Context: Recently, a report titled Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report, 2021 was released by UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Key highlights

• The Asia-Pacific region is not on track to achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030. Out of 104 measurable targets of the SDGs, the region is on track to reach only nine by 2030.
• At the current pace, the region may achieve less than 10 per cent of the SDG targets.
• The region’s progress has been too slow on half of the goals in Asia-Pacific and many were stalled at levels well below the 2020 milestone.

Progress in achieving goals

• The most promising are goals for good health and well-being (Goal 3) and industry, innovation and infrastructure (Goal 9) where the region has progressed the most.
• The region has also made some progress on goals for no poverty (Goal 1), zero hunger (Goal 2), quality education (Goal 4), reduced inequalities (Goal 10) and partnership for the goals (Goal 17), albeit too slow to achieve success by 2030.
• The region is regressing on critical goals of climate action (Goal 13) and life below water (Goal 14).
• Other goals where the region fell abysmally short of expectations were gender equality (Goal 5), clean water and sanitation (Goal 6), affordable and clean energy (Goal 7), decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), and life on land (Goal 15).

Potential impact of COVID-19 in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
1) Health: The maternal mortality ratio could increase in 14 Asia-Pacific countries that already have a high burden of maternal deaths, from the projected 2020 baseline of 184 per 100,000 live births to 214 or 263 per 100,000 live births for the best- and the worst-case scenarios, respectively.

• Deaths of under-5 children in the region could increase by more than half a million over a six-month period in the worst-case scenario.

2) Social protection and basic services: There are 640 million multidimensionally poor people in Asia and the Pacific.

• The pandemic could potentially double this number by pushing an additional 636 million vulnerable people to multidimensional poverty.

3) Jobs, small and medium-sized enterprises and informal sector workers: Unemployment increased by 15 million in the region in 2020. Compared to 2019, workers in the region lost 7.1 per cent of their labour income in 2020, more than $1.0 trillion.

• In April 2020, lockdown measures impacted some 829 million informal workers in the Asia-Pacific region.

4) Fiscal and financial stimulus: Nearly half of the Asia-Pacific countries with data experienced negative economic growth worse than the projected -4.4 per cent global growth in 2020.
5) Social cohesion and community resilience: At least 70 per cent of mental health services for older persons were disrupted between June and August 2020.
6) Environment: Among the recovery measures approved by 13 countries in the region, 11 countries had very little or almost no consideration of the environmental dimension.
7) Green recovery during pandemic: The region has made no progress on SDG goals for sustainable cities and communities since 2000.

• During the pandemic, too, it missed the opportunity to build back better. Large cities in the Asia-Pacific region produced 154 to 280 tonnes more medical waste per day than before the pandemic.
• The COVID-19 related bio-medical waste generation in India increased from 3,025 tonnes in June, 2020 to 4,527 tonnes in December 2020.

8) Addressing data-deficit: Nearly 40 per cent of the SDG targets cannot be measured for the Asia-Pacific region due to the lack of data. The goals for climate action and life under water were among the most “data-poor”.