The SDGs and the global pandemic

The SDGs and the Global Pandemic

Larry A. Swatuk, PhD, University of Waterloo

To paraphrase Shakespeare, 'SDGs, SDGs, Wherefore Art Thou, SDGs?' The Sustainable Development Goals were meant to act as a global roadmap to sustainable, equitable, efficient, and just forms of development by the year 2030. What the coronavirus pandemic shows us is that we are more likely to end up in violent conflict than we are to eliminate any, let alone all, of the 17 global goals.

Let's break down the pandemic in terms of goals themselves. SDG 17 revolves around cooperation and collaboration. In order to achieve the global goals, we must work together. What the pandemic has shown us that states have run off madly in all directions, often working at cross-purposes, happy to point a finger rather than lend a hand. Without collaboration there will be no end to the pandemic and without an end to the pandemic the world will spiral down toward dysfunctionality rather than up to a higher state of sustainability. A good deal of the problem derives from the barriers set up to ensure that SDG 9 (Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation) will fail. SDG 10 focuses on reducing global inequality; however, for more than three decades the world has moved toward worsening inequality, with greater concentrations of wealth at the top than at any time in history. This impacts SDG 8 (the world of work), where neoliberal globalization has allowed corporations to outsource their dirtiest work to the Global South (from textile manufacturing in places such as Bangladesh and Dominican Republic, to commodity production and processing such as palm oil across the Tropics to sweatshop production of higher end commodities in places such as Vietnam, China and Mexico). This process has created the 'rust belts' across middle-America that are ripe for nationalist picking (Make America Great Again) and driven much of the labour across the Global North into white (high finance, insurance) and blue (McJobs; gig economy) collar services. The pandemic has exposed the frailty of a system built on mass exploitation. The UN estimates that more than 130 million people may be driven into poverty by 2030 (SDG 1) as a result of the pandemic. Personally, I think this number is low by a factor of ten. It also exposes the frailty of a global economy reliant on just in time production, and of Western economies so dependent on constant demand and consumption: tell everyone to stay home - without a plan - and the result is 30 million Americans unemployed in less than two months. 

Perhaps the most telling failure aside from unemployment, is the failure of the global food system. SDG 2 speaks to achieving no hunger, yet while there is more than enough food produced around the world to feed everyone, some 40 milliion Americans - the richest economy in the world - are forced to use food stamps to stave off household hunger. Elsewhere around the world, people are playing a sort of roulette: starve and stay at home, eat and risk contracting covid-19. Following on from SDG 2 is SDG 3 related to health. What coronvirus has exposed with shocking clarity is the complex array of social factors that lead to some being relatively secure (with the U.S. President being tested daily and requiring anyone who comes in contact with him to wear a mask) to those who are compounding acute health problems (COVID 19) with chronic problems (most related to inadequate nutrition and poor diet in fact). The prospect of famine looms across the Global South while European and American farmers slaughter their animals unable to get to market in the millions.

SDG 4 concerns education for all, yet the pandemic has brought all education to a virtual standstill and pushed tertiary education institutions around the world to the brink of collapse. With the prospect of students unable to travel to their institution of choice in the Fall, not only are universities facing bankruptcy but so are towns and cities (SDG 11) around the world. The knock on effects of the pandemic illustrate quite clearly how all SDGs are intimately integrated. 

SDG 5 is about gender equity, and what the pandemic is showing us is the way in which women are most seriously affected in so many different ways: women are most at risk as they work 'essential services', most nurses and many doctors are female and struggle with the absence of PPEs; the lockdowns have exacerbated problematic gender relations, heightening women's exposure to domestic violence. The list goes on as 'stay at home' means women's role in agriculture, education, health care etc. is under acute pressure so jeoparizing household livelihood security, for example. 

Water and sanitation for all (SDG 6) is a lofty goal, but when protection from the virus requires you to wash your hands frequently with warm water, it is clear that perhaps one billion people are inadequately prepared for this. States have long ingored the sanitation side of water provision, and farmed out water provision to private sector and NGO actors in urban and rural areas. This abdication of responsibliity for providing citizens with equitable access to enough water of appropriate quality has heightened the pre-existing gross inequalities (and therefore insecurities) among citizens due to class, race, gender, caste, age and other cross-cutting variables (SDG 10).

The global economic slowdown (indeed, the UN estimates that the world economy will shrink by 3.2% in 2020) has crashed demand for fossil fuels so challenging governments to think creatively post-pandemic. Yet, the oil industries are lobbying hard for government assistance to help them survive (as if their pockets aren't already deep enough). What will governments do? Will they pursue orthodox bailouts of the very industries that are assembling the landscape for not only the pandemic but other system stressing crises to manifest, or will they use this moment to push beyond carbon, supporting research and development not only for renewable energy but new forms of wealth creation (SDG 9), aiming to build jobs in a new economy (SDG 8), not an old one? As 'shovel ready' projects are being contemplated, the jury is out.

Much of the global economy depends on the high functioning inter-connectness of 'global cities': transportation hubs; technology centres; and simply concentrated areas of consumer demand. Many cities too are hotbeds of coronavirus infection. The way urban spaces have been organized illustrate not only the way the virus can proliferate, but also how, under pandemic lockdown, the city is a also a hotbed of problems of mental health: absence of green spaces; poor walkability. Global South mega-cities are another sort of extreme, where 'sheltering in place' means having zero ability to social distance. It also links to food insecurity (SDG 2) and poverty (SDG 1) since slum dwellers must engage in piecemeal work, mostly in the informal economy, for day wages in order to feed themselves and the family. To shut this down is to guarantee not a pandemic, but starvation and most likely citizen revolt.

Enter SDG 16 again, on good governance. It is clear that too may governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to expand their powers, clamp down on dissent, and institute new mechanisms of citizen surveillance that may have short term utility in monitoring the pandemic, but more worryingly, longer term utility in fostering anti-democratic practices.

The pandemic provides us with a glimpse behind the curtain of preparedness in relation to a global system wide shock. How we respond now will tell us a great deal about how we will deal with coming climate shocks. This pandemic provides the world with an opportunity to not merely respond to a global threat, but to critically reflect on the preparedness of our so-called systems to cope with shock and not only bounce back but return in a better, more-prepared form for the next shock down the road, i.e. climate change (SDG 13). In disaster risk reduction speak, this means building back better. It doesn't mean building back as it was before, but learning the lessons of the crisis, and making the necessary changes. The world is on course for the greatest cut in carbon emissions ever. The planet is getting a bit of a breather. Life under water and on land (SDGs 14 and 15) are in some cases recovering from consistent over-exploitation by human activity. We are ready for the great reset. Will we learn our lessons well?

This brings me back to SDGs 17 (cooperation) and 16 (peace, security, governance). As I said at the outset, we are now faced with a choice: pull together and flourish, or pull apart and perish. The early indications are not good. The world's states and peoples have committed to Agenda 2030. The SDGs should be front and centre in discussions about moving forward, in addressing the pandemic, in adjusting our current systems, and in building back better. But in the cacophanous clamour of short-term state-specific crisis management, those voices calling for coordinated medium term thinking are unheard. Perhaps the SDGs can serve as a platform from which to launch the great global reset.