Scientific paper
COVID-19 and the case for global development
Johan A. Oldekop, Giovanni Pasquali, Uma Kothari, Aarti Krishnan, Tom Lavers, Aminu Mamman, Diana Mitlin, Negar Monazam Tabrizi, Tanja R. Müller, Khalid Nadvi, Rose Pritchard, Nicholas Jepson, Kate Pruce, Chris Rees, Jaco Renken, Antonio Savoia, Seth Schindler, Annika Surmeier, Gindo Tampubolon, Matthew Tyce, Vidhya Unnikrishnan, Ambarish Karamchedu, Martin Hess, Rory Horner, Upasak Das, David Hulme, Roshan Adhikari, Bina Agarwal, Matthew Alford, Oliver Bakewell, Nicola Banks, Stephanie Barrientos, Tanja Bastia, Anthony J. Bebbington, Ralitza Dimova, Sam Hickey, Richard Duncombe, Charis Enns, David Fielding, Christopher Foster, Timothy Foster, Tomas Frederiksen, Ping Gao, Tom Gillespie, Richard Heeks, Yin-Fang Zhang
2020
#Trade and FDI
COVID-19 accentuates the case for a global, rather than an international, development paradigm. The novel disease is a prime example of a development challenge for all countries, through the failure of public health as a global public good. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the falsity of any assumption that the global North has all the expertise and solutions to tackle global challenges, and has further highlighted the need for multi-directional learning and transformation in all countries towards a more sustainable and equitable world. We illustrate our argument for a global development paradigm by examining the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic across four themes or 'vignettes': global value chains, digitalisation, debt, and climate change. We conclude that development studies must adapt to a very different context from when the field emerged in the mid-20th century.