The year 2020 brought a pandemic in our lives and challenged us in every way possible but we still have a decade to go for the Sustainable Development Goals. Did this year provide us the time to reflect and contemplate the change we require in our responsibilites towards the planet, or are we unable to foresee the immense challenges that the aftermath of this pandemic can pose in our lives?
The Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all". They were introduced in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and are intended to be achieved by the year 2030.
Since it’s been five years since the Global Goals were adopted worldwide, a three day ministerial meeting of the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) was recently held from 14th July to 16th July for the review of the same. The meeting was organized virtually and is regarded as the core platform for the review and follow ups of the SDGs. The current scenario brought its own challenges in the progress of the SDGs and this was deliberated upon in the United Nations conference.
The conference witnessed an in depth discussion of the hindrances which governments bodies as well as non-government organizations face in the acceleration of their progress towards the SDGs. Voluntary national reviews (VNRs) of forty seven countries, of their implementation of the 2030 Agenda in the 2020 HLPF were discussed and summarized in the days succeeding the conference.
According to the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 by the United Nations, the world had been making progress—although uneven and insufficient to meet the Goals — in areas such as improving maternal and child health, expanding access to electricity and increasing women's representation in government.
But it also brought the greatest challenges that COVID-19 poses to light. According to reports, the pandemic is expected to push 71 million people back into extreme poverty by the end of the year, leading to the first increase in global rates of extreme poverty in more than 20 years. The UN Foundation has shown that 90 percent of children i.e over 1.6 billion, are affected by school closures. Due to inequalities in access to technology and resources, the most vulnerable children are falling further behind. This includes 370 million who depend on school meals for nutrition and currently face devastating health consequences.
Moreover, a lesser representation of minorities in the decision making process implies that lots of communities will be at a greater risk of facing discrimination and inequalities. The greatest challenge that a very large percentage of the population faces across the globe, is the risk of unemployment. Unemployment is evidently going to result in 270 million people experiencing acute food insecurity, meaning their lives would be in immediate danger from lack of food.
But the silver lining to the entire situation is progress towards a better climate. It has been calculated that by the end of 2020, a 6 percent decline in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to project, which is a reversal of the 1.5 percent average annual increase in emissions over the past decade.
So, in my opinion, now our path will be determined by leadership. Leadership towards roles in areas and sectors which require immediate and crucial attention. While the power of decision making does lie in the hands of decision makers, we as individuals need to take initiative wherever we can. The pandemic can be said to have brought the world together once again, where we strive to rewrite the progress which has been erased by the uncertainty of these times.
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