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Urban populations have exploded since 2000 and will continue to grow in many parts of the world for decades to come.

For the past century, the primary political actor on the international stage, and one of the most influential in people’s everyday lives, has been the national government. National governments conducted international relations and made decisions mostly independent of the input of sub- and non-state actors. Over the past decades, however, national governments have yielded to other actors’ influence over and access to the international stage, where many of the most important global political decisions are made.

Sub-national polities like states and provinces; cities, and especially urban mega-centers; criminal organizations like gangs, terrorist groups, and the mafia; civil groups like non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits; private enterprises; and even individuals are playing an increasingly significant role in international affairs and people’s lives. National policymakers underestimate the true scope of this transition, which is increasingly visible as sub- and non-state actors take on functions previously the exclusive realm of national governments.

This paradigm shift in global governance and politics is clearly visible through action on climate change, food security, and COVID-19. In each of these areas, non-state actors have played and will continue to play roles considered extremely unorthodox a mere decade ago—and for which policy still fails to properly account.

Non-state actors typically step into a leading role in society—whether that is to serve economic, political, or social needs—when national government fails to serve the needs or desires of its citizens. Especially as the world faces a pandemic, which requires a strong national response to safeguard citizens’ health and economic wellbeing, the responsibility for action should not be given entirely to non-state actors. Rather, their actions should serve to augment competent government responses at the national level.

The Streets Are Paved With Carbon

When President Donald Trump officially began the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change in November 2019, mayors across the country responded by doubling down on their support of the accords’ goals. The Climate Mayors represent 71 million Americans in 446 cities and pledged to “adopt, honor, and uphold the commitments to the goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) founded Climate Mayors in 2014. (Flickr)

However, the Climate Mayors are not a reactionary response to urban-dwelling, liberal displeasure with the Trump administration’s anti-science stance on climate change. The group was founded in 2014 during the Obama administration to lobby the president to negotiate “the strongest possible agreement” at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris in 2015.

Climate activism at the municipal level is an essential component of restructuring the world’s economy to be greener and cleaner. Edward Glaeser, an urban economist at Harvard University, and Matthew Kahn, an environmental economist at University of California Los Angeles, found in a 2009 study that residents of city centers emit significantly less carbon than suburban residents of the same metropolitan areas.

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Despite this advantage over suburban areas, city leaders are not sitting still: they are using their powers to support green energy, enact plastic bag bans, and curb waste. Such leadership is not confined to U.S. cities. The C40 cities, a group representing 700 million people in more than 90 megacities, together making up one-quarter of the world economy, is a major international coordinator of climate action. All member cities are required to have a plan to limit their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goal of at-most 1.5℃ warming above pre-industrial levels.

The Invisible (Farm)hand

In many cities across the United States, there has been a push for more localized food production networks. While only two local food policy councils have explicitly expressed a need for urban-rural partnership in food supply, the practice could grow because cities rely on rural areas for food, and rural farmers need urban buyers for income.

We already see evidence of this cooperation in farmers’ markets, with local farmers independently selling their produce to urban or suburban residents. Many farmers’ markets in the U.S. are now “essential businesses,” and for good reason: they are critical sources of fresh food in low-income food deserts, and they act as a vital distribution network for local producers suffering economically due to COVID-19.

Farmers’ markets, with their shorter, farm-to-table supply chains, stand in sharp contrast to the globalized food supply networks that the pandemic threatens to uproot. The World Food Programme has warned that COVID-19 could be disastrous for much of the developing world. If major food importers suddenly start to panic-buy food from around the world, they will drive prices up even as pandemic-related containment measures have slowed transport worldwide. Those high food prices and transport delays would hurt low-income food-importing countries the most.

Shorter supply chains can usually adapt to global shocks more quickly and creatively than the globalized supply chains straining under the pandemic’s weight. It seems like local farmers should be the biggest winners of a post-pandemic regionalization of supply chains. Not necessarily: on small western European farms that depend on seasonal workers for cash crops, sudden continent-wide border closures have farmers scrambling to hire workers and salvage their investments.

Workers from central and eastern Europe are often the ones picking labor-intensive crops in fields across France and Germany. With the European Union’s free movement and generous agricultural subsidies, most farms hire and pay to transport large groups of low-wage migrant laborers. With those migrant workers now stuck in place across Europe, far from French asparagus farms, western European governments are trying to drum up enthusiasm for farming among their own citizenry.

The response has been mixed: out-of-work students and service workers are normally the most willing to get their hands dirty with temporary farm contracts. It is not clear when this huge disruption to food supply chains will end. But, this pandemic could spell the end of sourcing so much labor abroad. Local farmers in developed countries might be better off now—if they can meet local demand—but only if they can adapt to a vastly different domestic labor market.

While local farms and governments are making strides toward community food procurement, the global-level shifts in the flows of food and labor still require all farmers to stick to the national government for some help.

Dr. Taliban

Many insurgent groups have historically seen the provision of public services as another arena for competing with governments for civilian support. However, COVID-19 offers a unique opportunity for non-state armed groups to capitalize on state weaknesses. For example, in the Idlib province of Syria, the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has used the coronavirus to legitimize itself as a capable governing body, ordering a ban on large gatherings and disseminating health information to the public.

In some places, militant groups’ actions have overlapped with government efforts, even while opposing the government on the ideological level. In Cameroon, select Anglophone separatist groups have declared a ceasefire in their fight against the government. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has conducted awareness campaigns about practicing healthy habits, cancelled all public gatherings, and instructed people to pray at home instead of at mosques. They have also allowed government health workers and NGOs safe movement through Afghanistan. The Ministry of Public Health has applauded these moves. Despite the group’s measures, it has continued to attack Afghan forces.

The Taliban has raised awareness about healthy habits amid the pandemic in Afghanistan. (Newsweek)

In the United States, the absence of federal-level action on COVID-19 has forced state and local governments to step up. Trump’s position has been one that emphasizes state’s responsibility. In March, he told reporters that states should try to acquire medical equipment on their own before relying on the federal government’s aid. “The federal government's not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping, you know, we’re not a shipping clerk,” he said.

Instead, Santa Clara County aggressively limited public gatherings; Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) declared a state of emergency and urged universities to move their operations online; and governors of western, eastern, and midwestern states formed their own regional partnerships to coordinate the transition away from stay-at-home orders.

Sacramento County Director of Health Services Peter Beilenson’s response in an interview demonstrates this reality. “This has been mostly a state and local effort. The federal government has been sort of behind the times.”

That being said, the federal government has made some efforts to ramp up production of much-needed goods. General Motors signed a $490 million deal with the U.S. government to produce 30,000 ventilators by the end of August. Six-thousand of those ventilators are due to the Strategic National Stockpile, the federal government’s national repository of critical medical supplies, by June 1. Automobile manufacturers like Ford and Tesla have also committed to shifting production to ventilators. Globally, companies from the Bacardi Distillery in Puerto Rico to L’Oreal in France have shifted from producing rum and cosmetics to hand sanitizer and other medical disinfectants.

However, not all private efforts are altruistic. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a $647 million deal with Philips for 2,500 ventilators by the end of May and 43,000 by year's end. This announcement comes after a previous HHS contract with a Phillips subsidiary for 10,000 ventilators did not result in a single new unit for the Strategic National Stockpile. Instead, the subsidiary sold high-priced commercial versions of the ventilator to other bidders around the world. Nevertheless, private companies have played a crucial role in meeting supply shortages.

Meanwhile, grassroots movements around the world have risen to supply and protect local communities. Community groups have organized to meet the needs of individuals for whom government efforts have been insufficient by delivering groceries to at-risk neighbors, 3-D printing face masks, and creating economic relief funds for local artists and businesses. In the United States, Chinese-American communities, among others, have donated hundreds of thousands of masks, gowns, and other medical equipment. In Michigan alone, they have donated more than 200,000 units of personal protective equipment to hospitals, police stations, and nursing homes—despite the spike in racist acts against Asians, which have averaged more than 100 a day.

Volunteers from the Coordination Council of Chinese-American Associations deliver N95 masks to the Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center. (Jun Han)

Similar grassroots volunteer groups have sprung up in the U.K. and Kenya. In London, citizen groups in at least 34 neighborhoods have been coordinating to distribute leaflets listing volunteers' contact information. In a Zoom interest meeting hosted by COVID-19 Mutual Aid U.K., more than 200 people logged on to see how they could volunteer during the crisis.

In Kibera, Kenya, Africa's largest urban slum, Shining Hope for Communities has been operating hand-washing stations and health clinics with screening tests. Kennedy Odede, who grew up in Kibera and founded the organization in 2004, stressed that before deploying “police and guns” to enforce lockdowns, the government must provide the people with basic health and sanitation. “People need food, and there is no way food goes into Kibera slums, there is not even a road for the car to pass... I know my community—if there is no food, they are going to go onto the streets, and there is going to be violence,” Odede said.

Adapt or Perish

The age of nations has not quite passed, yet it has fundamentally changed as national governments lose their role as the sole force on the global stage. Sub- and non-state actors will continue to fill the void left behind by unfit, unable, or unwilling national governments to meet global challenges. Their impact on the lives of individuals will continue to grow. National governments are still critical actors, but they need to acknowledge that they are no longer the sole actors and will continue to lose ground unless they lead competent, effective action. Borders are permeable: things, ideas, diseases, and people cross them constantly. Sub- and non-state actors have recognized this and taken action. National governments must do the same.

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