This article is based on the secondary source which is based on the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) released its annual Sustainable Development Report (SDR) on 14 June 2021, which includes the 2021 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index. The yearly resources provide data to track and rank the performance of all UN Member States on the 17 SDGs. The 2021 Report also includes the International Spill-over Index, which was developed by the report’s authors. The authors are Jeffrey Sachs, SDSN President, as well as Christian Kroll, Guillaume Lafortune, Grayson Fuller, and Finn Woelm.
At the outset I wish to mention that the 2021 report reveals the first-ever reversal in progress since the SDGs were adopted in 2015, driven “to a large extent by increased poverty rates and unemployment” because of COVID-19 pandemic. It has to be admitted that because of COVID-19 manufacturing and tertiary sectors awfully suffered causing employment. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, ‘Unemployment Rate in India has increased to 11.90 percent in May 2021 from 8 percent in April of 2021’. It is pertinent to mention that in India, the unemployment rate is estimated by directly interviewing a large sample of randomly selected households. Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Consumer Pyramids panel of households comprises over 174,405 households including over 522,000 members who are over 15 years old.
The Report also has linked SDG progress to fiscal space, noting that developing countries have limited capacity to access market financing, which inhibits emergency response and investment-led recovery plans. “While the governments of high-income countries have borrowed heavily in response to the pandemic, [low-income developing countries] have been unable to do so because of their lower market creditworthiness.” As a short-term result, “rich countries are likely to recover from the pandemic more quickly than poor countries.” The report makes recommendations for increasing fiscal space for developing countries.
Regarding spill-over effects, the authors have mentioned that each country’s strategy to achieve the SDGs must avoid generating negative impacts on other countries. According to the index, high-income countries and OECD countries tend to generate the largest negative spill-overs. These can occur through unsustainable supply chains, base erosion, and profit shifting.
The Report has also mentioned that the country-specific findings (on 14 June 2021):
· Finland, Sweden and Denmark are ranked first, second and third, but even they are not on track to achieve all for the SDGs by 2030, given major challenges on several SDGs;
· The most progress is found in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Côte d’Ivoire; the authors add that some of the countries that progressed most also started from lower baselines;
· On a regional level, the region with the most progress has been East and South Asia; and
· Countries with the sharpest declines in SDG scores since 2015 include Brazil, Venezuela, and Tuvalu.
Before conclusion, I wish to mention that this article based on secondary source i.e. ‘SDSN, 2021 Findings on National and Global Performance towards SDGs’. So readers, researchers, and academicians can use the article for academic purpose even for research studies
The Report can be seen in the website: sdg.iisd.org/news/sdsn-releases-2021-findings-on-national-global-performance-towards-sdgs
Dr (Prof) Shankar Chatterjee, Hyderabad 9 July 2021
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