Between viruses, the climate crisis, and the persistent existence of Nickelback, the world doesn’t lack for apocalyptic threats these days. For all the doom and gloom served up by the Covid-19 pandemic, it has, however, also given us a real-time and real-world case study in managing (or failing to manage, in some spheres) a global crisis.

The organisational response to understanding and tackling this virus can largely be lumped into two areas – the medical-science side and the sociopolitical side. For the latter, groups like the World Economic Forum (WEF) point to three key factors or conditions that enabled a virus like Covid-19 to sweep across the globe and cripple it so effectively: globalisation, urbanisation, and climate change.