For a world in the grips of global crisis,
the only way forward is into the unknown
Month into 2020, novel coronavirus has brought the world as we know in to a grinding halt. The ongoing pandemic has reached proportions unseen in over a century. The invisible virus has exposed the fragility underlying our seemingly robust social and economic systems. In the landscape of converging threats, individuals, companies, societies, nations, and the international community are being forced to confront new and unfamiliar challenges.
As global crisis proves,
our existing systems have their constraints
Moving among us unseen, coronavirus is fundamentally changing the routines, conventions, and systems that compose our daily life. Amid such changes, we have witnessed in stark terms how, by allowing market logic-namely, a priority on cost minimization ?to prevail on a global scale, we have impoverished the medical and public health system critical for our existence. We have also seen how lack of transparency in crisis responses by government can exacerbate anxiety. The question arises: what must we work to change, and what must we ensure we protect?
“What are the conditions for survival
in a completely changed world?”
Throughout history, pandemics, wars, and other major threats to human survival have marked major turning points for human civilization. Today, we find ourselves at just such a truing point. It is time to discover new ways to live and understand the new conditions for survival. SDF2020, held on the 30th anniversary year of the founding of SBS, will be the beginning of this bold journey toward the future. We will explore the different crises converging on our world today from a variety of perspectives and seek concrete and actionable solutions through research, collaborative projects, and relevant case studies from Korea and around the world.