COVID-19 Pandemic as a Challenge and Opportunity for Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (original) (raw)

The coronavirus pandemic which started in 2019, has a dramatic influence on the global economic activity – disrupting of industrial production, decrease of merchandise trade and services, derailing economic growth, financial market volatility, shrinking of the global supply chains, limiting the traveling and last but not least, reduction of income of people and rising insecurity. The slowdown of the world economy has a direct impact on the sustainable development and reaching the goals of the Agenda 2030. The pandemic presents both an enormous challenge and new opportunities, it may affect positively or delay the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to recover from this crisis stronger and launch a new path towards economic revival the international organizations have undertaken a number of measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The UN has mobilized the full capacity of the UN system through its 131 country teams serving 162 countries and territories, to support national authorities in developing public health preparedness and response plans to the COVID-19 crisis. The UN estimates that “a multilateral response of about 10% of global GDP will be needed”. The economic policy of the governments of the affected countries has been directed to mitigation of the negative effects and adoption of fiscal and monetary stimuli. The EU and the US have already announced tremendous financial packages to help the economies of their countries, and many other developed nations are following similar steps. The governments of many countries undertook unpopular measures which appeared to be “the new normality”. However, developing countries may not afford financial stimuli due to their very high debt levels. Rich and poor, the pandemic has forced all the people to reconsider almost every aspect of their life. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on achieving the SDGs. It examines its implications in a global economic context and answers the question whether it is a threat or a chance for reaching the SDGs. The attention is focused on the response of the UN and the measures for combating the coronavirus pandemic. The authors assign priority to the key messages from the Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2020 of the UN and the targeted areas and actions to promote stability. The opportunities and mechanisms for a green recovery of the economy have been discussed. An emphasis is put on the EU Green Deal as a roadmap to sustainable development. The paper has a standard structure, the methodology is based on desk research, i.e. a survey of specialized literature, papers and documents of the UN, UNDP, UNIDO, OECD, EC, as well as quantitative evaluation of statistical information and analysis of the current world trends. Key words: COVID-19, sustainable development, SDGs, Green Deal, green recovery