The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) stands with the billions of people suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate priority is to protect them. But UNEP also has a duty to help nations build back better after the pandemic to increase resilience to future crises. In COVID-19, the planet has delivered its strongest warning to date that humanity must change. Shutting down economies is a short-term response to this warning. It cannot endure. Only by building functioning economies that work with nature, not against it, can the world’s nations thrive.