Amid the pandemic and the subsequent recession, the world is facing a crisis unlike any in recent history. COVID-19 has thrown decades of hard-work towards eradicating poverty and put multilateralism and cooperation among world governments in question. While casting doubts and uncertainty over a fast economic recovery in a post-COVID 19 future. In that event, experts and scholars are wondering if investing in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a worthy objective. Have they become irrelevant? Should we cling on to them as the only feasible plan that could guide us to a path out of the crisis? Any attempt to answer these questions will be critical to help us contextualize the future of Sustainable Development. The truth is, the SDGs remain relevant more than ever. Today, COVID-19 has only brought their importance to new light and the real challenge is how should we proceed and what goals should we prioritize until the crisis is over. Given the global nature of the pandemic, the SDGs with their 169 targets could deliver a fast recovery and serve as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by the end of 2030. In order to do so, they must become a driver for a common policy framework to mitigate the pandemic’s broader consequences.
Although great strides have been achieved, the pace has slowed in 2020, and in some cases, turned back decades of progress due to COVID-19. Even before the crisis, the world was off-track to fulfill the SDGs and many countries appear to be falling behind in delivering targets. The Social Progress Imperative nonprofit organization recently published its 2020 Social Progress Index projections, which tracks how current and future trajectories of social progress will look in 2030. Sparking debate, the report asserts the pandemic is endangering to set back global development by a decade, thereby, delaying the achievement of the SDGs by 62 years unless urgent actions are taken.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the 2030 agenda has been put on hold, and governments particularly in developing countries are prioritizing the fight against COVID-19 over other pressing matters. This has resulted in poor performance on many fronts and translated into a lack of trust that the SDGs promise won't be fulfilled. Besides, the pandemic threatens to erase decades of progress on poverty, hunger, health care, and education exacerbating the problem of inequality. As it becomes increasingly clear that stalled progress on SDGs could have a lasting negative effect, it is critical to combine global efforts and develop sustainable solutions.
A decade away from delivering the 2030 promise, extensive debates around the 2030 Agenda implementation are increasingly focused on how the world could effectively uphold a ‘leave no one behind’ agenda in the post-COVID-19 period. Moreover, there is a realization from policymakers that traditional aid from developed countries in the COVID-19 world, will fall short. Therefore, new innovative methods are necessary in order to keep pace with the delays caused by the disease in achieving the SDG goals and targets.
Current Trends
A closer look at the unfolding economic and social impacts of COVID-19, including projections of the year 2020 suggest the pandemic abruptly disrupted the implementation of many goals and progress either faded or been reversed in various areas turning the next decade of action towards achieving the SDGs into something of a pipe dream. A data assessment of current world trends points out that in the first three months, the total of unemployed people in the G7 countries has varied widely, from 30 million in the United States to 1.76 million in Japan. Unfortunately, many of these jobs will likely not come back even if the pace of the rapid jobs recovery is sustained when the pandemic is over.
Furthermore, claims for unemployment benefits have soared in most developed countries by hundreds of millions of people. Whereas, the situation in developing countries is bleaker where a large proportion of informal economy workers lost their jobs and many other’s livelihoods are threatened. As a result, 1.6 billion in the informal sector – half the global workforce – are vulnerable to economic shocks and prone to plunge into extreme poverty in the next decade. Such an outcome is likely to be felt more strongly across developing nations in the next two years, causing global poverty to rise while disrupting the achievement of SDG 1 in reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty.
The impacts of COVID-19 are not only limited to SDG 1 (No poverty) but also to SDG 2 (Zero hunger) by exacerbating distortions in world agricultural markets. In the meantime, it threatens agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, especially in developing countries. A global study published by the Food and Agriculture Organization in partnership with Gallup World Poll showed that due to the impact of COVID-19 on the global food system, 2020 and 2021 will witness the highest levels of hunger in almost a decade. More importantly, the projections found that roughly 2.5 billion people—almost one-third of the world’s population—suffer some level of hunger. Consequently, due in part to resource scarcity they can't obtain enough food to satisfy their hunger. While 800,000 people are vulnerable to food insecurity, going entire days without eating at least once.
Perhaps the impact of COVD-19 is most felt on health care systems, posing a threat to implementing the SDG 3 (good health and well-being). For the first time in history, a health crisis has shut down the entire global economy, painfully demonstrating how inseparable healthcare and the economy have become. As COVID-19 rages across the world, the pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of public health systems worldwide, meanwhile, it has prompted an unprecedented strain on hospitals and healthcare workers. From a lack of medical supplies to issues in access among underserved populations, the COVID-19 crisis has become a burden to already stretched health systems, especially in developing countries. However, the main factor affecting their bottom line is the halt on elective procedures and surgeries to keep medical offices clear to reduce the risk of disease spread and prepare for COVID-19 patients.
Moreover, the pandemic remains a priority to many health systems in developing nations. They also have to cope with diseases such as malaria, HIV, and other communicable diseases. Consequently, the focus on COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted and altered the whole course of other disease prevention programs. The pandemic has put a spotlight on some of these problems and revealed holes in the healthcare delivery system that can have lasting effects on patients and workers alike. Beyond these impacts, COVID-19 has brought to public notice the urgency to address gaps in the many country’s public health infrastructures and prompted many inquiries on how to initiate change to deal with any future health crisis.
In addition to the aforementioned economic impacts of COVID-19 on SDG1, 2, and 3, the pandemic has also disrupted the fulfillment of SDG 4 (quality education) as many higher educational institutions shifted to online learning to finish the 2019-2020 academic year remotely. This has led to a reduction of teaching and administrative staff. Thus, these circumstances have impacted the quality of education and compelled many higher educational institutions to reduce staff and courses in order to adjust to the current situation which could continue for the next couple of years.
Opportunity for Change
The 2030 Agenda is ambitious but the million-dollar question now is whether the SDGs can be achievable by their target and if an economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 environment can effectively support a ‘leave no one behind’ aspiration? Given the recent record of weakened multilateralism, ending extreme poverty, combating climate change, and reducing inequality, and other goals have proved to be more than a challenge to overcome. Meanwhile, the rise of populism has compounded the sentiment of nationalism at the expense of multilateralism as one of the side-effects of the pandemic making an already-challenging path to SDG success even more difficult.
But there is ground for optimism because the quest for prosperity through development is much-needed in the post-COVID-19 world. If we don't make tough decisions today, the next generations are going to have to make far tougher decisions tomorrow. Hence, the world today needs more than ever to renew its collective commitment to the SDGs with a multilateral approach to addressing the most urgent development challenges. More importantly, relying on timely and disaggregated data that go hand-in-hand with a thorough assessment and comprehensive analysis of the economic and social repercussions of the pandemic will elevate countries' preparedness for the post-COVID-19 crisis.
Ultimately, given the underlying challenges of sustainable development, the global outlook looks bleak and the best-case scenario envisages a recovery exit from the pandemic in the first quarter of 2021 with a new vaccine coming in. However, a full economic recovery is going to take at least one to two years to reach pre-COVID-19 levels. Increasingly, the challenge, governments, and policymakers face today is not only the challenge of ending the pandemic but also recognizing that eradicating poverty and other matters in question must be carried out simultaneously with innovative actions that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and boost economic growth – all while tackling the pandemic to preserve the gains of the pre-COVID-19 period. The time is ripe for policy reform and policymakers have a great opportunity to align their policies around the SDGs. Let's hope that governments can rise to the challenge to tackle related problems that the pandemic has exacerbated. One thing is certain if we continue with business as usual, the depth of poverty will be greater and the SDG goals and targets will likely not be achieved in 2030.
Abdelillah Bendaoudi is a freelance writer based in Maryland with a particular focus on Sustainable Development. He is also a reporter and contributor at the Muslim Link Newspaper.
