Introduction

Being put on the agenda upon the COVID-19 outbreak, GPGs are actually an issue that has never become out-of-date due to globalization in many fields such as environ­ment, health, information, peace and governance.

B. A91kgoz (B)

Department of Public Finance and Financial Management, Izmir Katip Celebi University, Izmir, Turkey

e-mail: bernur.acikgoz@ikc.edu.tr

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 3

B. Afikgoz and 1. A. Acar (eds.), Pandemnomics: The Pandemic’s Lasting

EconomicEffects, Accounting, Finance, Sustainability, Governance & Fraud: Theory

and Application, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8024-3_1

However, despite their increasing vulnerability, countries can also take advantage of new opportunities offered by globalization to promote GPGs. Today, countries can expand their knowledge limits by creating international research networks for health and supporting international research. Public-private partnerships can be established to create new generation product groups, making medicines, vaccines and diagnosis much easier. Countries can share the burden of dangerous and communicable diseases in the world through R&D studies, innovation, joint projects, screening programs, surveillance activities and other means to be carried out in cooperation, and at the same time, they can minimize their health, environmental and financial risks that may stem from cross-border movement of people, animals and foodstuffs and thereby increasing connections.

The interdependence of socio-ecological systems and increased access to human activities resulted in significant political and scientific difficulties in managing the environmental resources. Human activities and the physical environment interact with each other. Therefore, the main challenge for governance in environmental and health issues is to link physically-linked actions each other also institutionally. It is necessary to question whether the core institutions of the economies are set up to address this challenge thoroughly (Vatn 2012). In modern economies, generalized dependency and complex coordination problems prevail. While the basic structure of markets and firms is strong in facilitating economic expansion, it is weak in addressing the dependencies created (Brousseau et al. 2012). Of course, states and international organizations have made various arrangements to try to overcome these difficulties. However, these arrangements are not at a sufficient level, as we have seen in the COVID-19 outbreak.

Governance problems of environmental GPGs and GPGs for health are evident. First of all, it is necessary to develop institutions and governance mechanisms working on the right spatial and temporal scale. Then, it is necessary to match the governance structure with the nature of public goods at risk. For example, considering the open oceans and global disease risks, promoting collaboration in their governance is now an imperative. When it comes to disease risks, although global cooperation is easier due to the high potential cost of global outbreaks, collaboration efforts in the field of environment appear to be a more complex problem (Perrings 2012).

Collective action problems vary in scale, from the very small problems that concern only a few people, such as the farmer-managed irrigation system, to the enor­mous problems involving global resources such as the atmosphere and oceans. If we are to effectively solve collective action problems, we should consider restructuring existing market and government institutions.

It seems that being dependent on the management tools, in which change is assumed in the effort to manage complex and dynamic socio-ecological systems, is already costly and a highly unwanted obligation in the future. In a world where change is often nonlinear, sudden and irreversible, we need to formulate a set of prin­ciples that will help (re)establish environmental and health policies that can produce sustainable results (Young 2012).

Promoting sustainable use of world resources and a harmonious relationship between people and ecosystems requires setting up market-based and self-financing mechanisms that do not require donations for implementation and reduce the wealth gap between rich and poor countries and more generally between high and low income people, women, men and children. In the event of crises, government intervention is possible and legitimate, where mobilizing the means rapidly and massively enables citizens and stakeholders to accept major policy measures and reforms. Nevertheless, the emergency plans rarely result in the optimal measures. Thus, the main objective of common policies should be crisis avoidance. At this point, it is necessary to rely more on decentralized and reflexive governance, as all stakeholders must feel accountable. Furthermore, this will enable better management and producing the required knowledge.

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