Tannuka Juneja
The climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and a more significant number of conflicts in the world endanger the achievement of SDGs, highlights the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022.
The publication highlights the gravity and magnitude of the challenges we face, with these cascading crises intersecting, affecting food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, peace and security, and making the race more difficult. towards the achievement of the SDGs
According to UN data, the pandemic has wreaked havoc on the Goals and its effects are far from over. Global “excess deaths” directly and indirectly attributable to COVID-19 totalled 15 million at the end of 2021.
This marks a setback of more than four years in poverty alleviation that had pushed an additional 93 million people into extreme poverty in 2020. In addition, some 147 million children missed more than their face-to-face classes in the last two years.
The pandemic also severely disrupted essential health services, derailing progress in health.
On the other hand, the world is on the brink of a climate catastrophe that is already hitting billions of people.
Energy-related CO2 emissions for 2021 increased 6%, reaching their highest level to date and completely erasing pandemic-related declines.
To avoid the worst effects of climate change, as set out in the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to peak before 2025 and then decline by 43% by 2030, falling to net-zero by 2050. However, those emissions will grow by almost 14% in the next decade.
