It is now clear that Covid-19 presents a major setback for the SDGs.
At the time of writing, the virus has claimed almost a million lives
and disrupted the entire world, sparing no region. An estimated 71 million people
are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty
this year and as many as an additional 132 million people
may go hungry. These devastating impacts are even further amplified in low-income countries and among vulnerable groups.
While it has become harder to achieve the SDGs, they remain achievable. They are also affordable according to the IMF
and the SDSN, at roughly 2% of global output with 0.5% needed to fill financing gaps in the poorest countries.
Some people criticise the goals,
but they have not demonstrated technological or other operational
obstacles to achieving the SDGs. The bottom line is that the goals can
be met if the world wills the means.
This will require taking stock of lessons learned and charting
long-term recovery paths that are based on the SDGs. The SDGs are global
goals that balance the environmental, social and economic dimensions of
sustainable development. They provide a framework for making societies
resilient. Failure to meet the SDGs would lead to climate
and biodiversity
crises as well as rising inequalities
that will threaten current and future generations in all countries.
Before Covid-19, most countries were making
progress towards the SDGs, as shown in this year’s Sustainable
Development Report 2020 (SDR2020) issued by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network
(SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung.
While no country was on track to achieve
all SDGs, most countries progressed towards the goals. Among UN regions,
East and South Asia have progressed the most.
If the SDGs had been heeded earlier, the ability of countries to respond and control global health
security issues, like pandemics, would be much more effective.
SDG 3.D calls for “early warning, risk reduction and management of
national and global health risks,” but many countries, including rich
countries, overlooked the target. Yet, greater foresight and decisive
action could have saved many lives. Many low-income countries, notably
Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Vietnam, have so far largely suppressed the
epidemic at low cost.
The SDR2020’s pilot assessment
of OECD countries’ early response effectiveness to Covid-19, covering 4
March to 12 May, suggests that countries in the Asia-Pacific region —
especially South Korea — as well as the Baltic States, were best able to
mitigate the health and economic impacts of the pandemic over that
period. Primarily through social distancing and the widespread use of
protective personal equipment, combined with an early focus on testing
and contact tracing. The early success of South Korea
and other Asian countries might also be explained, at least partly, by
their recent experience with the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)
in 2015.
In 2019, a group of international experts and scientists proposed that the 17 SDGs can be achieved through six SDG Transformations:
(1) education and skills; (2) health and wellbeing; (3) clean energy
and industry; (4) sustainable land use; (5) sustainable cities; and (6)
digital technologies. All are guided by the principles of “leave no one
behind” and “ensure circularity and decoupling.” Together these
transformations provide a framework for a recovery from Covid-19 based
on the SDGs.
To implement the six SDG Transformations, governments should consider three changes.
First, they need to emphasise long-term planning with support from
science, engineering, and public policy. Countries should consider
medium-term targets with time horizons of 10-30 years (i.e. 2030 for the
SDGs and 2050 for the Paris Agreement) and develop policy pathways for
achieving them.
Yet, since the 1990s, many OECD countries have lost capacities for
strategic foresight and planning. The Covid-19 crisis has revealed deep
vulnerabilities in health systems due to a lack of preparedness in many
countries, including Western European countries. The recent appointment
in France of a High-Commissioner for Planning and Foresight
in August 2020 demonstrates a political will to integrate more
effectively long-term considerations into policy frameworks and
government strategies in France in the aftermath of Covid-19.
Second, budgetary frameworks, and financing must be aligned with
these long-term pathways to strengthen public SDG investment alongside
private financing. To mobilise private financing and direct it towards
each SDG Transformation, governments can use corrective pricing through
taxes, charges, or tradable permits or direct regulation and mandates,
such as land/ocean use planning, building codes, or bans on hazardous
products. Cabinet-wide coordination is needed, typically in the office
of the president or prime minister.
Third, the SDG Transformations can only succeed if they enjoy
societal legitimacy, so political processes should engage the public in
participatory decision making and promote transparency and
accountability. Recent engagement processes launched in Finland, France
and the United Kingdom
(among others) are progressing in the right direction.
Lastly, the post-Covid-19 recovery will need to be investment-led
as aggregate demand, income and trade will continue to remain largely disrupted. To guide the recovery using these transformations,
relationships between markets and governments must be rebalanced, with
governments playing a more central role in the economy through public
investments (particularly within health systems), redistribution of incomes from rich to poor, and regulation of industry to ensure environmental and social sustainability.
Considering their size and importance in the global economy, G20
countries should intensify policy efforts and actions for a Covid-19
recovery built around the SDGs.
This article was initially published on
Apolitical.
