'After the Virus' , a 6-part podcast and video series exploring how the Covid-19 pandemic will change the world in the long-term.

We're half way through 2020 and there's barely a nation on Earth that Covid-19 hasn't touched.

Close to five million people have contracted the virus. More than 300,000 have died.

But now, all around the world, people are starting to lift their heads, look around and step out of their homes into a new reality.

The question is; what does that world look like?

To try to answer that, RNZ is making a podcast and video series about the post-pandemic world.

Hosted by Guyon Espiner, 'After the Virus' talks to New Zealand and international experts about the way our world will change in the wake of Covid-19.

On video, on radio and as a podcast, over six episodes, we'll be asking how we'll live, how we'll work, govern ourselves, the future of our economies, our health system and our environments.

Because there are many questions and they all need answers.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Has the pandemic bought us any time to arrest climate change? If so, was the price we paid too high?

Covid-19 has shrunk the 10 years the world had to address climate change to no more than 18 months, according to the United Nations lead negotiator for the Paris Agreement.

Watch the video version of the episode here

Christiana Figueres, head of the UN climate change response that led to the Paris Agreement in 2015, said the $10-20 trillion being spent on economic recovery packages around the world would not be repeated.

"We thought this was the decisive decade for climate change. No. Forget it. This is it," she said.

"Those 10 years that we thought we had have now been shrunk into basically anywhere between three to 18 months because by the end of those 18 months all the decisions, and in fact most of the allocations of the recovery packages, will have been made."

She made the comments in a new RNZ podcast After the Virus, speaking alongside the current head of the United Nations Development Programme Achim Steiner and New Zealand's Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton.

Both Upton and Steiner said rebuilding a post-pandemic economy in a way that addressed climate change would require profound change for industries vital to New Zealand: aviation and tourism.

Figueres said that because much of the world had gone into lockdown the planet had recorded the biggest carbon crash ever, with 2020 emissions likely to be 8 percent down on last year.

She said that while this was more than the 7.6 percent drop needed every year this decade in order to avoid dangerous tipping points - the result was not good news.

"It is not good news because the drop in emissions has come at a very, very high human cost. We have lost thousands of lives. We have lost millions of livelihoods. That is not the way we are planning on decarbonising the economy," she said.

"The responsible decarbonisation of the economy has to be a drop in emissions and an increase in the quality of life of the human population. So this is almost getting to the right destination with absolutely the wrong path."

The world will lock in rising emission levels if changes aren't made now, says Christiana Figueres

Figueres said the world was now at an "irreversible T junction" and if nations tried to return to the old normal they would lock in rising emission levels.

That would mean kissing goodbye targets of staying below 1.5-2°C warming - the level needed to prevent sea level rises, flooding, extreme weather conditions and other destructive effects of climate change…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

In this episode; politics. How has the virus changed the way we are governed?

The world is sliding towards anarchy as the United States abandons its global leadership position in the Covid-19 crisis, says former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Watch the video version of the episode here

He appeared alongside CNN international anchor Christiane Amanpour who singled out New Zealand as having a world leading response to the virus.

Despite America's claim to be the leader of the free world, Rudd said that during the pandemic that leadership has been found wanting.

"As the world looked for American leadership in responding to what was becoming a global crisis, both in public health and in the economy, that American leadership was not forthcoming."

Rudd said America was effectively withdrawing from leading international bodies, including the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Human Rights Council and the World Health Organisation.

"You could list the other institutions from which the Americans are absenting themselves," he said.

"The response in Beijing is hip hip hooray! There hasn't even been a fight at the O.K. Corral. Instead, the Americans have simply said, 'we're not here anymore.'"

Rudd said China was rushing to fill the void, supplying medical supplies from Europe to Africa, pledging $2 billion to the WHO to fight Covid-19 and engaging in intense lobbying to hold leadership positions on international organisations.

"My fear now is that we end up in ... the slide towards international anarchy, which is no fundamental equilibrium holding the order together, and no leadership being provided by the United States."

Rudd said it was already happening in the falling away of international trade rules, which had big implications for smaller trading nations such as New Zealand and Australia.

Rudd, who was Australia's foreign minister as well as prime minister, said under Donald Trump's administration of the US, protectionism had increased and the WTO disputes resolution process had fallen into disrepair.

"If you want to know what it looks like, look no further than the WTO because it is a harbinger of what is happening - the slow and steady drift towards anarchy," Rudd said. "There are exit ramps, but no one's taking them at this stage."

CNN's international anchor Christiane Amanpour echoed Rudd's concerns about US leadership.

"I think it's very worrying that the United States has abandoned its historic role as a global coalition builder and a global force for good in the world."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details