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The purpose of the article is to propose a critical and decolonial reflection on the limits, challenges and alternatives of risk governance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper begins with an invitation to think about the current crisis of multilateralism as a first step to problematize the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 virus and its effects on the institutional frameworks of global politics. To understand the consequences of the current pandemic in the shaping of governance schemes adopted to address the emergency, reference is made to a body of literature that addresses perspectives on risk and uncertainty in contexts of transition towards sustainability. It also delves into the notion of geography of knowledge --developed by Latin American political ecology-- to explain the deep entanglements between the coloniality of knowledge and the construction of public imaginaries and knowledge devices on risk control and governance. We understand this reflection as "being part" of an exercise of sociological imagination that seeks to contribute to the construction of possible futures, in which integral and safe spaces are available for the reproduction of all forms of life on the planet. This reflection concludes with some ideas on the need to stimulate a new and different set of relations between sciences, technologies and knowledge, which ensures the adequate exercise of citizen practices and diverse subjectivities, in harmony with social participation in pluralistic contexts and full recognition of rights. COVID-19 represents an important opportunity to think about different ways of environmental cosmopolitanism, capable of bringing these ideas to the political arena through social movements, which could be taking shape in addressing the emergency at the local and community levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]