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In just a few weeks, COVID-19 has become a global crisis and there is no longer any question of it being a major pandemic. The spread of the disease and the speed of transmission need to be squared with the forms and characteristics of economic globalization, disparities in development between the world’s different regions and the highly divergent degree of their interconnectedness. Combining a geographic approach based on mapping the global spread of the virus with the collection of data and socio-economic variables, we drew up an OLS model to identify the impact of certain socio-economic factors on the number of cases observed worldwide. Globalization and the geography of economic relations were the main drivers of the spatial structuring and speed of the international spread of the COVID-19.

While many articles have analyzed the effectiveness of the policies that aimed to limit the spread of COVID-19, very little research work has examined the determinants that drove these policies. Therefore, we proposed to study the determinants that led government authorities to implement more or less restrictive policies to limit the spread of the pandemic. Using the COVID-19 stringency index, we highlighted a positive effect of the incidence rate on the stringency level. Patient capacity in intensive care units was also a key variable. This is indicative of the capacity of countries to have a sufficient and appropriate health system to absorb such pandemic crises. On the other hand, we show that epidemiological data regarding the risk of excess mortality (diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular pathologies) had a negative effect. We conclude by recalling the importance of policy coordination between countries when it comes to lowering the stringency levels of measures, in order to avoid a resurgence of the epidemic.

Despite the climate emergency, there is still no consensus on renewable energies, which have to confront forms of social opposition that may well affect the success of any project (especially wind energy and biogas). We propose an original analytical framework to go beyond the nimbyist approach, combining the proximity theory and the exit-voice model. This enables us to examine the thinking adopted by biogas production stakeholders and the ensuing associations in order to identify and understand the obstacles to the development of joint biogas production projects. Taking further other theories that highlight the importance of place attachment and place identity, we show that the challenges linked to a project's territorial governance can explain conflicts that may lead the project initiators to abandon a biogas plant's construction. We show that considering the local residents' interests and including them in the participative procedures are not the only factors that count, but also, more generally, coordination between all of the stakeholders. Our paper also highlights the need for an intermediary actor to play the role of facilitator in organising different types of proximity.