Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainably Developed Society

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted both preventive and reactive disease control measures, such as lockdown, physical distancing, and mask use, among others These measures have exerted inﬂuence

This Special Issue gathers contributions on the analysis of the "Challenges of post-COVID-19 for a sustainable development society", which are varied, multiple and interdependent of an interdisciplinary nature in various areas, such as health, social, economic, ecological, political, educational, and moral areas, among others, towards increasing sustainability [16]. The fulfilment of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [17] is, undoubtedly, a complex process involving various actors, powers, and interests, to which the fact that human beings are generally averse to changes in socio-cultural patterns must be added [11,18].
In addition to being unexpected and unplanned, the COVID-19 pandemic was, as a result, a generator of high uncertainty about the present but also about the future [19], demonstrating that unpredictability cannot be disregarded in any social process [1,5,14]. Still, and without over extrapolating or falling into the error of continuity or "new normal vs old normal" dichotomy [15], it is possible to consider the opening of potential futures and sustainable development opportunities to (re)discover if we do not stick to "business as usual" [2,6,7,9,15,[20][21][22][23][24]. In the words of Zinn [18] (p. 613), "To what extent the opportunity for global learning is taken up remains to be seen. There is little doubt, however, that pandemics will contribute to long-term changes in human attitudes and behavior towards the environment and the technologically shaped lifeworld".
We are pleased to acknowledge all the professional collaborations provided by the Editorial Office of Societies journal, as well as the trust placed in us by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Gregor Wolbring, and a group of reviewers, which resulted in very rigorous but, at the same time, constructive evaluations, and contributed greatly to maintaining a high level of scientific demand for this Special Issue. This resulted in a very interesting and heuristically pertinent contribution.
To summarize the main characteristics of the manuscripts published in this Special Issue of Societies journal, "Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Development Society": 18 manuscripts were submitted, nine were accepted and published (five articles-as original empirical research-and four concept papers-contributing with new insights but without mobilizing new empirical information). Table 1 summarizes some characteristics of the published manuscripts [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. In any case, and whatever the developments in the post-COVID 19 world, it is critical to consider individual and/or collective inequalities of various kinds, and materialized in numerous ways [1,7,[34][35][36]. According to Leach et al. [5] (p. 4), "Epidemics are often said to be mirrors to society and COVID-19 has revealed a highly unequal world. It has highlighted inequalities and structural vulnerabilities, often the result of long histories of marginalization. Although the virus initially spread in richer countries, the trends soon reversed".
One example of these inequalities reinforced by COVID-19, among many others that we could point out, is closely linked to the digital divide, and it has been demonstrated that, with the closure of schools, socially and economically disadvantaged students have found it more difficult to keep up with school subjects [10,37,38].
We are confident that our readers will appreciate this contribution toward (re)thinking the post-COVID-19 period in a desirably more sustainable world, which will always be necessary in a permanently built balance between society, nature, and technology [18]. In this balance, citizenship exercised in a conscious way, scientific interdisciplinarity, the community-scientists-political decision relationship and communication, and collective cooperation (group, national, and transnational) are crucial elements for success in achieving this goal [3,21].
Funding: This research was funded by the University of Azores, Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences-CICS.UAc/CICS.NOVA.UAc, UID/SOC/04647/2020, with the financial support of FCT/MEC through national funds, and when applicable, co-financed by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement.