S1.8 COVID-19 & Jamaica’s Future: Impacts, Solutions & Future Prospects

08/16/20 • 84 min

Over the past few months, we’ve looked at how COVID-19 has affected various sectors, so in our final session we’ll be reviewing some of the most salient points, suggestions, tying them together, and wrapping them up. We want to figure out how we can craft our advocacy to address some of the issues highlighted and implement some of these solutions. We don’t want this initiative to end with us just having discussions and that’s the end of it. Our goal is to create a strategic plan about how we as young people can lobby our policymakers and private sector partners to create the radical change that we need to move Jamaica forward in a post COVID world.

Previous Episode

S1.7 Human Dimensions of a Pandemic: How Covid-19 affects various demographics

There is no society without people.
According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “The COVID-19 outbreak affects all segments of the population and is particularly detrimental to members of those social groups in the most vulnerable situations, [it] continues to affect populations, including people living in poverty situations, older persons, persons with disabilities, youth, and indigenous peoples. Early evidence indicates that the health and economic impacts of the virus are being borne disproportionately by poor people.

For example, homeless people, because they may be unable to safely shelter in place, are highly exposed to the dangers of the virus. People without access to running water, refugees, migrants, or displaced persons also stand to suffer disproportionately both from the pandemic and its aftermath – whether due to limited movement, fewer employment opportunities, increased xenophobia, etc.

If not properly addressed through policy the social crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic may also increase inequality, exclusion, discrimination, and global unemployment in the medium and long term.’

Next Episode

The Danger to Our Waters: Threats of Deep-Sea Mining

The ocean is approximately 12,100 feet (3,688 meters) deep and we have only explored about 5% of it. That means the majority of our ocean HAS NOT BEEN EXPLORED. This season on Environmentally Speaking, we are diving deep into the ocean and discussing the topic of deep-sea mining, which is set to start as early as July 2023. But there are still a lot of unknowns related to the ocean's ecological systems. Join us, as we kick off season two of Environmentally Speaking, learning more about the deep sea and what we don't know about the ocean.