New York, July 7 – The COVID-19 pandemic, which entered a third year in 2022, and destructions caused by climate change and conflicts have halted or reversed years or even decades of development progress around the world despite continued data gaps at the national and subnational levels, the United Nations said in a report that analyzed whether its major program known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could be achieved by 2030.
The SDGs are topped by the important goals of ending poverty anywhere in the world and ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. The other 15 goals include inclusive and equitable education, gender equality, affordable and sustainable energy for all, combat climate change and protect and restore the ecosystems.
The UN report titled Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals 2022 said that by the end of 2021, more than 5.4 million people worldwide had died as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with estimates suggesting that there were nearly 15 million excess deaths.
See report: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2022.pdf
The report said, “Global health systems were overwhelmed and many essential health services were disrupted, posing major health threats and undermining years of progress in fighting other deadly diseases.” It said an additional 75 million to 95 million people will live in extreme poverty in 2022 compared with pre-pandemic levels. Billions of children missed out significantly on schooling and over 100 million more children fell below the minimum proficiency level in reading and in other areas of academic learning.
“This generation of children could lose a combined total of $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value. Struggling with lost jobs, increased burdens of unpaid care work and domestic violence, women have also been disproportionately affected by the socioeconomic fallout from the pandemic.
The report said about 2 billion people were living in conflict-affected countries by the end of 2020 and these numbers have increased since the Russian military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The war forced more than 5.3 million Ukrainians to flee their country and 7.7 million others were displaced within the country.
Russia and Ukraine are major producers of wheat, fertilizers, minerals and energy but the war stopped shipments of those commodities to countries that needed them the most. The report said at least 50 countries imported 30 per cent of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 36 importing at least 50 per cent, and most of them are African countries or among the least developed countries.
The report said the number of people going hungry and suffering from food insecurity had been gradually rising since 2014. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the number higher and exacerbated all forms of malnutrition particularly in children. The war in Ukraine has disrupted the global supply chain, creating the biggest global food crisis since World War II.
Concurrently five United Nations agencies said in their 2022 edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World that the number of people affected by hunger globally has risen to as many as 828 million in 2021, which constituted an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition report shows the world is moving backwards in efforts to eliminate hunger and malnutrition,” the UN report said.
See report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World
This new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the UN Children’s Fund, the UN World Food Program and the World Health Organization said the world is moving further away from its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.
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