Another Victim of COVID-19: Sustainable Development
from The Internationalist and International Institutions and Global Governance Program
from The Internationalist and International Institutions and Global Governance Program

Another Victim of COVID-19: Sustainable Development

A boy wearing a protective mask waits for a train in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 27, 2020.
A boy wearing a protective mask waits for a train in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 27, 2020. Jorge Silva/Reuters

The coronavirus pandemic is a major setback for efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

May 4, 2020 1:15 pm (EST)

A boy wearing a protective mask waits for a train in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 27, 2020.
A boy wearing a protective mask waits for a train in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 27, 2020. Jorge Silva/Reuters
Post
Blog posts represent the views of CFR fellows and staff and not those of CFR, which takes no institutional positions.

In my weekly column for World Politics Review, I discuss the implications of COVID-19 for efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The ultimate cost of the coronavirus pandemic won’t be tallied for a while. But one casualty seems obvious now: sustainable development. The pandemic has exposed the world’s failure to meet basic human needs, not least in health. Worse, it threatens to erase recent social, economic and environmental progress, particularly among the world’s most vulnerable populations. Pundits frequently describe the coronavirus as a “great equalizer,” reinforcing the message that “we’re all in this together.” In truth, the pandemic is reinforcing the brutal inequality that separates the world’s privileged and marginalized communities.

More on:

Public Health Threats and Pandemics

COVID-19

Development

Inequality

Food and Water Security

Read the full World Politics Review article here.

More on:

Public Health Threats and Pandemics

COVID-19

Development

Inequality

Food and Water Security

Creative Commons
Creative Commons: Some rights reserved.
Close
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.
View License Detail
Close