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United Nations University (UNU) Summary Input for 2022 HLPF and ECOSOC
“Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”
1. Progress, experience, lessons learned, challenges and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of SDGs 4, 5, 14, 15 and 17 from the vantage point of your organisation bearing in mind the three dimensions of sustainable development and the interlinkages across the SDGs and targets, including policy implications of their synergies and tradeoffs.
UNU institutes across the globe have identified progress, lessons learned, challenges, and impacts of the pandemic on implementation of the SDGs under review, including identifying interlinkages across the SDGs.
Research into inclusive green recovery/transitioning to green economies from the pandemic calls for a post-COVID-19 paradigm shift to re-orient economic systems that better align with the three dimensions of sustainable development, improve human wellbeing, and increase harmony between development nature. Five interrelated and interdependent building blocks have been identified to achieve a more inclusive green recovery: prosperity (SDGs 1, 2, 8 and 9), health (SDGs 3, 6), nature (SDGs 7, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15), justice (SDGs 4, 5, 10 and 16), and transformation (SDG 17).
More specifically, in relation to the SDGs under review, UNU’s research has revealed the following:
Education and the pandemic (SDG 4): Education is society’s greatest equaliser and a significant determinant of sustainable economic growth. Halting education exacerbates socio-economic and gender inequalities (SDGs 5, 10) within and between countries and negatively impacts future generations. Despite this, together with the evidence of negative direct and indirect effects on children and adolescents of closing schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries continue to keep schools closed even when there are clear World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations to the contrary. In 2021, UNU researchers developed policy briefs, calling on the G20 to develop a policy to reopen schools and close them only when recommended by the WHO and as a measure of last resort. Further, the interlinkages between school closures on education, combined with the impact of COVID-19 on poverty reduction (SDG 1), food security (SDG 2) and good health and well-being (SDG 3) have led to estimates of current students expecting lower incomes over their lifetime than students attending schools, increasing income insecurity and lowering national GDP for affected countries.
In terms of higher education institutions, the pandemic has raised questions about the relevance and viability of current university models, highlighted the drawbacks of narrowly focused academic disciplines, and put a spotlight on challenges of institutional governance both internal and external.
Gender and conflict management (SDG 5): Violent conflicts have not come to a halt during the current global pandemic but are instead being further complicated by it. People living in emergency settings are currently enduring a crisis within a crisis. While women’s active participation in peace processes at all levels has been proven to be integral to the durability of peace agreements, they comprised only 6% of mediators, 6% of signatories, and 13% of negotiators in major peace processes between 1992 and 2019.
Addressing the gender dimensions of conflict requires increasing women’s participation in all facets of peacekeeping, including peace mediation, as well as inclusive, effective and gender responsive rule of law institutions to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies and advance gender equality.
Further, UNU’s examination of how and why individuals exit armed conflict, evaluating the efficacy of interventions to support transition to civilian life, reveals a range of impacts that interventions have on children, women, and ethnic minorities. The data collected can enable UN partners to develop gender-transformative support for war-affected populations, those transitioning out of conflict, and thus improve the long-term trajectories of women and girls. Life below and above (SDGs 14 and 15):
Environmental risks have increased as a result of COVID-19. Pandemic-generated demand and use of single plastics has increased plastic pollution both below the sea and above the land. Research reveals low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) are more adversely affected given the high percentage of their populations that rely on fisheries and agricultural-based livelihoods. The pandemic has also reduced monitoring capacity of illegal exploitation of land and sea resources. Such impacts combine to increase risks posed by extreme weather events, reducing the resilience of affected communities.
There are interlinkages between gender inequality and life below water and on land. Women in the fishing and aquaculture sectors lack access to resources and are disproportionately represented in processing and marketing roles, which are often low-paying and precarious. Similarly, decision-making positions in the maritime industry are largely dominated by men, which limits the status of women. Moreover, only 13.8% of landholders are women globally, which reduces their ability to make critical decisions. UNU institutes have engaged in adapting recommendations to encourage policymakers to ensure equitable representation of women in all phases of landscape project development and implementation, promote recognition of women’s rights and access to resources, and ensure that women receive the benefits equitably.
Life on the land includes the more than one billion people who live in forest areas around the world. Forests provide livelihoods, generate income through local, national, and global supply chains of products and are biodiversity hotspots that function as carbon sinks, keeping the Earth’s climate stable. Yet, illegal logging and other environmental crimes have contributed to the loss of approximately 40 per cent of the planet’s forests. In forest regions, like the Amazon, the Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the crisis by weakening social services and making local indigenous populations more vulnerable to land invasions by illegal miners, illegal loggers, and associated armed groups. To combat and reverse this trend, local and national efforts must be complemented with international cooperation.
A project by UNU and partners to map global and regional governance arrangements on forests and other ecosystems, systemizing cooperation instruments that are part of international forest governance, aims to analyse the challenges and identify best practices related to existing frameworks for sustainable forestry management.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed significant flaws in critical economic sectors in Africa, revealing the reliance of African countries on the importance of food and agricultural inputs from outside of the continent. Lockdowns and restrictions have disrupted supply chains, limiting access to critical agricultural inputs for farmers. UNU’s research finds government measures to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on residents and businesses have mixed results, with a lack of a gendered approach, greater attention paid to some sectors over others, and the neglect of informal workers who make up a large part of workforces in the region. Within the UN system, UN Resident Coordinators (RCs) have been at the forefront of the organisation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, rallying UN capacity to support government response and recovery. The existential threat from the interlinked effects of climate change, biodiversity loss & pollution (SDGs 13, 14 and 15), the Triple Planetary Crisis, presents an even greater challenge for humanity, requiring radical change to approaches to development, well-being, and growth. RCs perform a crucial role in the international multilateral system’s response to this crisis, helping to bolster national-level actions that can coalesce into meaningful changes at the global level. UNU’s engagement with RCs has identified common obstacles they face to meet this challenge and considers good practices and models that could help them become even more effective actors around the world.
While the pandemic has certainly highlighted challenges for meeting SDGs 14 and 15, it has also provided opportunities in some areas. UNU’s research in Africa shows some small businesses in the energy sector taking advantage of digital technologies to maintain staff and maintain relevance in the sector, while other communities consider the pandemic an opportunity to move toward more sustainable living in harmony with nature – landscape and seascape approaches to policy formulation. This would require a shift in mindsets about the interaction between life, nature, production, consumption, and new business practices.
Stronger cooperation (SDG 17): The 2030 agenda emphasises a transformation of global development and a “win–win” cooperation based on an integrated approach and equal relationships among member states, as well as coherent, comprehensive, and inclusive responses for development issues and challenges. Partnering for the SDGs requires the government to move away from its traditional ways of working to engaging more with non-state actors such as consulting in policymaking or contracting for policy implementation. Multi-stakeholder research projects conducted by UNU are often co-designed and involve partnerships with UN entities, national, local, and regional governments, the private including the financial sector, philanthropic individuals/associations, other academic institutions, NGOs and civil society. Projects on financing against slavery and trafficking and managing exits from armed conflicts to research on the progress of subnational localisation of the SDGs, demonstrate that multi-level partnerships can become tangible instruments to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
