warnings of a serious global pandemic have gone unheeded, and COVID-19 has spread across the world, mishandled by many political leaders. But the coronavirus may provide a possible pathway to effectively addressing the broader problems of human security and sustainability. Many isolated reports on COVID-19 have been published, but their impact is unknown. Leadership to deal with the pandemic requires breaking information silos, engaging stakeholders, and creating a “spider web structure” to coordinate efforts for ending or containing the virus. Assembling leaders associated with many of these COVID reports, with the explicit purpose of learning what works and what does not, what is being done and might be done, and how to improve outreach, could provide a valuable case study of a transformative knowledge system. If successful, similar roundtables could be arranged for those concerned with the broader realm of health security, and the still broader concepts of the Sustainable Development Goals and/or Sustainable Human Security. In an era of “truth decay,” however, transforming knowledge systems and promoting effective global leadership will not be easy.

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