In the face of converging crises endangering humanity’s survival, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) stand as a comprehensive response.
Addressing a range of threats and offering solutions, the SDGs provide a holistic framework to avert these challenges. Neglecting these crucial goals comes with significant risks, making their consideration imperative.
According to Liu Zhenmin Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 charts progress towards realizing the 17 Goals.
It is a collaborative effort between the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and more than 50 international and regional agencies, based on millions of data points provided by over 200 countries and areas.
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This year’s report paints a particularly sobering picture. Using the latest available data and estimates, it reveals that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is in grave jeopardy due to multiple, cascading and intersecting crises. COVID-19, climate change and conflict predominate.
Each of them, and their complex interactions, impact all of the Goals, creating spin-off crises in food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security. To put the world on track to sustainability will require concerted action on a global scale.
Cascading and intersecting crises
Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on almost every aspect of our lives. And it is still far from over. The pandemic wiped out more than four years of progress on poverty eradication and pushed 93 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020. It has disrupted essential health services, resulting in a drop in immunization coverage for the first time in a decade and a rise in deaths from tuberculosis and malaria, among many other impacts.
Prolonged school closures put 24 million learners – from pre-primary to university levels – at risk of not returning to school.
The immediacy of the COVID-19 crisis is now overshadowed by the existential threat of climate change. Increased heatwaves, droughts and apocalyptic wildfires and floods are already affecting billions of people around the globe and causing potentially irreversible damage to the Earth’s ecosystems.
For example, continuing ocean acidification and rising water temperatures are endangering marine species, including coral reefs, which are considered the “rainforests of the sea” for the biodiversity they support.
To avoid the worst effects of climate change, as set out in the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to peak before 2025 and then decline by 43 per cent by 2030, falling to net zero by 2050. Instead, under current voluntary national commitments to climate action, greenhouse gas emissions will rise by nearly 14 per cent by 2030.
Concurrently, the world is witnessing the largest number of violent conflicts since 1946, with one quarter of the global population now living in conflict-affected countries. As of May 2022, a record 100 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. The outbreak of war in Ukraine has caused food, fuel and fertilizer prices to skyrocket, disrupted supply chains and global trade, and roiled financial markets, fuelling the threat of a global food crisis.
Staying ahead of the curve
To stay ahead of these crises, we need to understand where we are and where we are headed, and that will require significant investment in our data and information infrastructure. Policies, programmes and resources aimed at protecting people during this most challenging time will inevitably fall short without the evidence needed to focus interventions.
Timely, high-quality and disaggregated data can help trigger more targeted responses, anticipate future needs, and hone the design of urgently needed actions. To emerge stronger from the crisis and prepare for unknown challenges ahead, funding statistical development must be a priority for national governments and the international community.
A road map for survival
The severity and magnitude of the challenges before us demand sweeping changes on a scale not yet seen in human history. We must start by ending armed conflicts and embarking on a path of diplomacy and peace – a precondition for sustainable development. We simply cannot tolerate war and the senseless loss of precious lives and resources it entails.
Second, we must adopt low-carbon, resilient and inclusive development pathways that will reduce carbon emissions, conserve natural resources, transform our food systems, create better jobs and advance the transition to a greener, more inclusive and just economy. The road map laid out in the SDGs is clear.
Just as the impact of crises is compounded when they are linked, so are solutions. When we take action to strengthen social protection systems, improve public services and invest in clean energy, for example, we address the root causes of increasing inequality, environmental degradation and climate change.
Third, nothing short of a comprehensive transformation of the international financial and debt architecture will be required to accomplish these aims and to avoid a two-track recovery, with developing countries left behind. The stakes could not be higher. If humanity is to survive, we must survive together, leaving no one behind.
