Culminating Crises: Reflections and Learnings for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on culminating crises by analysing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, wars and conflicts and political-economy and discuss how these crises have affected sustainable development efforts with a view to suggesting some strategies. Drawing mainly from the secondary data and the author’s reflections, each of the four crises is analysed in terms of its negative and positive consequences. Then how these crises have affected sustainable development efforts, particularly the achievement of the sustainable development goals, is discussed. In the final section, seven strategies are suggested to culminate these crises.

President’s Welcome Address at the 23rd ICSD Biennial International Conference—Social Development in Times of Crisis: Challenges and Responses, Gavle, Sweden, 23–25 August 2023

“…When the two elements occur simultaneously and excessively across different continents, the most impacted by them are human beings and other species in the ecological systems, particularly those who do not have capacity to cope with the consequences of such events. (Pawar, 2023b, p. 241) The fourth crisis is created by the governance systems: The way the governance systems respond to the crisis and crises can itself result in another crisis (Pawar, 2023a), at least in the short term, instead of reducing the crises. For example, sudden lockdown and harsh implementation by law enforcement agencies, and growing inflation tackled by rising interest rates.…”

Poverty, Policy and the Poor

“…The above presentation of the latest achievement data from the SDG progress report (United Nations, 2023) shows that most of the countries and the world are far from achieving the set targets. Culminating crises—the corona virus pandemic, natural disasters, wars and conflicts and political–economy decisions—have significantly impacted the progress of the SDGs (see Pawar, 2023). United Nations (2022, p. 26) SDGs report 2022 stated that the number of people living in poverty has increased, wiping out the progress made over the last 4 years.…”

“…Workers living in extreme poverty increased from 6.7% in 2019 to 7.2% in 2020, adding 8 million workers into poverty. The report further states that ‘Rising food prices and the broader impacts of the war in Ukraine could push that number even higher, to 95 million, leaving the world even further from meeting the target of ending extreme poverty by 2030’ (Pawar, 2023). This is also well reflected in drops in global human development index values in 87 countries in 2020 and 51 countries in 2021 (UNDP, 2022).…”