Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have impeded progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals

COVID-19 pandemic responses have brought unprecedented challenges to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a quantitative, multi-dimensional assessment of the impacts of these responses on SDG progress is required. Here, we use an adaptive multi-regional input-output model to quantitatively assess the impact of pandemic responses on global and national SDG progress and show that COVID-19 pandemic responses reduced overall progress towards the SDGs by 8.2%, with socio-economic sustainability declining by 18.1% while environmental sustainability improved by 5.1% compared with the business-as-usual trend. Developing countries suffered greater reductions in overall sustainability (9.7%) than developed countries (7.1%). Under all post-pandemic futures, pandemic responses were found to impede overall progress towards the SDGs and worsened inequality between countries, particularly for socio-economic targets. A post-pandemic strategy toward the SDGs requires sustainable pandemic responses which not only address inequality among countries but also lessen the trade-offs between SDGs.

Cai Li, Zhongci Deng, Zhen Wang, Yuanchao Hu, Ling Wang, Shuxia Yu, Wei Li, Zhihua Shi, Brett A. Bryan