UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Policy Briefs

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis has revealed some fundamental development challenges that countries face and could be converted into an opportunity for recovering better, if much of the resources aimed at recovery are directed toward promoting the SDGs. Establishment of robust universal healthcare and social protection systems should be taken as immediate goals, and efforts should be made to build upon the emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis so as to reach these goals.

The responsiveness of social protection systems to health and other shocks can be strengthened in a number of ways. Programme design can be tweaked to better handle large-scale shocks. Novel programmes can build on existing social protection infrastructure. The value or duration of a programme can be temporarily increased. To reach those most in need, existing programmes can be expanded to include new beneficiaries. Lastly, different programmes can be aligned to create synergies in programme delivery. Risks of implementing more shockresponsive social protection include overwhelming demand, lack of coordination, poor targeting and negative public perception. These can be partially offset by ensuring universal access to programmes. In response to the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 (coronavirus), a majority of countries have rolled out emergency measures to support their citizens. The pandemic is pushing existing social protection programmes to the brink, with demand far beyond usual operating capacity. To build back better, now and in the future, governments should take this opportunity to review and strengthen the shock-responsiveness of their social protections systems.

This brief highlights how forests and the forestry sector provide essential services and products to support health and livelihoods during times of crisis, how investing in sustainable forest management and forestry jobs offer opportunities for a green recovery, and how healthy forests build resilience against future pandemics. In this context, it proposes policy recommendations to ensure that forest-based solutions be considered for recovery from the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and building back better.

The impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on SDG achievement will only be known with certainty in the months to come, but assessments for 2020 are bleak. If responses are ad hoc, underfunded and without a view to long-term goals, decades of progress stand to be reversed. However, as countries begin to move towards recovery, coherent and comprehensive actions can place the world on a robust trajectory towards achieving sustainable development. The channels through which the impacts will unfold are being identified and indicate that pre-pandemic progress on many SDGs can mitigate impacts. Building upon this insight, this brief suggests that the multilateral system can be pivotal in supporting three strategic priorities during the response and recovery that can set a course for achieving the SDGs—maintaining progress already made; enabling universal access to an expanded set of quality essential services; and reversing the degradation of nature.

The Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is increasing the risks of a balance of payments crisis, a food crisis and a debt crisis in landlocked developing countries (LLDC). A few LLDCs—with extremely high levels of external debt owed to private creditors—are particularly vulnerable. The unfolding multiple crisis may trigger instability, violence and conflict in many LLDCs, particularly in countries that have been mired in conflicts and civil wars in recent years. » High levels of income inequality in LLDCs may undermine their ability to implement effective stimulus measures to support the most vulnerable segments of their population. Timely international support is helping LLDCs avoid an immediate crisis but a long-term rescue and recovery plan is needed to steer their economies towards meaningful structural changes.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic presents a risk to key dimensions of national institutions highlighted in Sustainable Development Goal 16 (in terms of limiting transparency and access to information, eroding safeguards to accountability including integrity violations, fraud and corruption, and restricting participation and engagement). However, these institutional dimensions are also critical to providing a resilient response to the crisis. In many countries, governments, accountability institutions and civil society are innovating to mitigate institutional disruptions while ensuring an effective response to the pandemic. In the aftermath of the crisis, drawing lessons in terms of the resilience of national institutions will be a key undertaking in order to ensure effective and accountable government.

Without aggressive policy action, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic could turn into a protracted debt crisis for many developing countries. The note puts forward concrete proposals to expand on the G20 bilateral debt moratorium and to facilitate investments in recovery and the SDGs, including for highly-indebted middle-income countries that request a standstill, and by bringing in other creditors. Time gained by the standstill must be used to develop sustainable solutions to the debt challenges of developing countries—to ‘build back better’. Such debt relief should be part of broader financing and recovery strategies that take SDG investment needs into consideration, for example through country-led Integrated national financing frameworks. This is also the the time to also address long-standing gaps in the international financial architecture for sovereign debt.

Indigenous peoples in many regions have a long history of devastation from epidemics brought by colonizers, from the arrival of the first Europeans in the Americas who brought smallpox and influenza to a measles outbreak among the Yanonami of Brazil and Southern Venezuela in the 1950s/60s that nearly decimated the tribe (Pringle, 2015). COVID-19 (coronavirus) presents a new threat to the health and survival of indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples in nearly all countries fall into the most “vulnerable” health category. They have significantly higher rates of communicable and non-communicable diseases than their non-indigenous counterparts, high mortality rates and lower life expectancies. Contributing factors that increase the potential for high mortality rates caused by COVID-19 in indigenous communities include mal – and under-nutrition, poor access to sanitation, lack of clean water, and inadequate medical services. Additionally, indigenous peoples often experience widespread stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings such as stereotyping and a lack of quality in the care provided, thus compromising standards of care and discouraging them from accessing health care, if and when available.

Older persons and those with underlying medical conditions are at a higher risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19 (coronavirus). Multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination experienced by older persons are exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic and aggravate their vulnerabilities. Triage protocols and policies that ensure medical decisions should be based on clinical assessment, medical need, ethical criteria and on the best available scientific evidence.

Covid-19 (coronavirus) threatens to have devastating consequences in least developed countries (LDCs). Health systems may be unable to cope with a precipitous increase in infections, and these countries lack the resources to cope with the socioeconomic consequences of lockdowns around the world. Unless bold policy actions are taken by the international community, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the 2030 deadline will likely slip out of reach.