on account of shocks such as the impacts of climate change, the destruction of nature, a global financial crisis and even a pandemic worse than COVID-19, or a combination of these. Therefore, they assesed which countries would be most resilient under such circumstances, based on their ability to grow food for their population, maintain an electrical grid, protect their borders from unwanted migration as well some manufacturing ability.
Accordingly, New Zealand, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Tasmania and Ireland came out on top of this list. According to Prof Aled Jones, at the Global Sustainability Institute of the Anglia Ruskin University in UK, it was no surprise that New Zealand was rated best among these countries, recalling to mind the time when Silicon Valley billionaires began buying land in New Zealand in preparation for an apocalypse.
“We chose that you had to be able to protect borders and places had to be temperate. So with hindsight it’s quite obvious that large islands with complex societies on them already [make up the list],” he noted.
However, he added that it was quite a surprise that UK came out strongly, since the country is densely populated, produces 50% of its own food, comparatively slow in developing renewable technology and has traditionally outsourced manufacturing. “But it has the potential to withstand shocks,” Prof Jones added.
According to the global sustainability expert, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that amid a global crisis governments could in fact act quickly when needed. And as everyone talks about ‘building back better’ it is imperative to start focusing on resilience.
“We need to build in some slack in the system, so that if there is a shock then you have the ability to respond because you’ve got spare capacity,” he noted. “We need to start thinking about resilience much more in global planning. But obviously, the ideal thing is that a quick collapse doesn’t happen.”
