Downslide on SDGs worrying

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Report 2022, released by the United Nations last week, has raised serious doubts about achievement of these aims by the 2030 target date set for them. It has concluded that all the SDGs, adopted by nearly 200 countries including India, are in jeopardy. The 17 SDGs, with their 169 elements, including eradication of poverty and hunger, improvement in health and education, provision of clean water and sanitation, supply of clean and affordable energy, ensuring gender equality, and equitable economic growth, had provided an agenda for global action within a specified period. Some goals were expected to be achieved even before 2030. The report has identified three factors that are setting the world back on these goals. Based on a study of the working of these factors, it gives a grim picture of the emerging situation and highlights the magnitude of the challenges.

The three factors identified by the report are the Covid-19 pandemic, global conflicts, and climate change. An estimated 75-95 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty after the pandemic started. It has undone progress made in the previous years. The pandemic also disrupted essential health services, resulting in a drop in immunisation coverage for the first time in a decade and a rise in deaths from tuberculosis and malaria. Prolonged school closures have forced 24 million students at different levels to drop out. Strife and conflicts across the world have disrupted lives and undermined development. About one-quarter of the global population now lives in violence-torn countries. The Russia-Ukraine war has caused food, fuel and fertiliser prices to rise and caused a serious refugee problem. Women and children have borne the brunt of the situation everywhere. The report has warned that the world is on the verge of a climate catastrophe and noted that it is emerging as a major threat to the SDGs. Irreversible damage is being done to the earth’s ecosystems, and extreme weather events are affecting the lives of millions of people. The promises made about reducing greenhouse gas emissions are not being kept. Though it was agreed at the Paris climate conference that the emissions had to peak by 2025, it is now known that they will keep rising for many years after that.

Failure to achieve the SDGs will affect poor and developing countries more than others. India has slipped three spots, from 117 in 2021 to 120 this year, on the achievement of SDGs, and it is now behind all South Asian countries, except Pakistan. India’s slide is of particular concern because it has the largest number of poor and deprived people in the world. The report calls for urgent collective action to salvage the SDGs before it is too late.