The year 2020 ushered in a new decade making exactly ten years to the 2030 target for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the beginning of the year, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres made a call for an ambitious push to intensify efforts required for the achievement of the global goals. In addition, he called for “national and local governments, civil society organizations, youth groups, parliamentarians, media, and private sector” to form a global coalition in order to develop long-lasting solutions to world’s biggest problems if the SDGs must become a reality.
First, financial investments and multi-stakeholder partnership are crucial to the actualization of the SDGs. This truth has posed the question of the possibility of achieving the 17 goals of the SDGs considering the ongoing global pandemic. Since World Health Organization declared an emergency in 2019 confirming that the world is in a pandemic arising from the novel Coronavirus, governments, donors agencies, international financial institutions, etc have pledged extensive financial support to combat the global health situation. As a matter of fact, the world is almost in a pause with sole attention fixed on waging and winning the war against COVID-19. More money is pledged to undertake research, provide relief to vulnerable populations, facilitate economic stimulus to rescue crumbling businesses deeply affected by the pandemic, and so on. This could mean a significant attention shift from key SDGs targets across all the 17 goals.
The big question is what does this pandemic really mean for the SDGs? There are some indicators: poverty gap will widen as more people lose their source of income; severe learning disruptions as schools shutdown to curb virus spread especially in developing countries; inadequate access to wash, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities for vulnerable populations such as IDPs and refugees especially; increased plastic pollution since gloves, sanitizer containers are made from plastics and most importantly, reduced international cooperation for financing the global goals.
According to the World Economic Forum, “the pandemic has exposed fundamental weaknesses in our global system.” This is particularly true for the developing world. The current situation has shown gaps in different sectors from the country to country – the poor educational system, dysfunctional health care, weak economies, failed public institutions, food insecurity, amongst others. As opposed to completely halting allocations to these sectors to focus on combating the virus, this is a good time for governments to build resilience to cope with future emergencies with minimal disruption as we currently have it. As World Economic Forum puts it, we cannot afford to shift resources away from crucial SDGs actions instead we need to pursue the SDGs pari passu fighting the pandemic.
In a nutshell, if we must squeeze off lemonades out of the lemons we are currently dealt with, institutions across countries must be strengthened to adopt policies and programmes for a resilient future. More than ever, there is a need for deeper global and regional integration providing platform for collaboration to jointly implement sustainable solutions for development. Much more, there is a need for localized efforts led by non-profits, CSOs and the private sector providing services or leading interventions to create the world we want.
Written by Oluwabusolami Fadipe, a development practitioner based in Abuja, Nigeria.