COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world to a standstill with a
global lockdown, and up to 113,000 deaths as on April 12, 2020. Little is known
about creating physical barriers, boundaries or supposed walls from curtailing
spread of the infectious disease from to and further to different geographical
territories. At the time the 'Sustainable Development Goals' (SDGs), the
highest-level political forum and plan of action for people, planet and
prosperity were framed in 2015, a humanitarian disaster of this proportion was
not in the offing. This health and human crisis, in future, will call for
re-looking at all economic, political, social and global priorities, and
re-distributing resources for re-creating public structures for a world where a
mass contagion of this effect could be both prevented and cured.
The novel coronavirus, which
started spreading from Wuhan, China early in January, 2020 has a human to human
transmission, through tiny droplets discharged during coughing, sneezing or
speaking and falling directly, on surfaces, ground or even remaining suspended
in air for up to 6 hours or more. With patients remaining asymptomatic for as
long as 14 days, while still infecting others, the pandemic has almost been
impossible to manage through measures recommended by the World Health
Organisation, and countries - both developed and developing have had to
strictly enforce guidelines for social distancing, quarantining, curfews and self-isolation
through lockdowns.
Due to country-wide lockdowns,
many economic activities have come to a standstill. The initial economic
projections of growth rates are critically challenged, with agricultural
supplies getting wasted due to non-availability of freight transport. Daily
wager's lives have been majorly jolted with millions of them out of jobs,
heavily impacting the unorganised or service sector, which contributes a large
chunk to the national income. Migrant labour from cities started reverse
movements during this period to their villages on foot, in the absence of modes
of transportation. These testing times, and challenges thereof, call for some
visibly robust changes in the way services were being both offered and supplied
to people, whose lives would continue to get affected during and after the
pandemic.
The purpose of re-looking at
SDGs in this blog was to recommend fresh focus areas or merging various SDGs
for the pandemic and post-pandemic world. The pandemic falls under SDG 3: Good
health and well-being, however, it impacts 15 other SDGs as follows:
SDG 1: No poverty - there is sufficient evidence that
already suggests that the low income countries would only get poor after this
pandemic, and it is already impacting the lives of poor people adversely due to
lack of medical coverage and inability to abide by the standardised isolation
norms. At a time, when the global poverty rates had witnessed great reduction
and roles of development banking was been questioned, the pandemic has again
created the need for poverty-oriented funding.
SDG 2: Zero Hunger – perishable food is being spoilt due to lockdowns and would
adversely impact long-term produce. Due to lack of jobs, people will not be
able to afford basic essential food items, unless appropriate provisions are
made by the government to ensure food security.
SDG
3: Good health and well-being – this is the most affected of all the goals. Governments, private
sector and multilateral agencies have joined hands in sponsoring programs and
stimulus packages. Health and frontline workers are facing risk like never
before and constitute large numbers of those suffering and perishing from the
disease due to lack of appropriate health care equipment.
SDG
4: Quality education –
due to lockdowns, schools and instituted of higher education are closed down,
and the in-person learning is replaced by individualised web-teaching. Despite
not causing a break, this mode has several challenges like issues of web
connectivity, social learning etc.
SDG
6: Clean water and sanitation – the pandemic has highlighted the need of washing hands
frequently with soap and water. Although, there are no proven concerns of the
disease spreading through unclean water, appropriate processing of sanitary
waste is extremely crucial, including handling remains of the deceased.
SDG
8: Decent work and economic growth – Employment is directly linked to state of the economy. With
slowdown in global economy, lockdown has severely affected the livelihood of
not just daily wagers, but those engaged in the unorganised sector as well as
non-essential service sector as defined by respective governments.
SDG
9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure – A number of industries have been directly impacted due the
outbreak leading to their non-survival. Airlines, travel and tourism,
entertainment, transportation, non-essential retailing, construction etc. are
some examples where stimulus packages have been announced by the governments
for their revival.
SDG
10: Reduced inequalities – Not
just national, but even global disparities are bound to rise due to livelihood
shifts and changed style of working. The income levels of businesses and
personnel who could meet this shift with preparation would sustain or grow in
this era, others will need to adapt or wait patiently.
SDG
11: Sustainable cities and communities – The pandemic has shaken the capacity of best healthcare
systems in advanced economies in Italy, Spain, China, USA, Japan etc. Despite
building model infrastructure facilities, planned cities and empowering
communities, the vision for this goal will need to be revisited for future.
SDG
12: Responsible consumption and production – With almost all international and domestic boundaries
sealed, consumption is dependent on local supplies. There is also enhanced scepticism
of the virus remaining on the surfaces of packages, due to which there is very
care purchasing, even of essential commodities. Both production and consumption
will need to factor in the aspects post COVID-19.
SDG
13: Climate action – Climate
change has not sought the kind of attention it mandates not just on the
individual level, but even by certain economies. If a pandemic can cripple the
globe for more than a quarter at present, climate issues could be worst, and
require stricter focus.
SDG
14 and 15: Life below water and on land – It’s strongly believed that the live animal and seafood market
in Wuhan was the starting point for Coronavirus. Non-regulated livestock has
been commonly sold for human consumption in these markets, which led to
animal-human viral transmission. It’s important for human beings to protect other
living species on the planet, and not exploit them as food resources due to
infinite and sustainable alternatives already available.
SDG
16: Peace, justice and strong institutions – The pandemic has put to test the robustness of many governments,
institutions and even multilateral agencies. Policies of many countries were
challenged by the crisis at multiple levels. The World Health Organisation and
even the UNSC have been questioned for several decisions, which were not in
favour of controlling and containing the disease to particular regions in a
timely manner.
SDG
17: Partnerships for the goals – Progress has been made for this goal for managing the pandemic by
all financial institutions, regional trade organisations and for
capacity-building between countries. However, these efforts came at a time when
crisis was at its peak. With different geographies going through different
stages of the pandemic, better coordination and cooperation would help in
enabling countries to deal with the outbreak through knowledge-sharing.
