• Published on 21 May 2020
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Use SDGs and Paris Agreement to guide recovery from COVID-19 according to ADB VP

 The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) jointly launched today the latest edition of the Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership Report - Fast-Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Driving Asia-Pacific Transformations on the sidelines of the 7th Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD).

The APFSD concluded with a call for countries to revive international cooperation and multi-stakeholder partnerships in tackling the huge socioeconomic impacts of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which threaten to reverse hard-won development gains in the region. Participants also expressed concerns on the limited progress made toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and underscored the need for transformative accelerated action by all stakeholders to meet the targets by 2030.

More than 730 delegates representing governments, civil society, businesses and international organizations took part in the Forum hosted virtually by ESCAP.

The report highlights strategies to accelerate transformation and helps countries compare their speed of progress with others. It calls for clear direction, removing systemic barriers, investing in institutional and public readiness to change, and upgrading policymaking approaches to manage increasingly complex development challenges.

One of the report’s key findings is that higher income is not a silver bullet to address the challenges posed by the SDGs and achieve accelerated progress along transformative pathways. Low-income and lower middle-income countries emerged as some of the fastest-moving countries in the region.

“Resilience must be central to our strategies and interventions. Shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic do not respect borders, so the pathway to saving lives and securing livelihoods lies not in national isolation, but in cooperating across borders on information sharing, capacity building, and policy coordination,” said ADB Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development Bambang Susantono. “We must use the SDGs and Paris agreement as the guiding frameworks for our long-term recovery efforts, and do what it takes to prioritize their attainment.”

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker