UN #SDG News

Tackling inequality, bridging the digital divide, greening the economy, and upholding human rights and good governance will be critical for Southeast Asia to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Secretary-General said on Thursday.

Although hundreds of millions of smallholder family farmers in Asia-Pacific produce a majority of the world’s food, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on their livelihoods, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The global prevalence of potentially-deadly hepatitis B in children under age five, dropped to under one per cent in 2019 – down from five per cent in the pre-vaccine decades between the 1980s and early 2000s, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Monday.

“Exceptional and prolonged” temperatures in Siberia, have left parts of the Arctic warmer than sub-tropical Florida, and fuelled “devastating” wildfires for a second consecutive year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday, while warning also of rapidly decreasing sea ice along the Russian polar coast.

The immediate introduction of a Temporary Basic Income for the world’s poorest people could slow the current surge in COVID-19 and enable close to three billion people to stay at home, according to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released on Thursday.

Although some 178 million hectares of forest has been lost worldwide over the past three decades, the rate of loss has declined substantially during this period, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.

With the COVID-19 pandemic leading to a pause for most sport worldwide, the UN has been celebrating a highly-competitive game that you can play safely indoors or online – with the added bonus of helping reduce anxiety, and improving mental health: Monday marks the first ever World Chess Day.

Thirty-five young people with innovative ideas for tackling challenges such as protecting indigenous Amazonian land through adventure travel, converting harmful emissions into valuable commodities in the United States, and generating electricity from water in Nigeria, have been named as regional finalists for one of the UN’s most prestigious environmental awards.

 One hundred thousand households in Somaliland in northwest Somalia have better access to water, protecting them not just from the ravages of climate change but also against the spread of COVID-19, thanks to a project supported by the UN Development Programme.  

Hunger threatens to soar to devastating levels in 25 countries in the coming months due to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are warning.

With the COVID-19 pandemic putting development gains at risk, exposing vulnerabilities and inequalities both within and among nations, the UN Secretary-General is urging governments to reexamine how they work together to solve global challenges.

“Concrete, bold and implementable solutions” are needed to turn the tide on the many challenges the world is facing, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday, on the biggest day so far for the UN’s key international forum on sustainable development.  

While the scale and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic is being felt in developing and developed countries alike, the President of the UN General Assembly maintained on Monday that the response must focus on “the two-thirds of the world’s population at risk of being left behind”. 

In much of the world, “hunger remains deeply entrenched and is rising”, the UN chief said on Monday, launching this year’s major UN food security update, highlighting that over the past five years, tens of millions of people have joined the ranks of the chronically undernourished.

A new mechanism launched on Thursday aims to speed up action so that people everywhere will have access to water and sanitation by the end of the decade, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in “a serious setback” for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an independent UN human rights expert said on Wednesday, urging a high-level meeting to “take a hard look” at implementation efforts to live up to the promise to leave no one behind.

The dramatic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have laid bare “weaknesses in our systems and societies”, a top official told the UN’s key international forum on sustainable development which began on Tuesday, warning that “a new dynamic” is needed to overcome the negative shocks. 

The United Nations vision for a sustainable future for all “will depend on our policy choices today, and our resolve to act together in solidarity”, a senior UN official told delegates on Monday at a meeting to discuss post-pandemic recovery.

As a major United Nations forum prepares to assess progress towards a fairer future for people and the planet, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that each of the Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new UN report on tbe private sector, released by UN Global Compact, shows that progress on bringing about a sustainable future for people and the planet is patchy, and the majority of companies involved in the Compact, are not doing enough to help bring about the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.