Скачать или смотреть “Don’t panic with COVID-19. Learn from Latvia,” says Pabriks

“Resilience is about education. COVID-19 will not be the last emergency faced by Europe,” said Artis Pabriks, Latvian Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister for Defence. “We must all learn from this, change our mindset when it comes to crisis management, educate our citizens.”

Speaking with EURACTIV reporter, Brian Maguire, Pabriks outlined why Europe urgently needs to create a “readiness culture”. In Latvia, Pabriks recently launched a preparedness campaign called “72hrs”, encouraging Latvians to be prepared for any type of crisis; teaching citizens how to survive on their own for at least seventy-two hours. In doing so, he said, citizens will reduce their vulnerabilities and minimize serious risks.

The change in mindset, he says, comes from education: by enhancing critical thinking, media literacy, cyber hygiene, and digital literacy.

“Resilience relates to managing the consequences of all threats and hazards,” said Pabriks. “Our national state defence system is focusing on enhancing resilience - societal, psychological economic - and reducing vulnerabilities, by improving the resilience of key infrastructure assets, critical sectors and societies, and each individual.”

“Since it doesn’t really matter whether a power station has been destroyed by floodwaters or explosive devices, or whether a telecommunications supply chain has been compromised by cyber-attacks or software glitches, the response is largely the same. The backbone of Latvia’s plan is to take a ‘whole of society’ approach, allowing every actor, whether it is an individual, organization, company or a governmental body, to realize that in certain circumstances each of them becomes an important part of state defence.”