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REPORT LAUNCH | Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2021- Demanding justice beyond rhetoric
Friday, 17 September 2021, 9:00-10:30am EDT
Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis have exacerbated rather than reduced global inequalities. The most visible example of this is the global disparity in the distribution of vaccines.
So far more than 60 percent of people in high-income countries have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, but less than 2 percent have done so in low-income countries. In view of this dramatic disparity, the "leave no one behind" mantra of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development remains hollow.
In fact, the [...]
Ways out of the global health crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically demonstrated just how close the link is between humans, animals, and the environment, and has highlighted and aggravated existing challenges. The destruction of natural habitats and displacement of species, trade in wild animals, resource-intensive lifestyles and conditions, non-sustainable food systems and, in particular, industrial agriculture and intensive livestock farming are the causes of the emergence of zoonoses as well as numerous other communicable and non-communicable, chronic diseases.
The One Health approach focuses precisely on such [...]
Heard during UN LDC5 preparations
By Alexa Sabatini
“We are in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. The severity of its impact is being felt globally. The LDCs are bearing its heaviest brunt. They have weak infrastructures, and a serious lack of capacity to cope with internal and external shocks.”
-- H.E. Rabab Fatima, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh and Co-chair of the Fifth UN Conference on LDCs (LDC5) Preparatory Committee
Ambassador Fatima’s remarks highlight the drastic consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought on LDC countries. Referring to the scheduled process of LDC “graduation” out of that [...]
The new debt crisis and what to do about it
Global debt levels have been surging constantly over the past decade, and the need to fight the COVID-19 crisis with running fiscal deficits and borrowing money has been a further shock to global economies. While central bank interventions have been keeping interest rates low in the global north, countries in the global south are particularly vulnerable to crisis because they owe large amounts of external debts. The risk of debt crisis is high and debt service costs are rising rapidly. Each dollar spent on debt service in low-income countries is a dollar that is not being spent on financing [...]
