1.1.1. Environmental systems

The root cause of recent pandemics can be traced to the compounded stress humans have inflicted on natural processes and ecological systems species move. The limited evidence on how territorial regions responded to the pandemic attests to the weak organizational structures at this scale. Without the political capacity and will to unite these agglomerated parts, policies continue to be fragmented and ad hoc, as addressed in Chapter 4. However, subnational governance structures and their potential to affect change in land use planning, management and construction patterns at the territorial scale are key to strengthening resilience and balancing urbanization, as explored in the sections that follow.

While cities can be more energy and resource efficient per capita due to economies of scale, compact urban form and dense infrastructure, recent trends show that “the physical extents of urban areas are expanding faster than urban populations.”2 This is especially disconcerting at the regional scale, where the change in land use for urbanization is primarily characterized by peri-urbanization – the consumption or conversion of rural areas into extended metropolitan regions – which tends to degrade natural resources and agricultural uses while falling short of the density needed to reap urban benefits. As institutions look for ways to “build back better” in response to COVID-19, the form and spatial distribution of building additional accommodation for the growing number of urban dwellers will also prove vital. In order to fetter the negative impacts of urban population growth on environmental systems, not to mention the inequitable burdens borne by society’s most vulnerable due to the destruction of those systems, decision-making structures and enforcement mechanisms at the subnational scale will have to define urban growth boundaries and manage land use more sustainably.

While urban growth boundaries may not be a major challenge to define, regulating and enforcing greenfield construction and natural resource use at all scales will continue to be an obstacle partly due to land value dynamics. In these contexts, the true cost of environmental destruction is often overlooked in favour of the short term financial returns that development might bring. This could be alleviated, however, by the design of a more comprehensive metric that reflects the unacknowledged economic costs that accompany the degradation of habitats and ecosystems. A recent review of the “economics of biodiversity”, sponsored by the UK Treasury in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November 2021, advocates for “an inclusive measure of wealth” including natural assets to reflect that “we — and our economies — our ‘embedded’ within Nature, not external to it.”3

1.1.1. Environmental systems

The climate crisis caused by unchecked human activities, including unsustainable urban development, is the greatest challenge the planet faces in the 21st century. To a significant extent, the root cause of recent pandemics can be traced to the compounded stress humans have inflicted on natural processes and ecological systems. The spread of viruses and infections in the last few decades has been enhanced and accelerated by rapid, unsustainable and often chaotic urbanization, biodiversity loss, increased human-wildlife contact and the prevalence of unregulated live animal “wet markets” within unhygienic food and water systems. The deterioration of vegetation cover as metropolitan areas extend beyond urban boundaries have led to habitat loss and the intermingling of animal and human environments, contributing to an increase in zoonotic diseases, where viruses are transmitted from animal species to humans.4 Long before the appearance of COVID-19, studies had already confirmed how land use change, extraction activities and migration altered and fragmented natural habitats, broadening the interface for human-wildlife interactions and increasing the chances of novel infectious diseases.5

At the same time, the impacts of climate change and other environmental pressures on public health are already being felt. Global warming, pollution, intensive farming and other harmful developments have played a critical