The United Nations in 2015 set up a collection of 17 Sustainable Development Goals which are interconnected. These goals are designed as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. The goals are set to be achieved by 2030. The 17 SGDs are the following:
In July 2017 the UN published a resolution to make the SDGs easier to attain. Indeed, it identified specific targets for each SDG., together with the indicators that have to be adopted to monitor the progress over time.
The most important SDGs, according to experts surveyed by sdgsinorder.org, are reduced inequalities, no poverty and gender equality.
The 10th goal is related to reducing inequalities within and among countries. The first target is to achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40% of the population. Before the pandemic, the goal was making modest progress in terms of reducing inequalities in areas like income inequality. However, the pandemic is constantly increasing inequalities within and among countries, especially when it comes to the availability of the vaccine. Moreover, the pandemic will overall slow down the attainment of this goal by 10 years.
No poverty is the first SDG and it is related to all of its forms. There has been an optimistic slowdown on reducing poverty since 2015. However, as before, the pandemic has been hitting this target since its origin. Indeed, the global rate of poverty has been rising in 2020 for the first time in more than 20 years. Moreover, together with conflicts and climate change, the attainment by 2030 of this goal is unrealistic without immediate global policies.
The third most important SDG is the 5th and has to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. As you can imagine, Covid19 also impacted this goal as its socio economic consequences have also touched gender equality. Indeed, violence against women and girls have been increasing, child marriage is set to increase after a constant decline, and increased home work is affecting women more than men. Therefore, the pandemic has shifted the attention to a need for a rapid action to address gender inequality.
We have analyzed the three most important SDGs and all three have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Therefore, it is normal to assume that also the remaining ones have been affected. Overall, the pandemic had an impact on the world as a whole. However, this doesn’t imply that we need to forget about the SDGs or put them aside to solve more important issues. The SDGs have been set for a reason. Therefore, it is crucial to act to limitate the negative spillovers on the attainment of these ones.