Demise of central business districts because of the pandemic has proven not to be the case as economies moved into recovery stages. Aligned with the pandemic evolving from its initial health and economic crisis stages into a net zero recovery and reset, so it’s important not to extrapolate from one-phase lessons you think will be long term. A key question would be what the pandemic does to the ‘demand-side’ profile of South Americans trading partners and how successful they will be in producing the customers that the region needs into the future. Citing extreme anxiety around global sea-level changes and the link to climate change, he said leading cities had prioritized the net-zero carbon agenda and focused on the fundamental challenges of reforming business models for energy and its sources, transportation, real estate and construction to turning buildings into ‘net energy producers’ while optimizing water consumption and reuse. To that end, and to ensure the region lived up to its increasing profile on the world stage, the countries should be reworking its cities’ business models, to create a live ability and innovation strategy, as a way of capturing value from the net-zero pathway and using that to refinance infrastructure.
While many home-grown businesses are already pushing the frontiers of knowledge across IT, medical, aggrotech and manufacturing sectors, we have yet to reach a critical mass of labor, capital and expertise in these sectors that catalysis further entrepreneurship and creates the capacity to market globally. The uptick in digitization was creating a completely new market in digitized and remote medicine and changing the way doctors provide their services. While many of the “loser” sectors are dependent on the success of vaccine distribution, and were re-rated by the market on recent vaccine announcements, there will still be a ‘hybrid system’ after a normalized pandemic response.