POLICY BRIEFS

Bertelsmann Foundation, Germany: The UN’s Sustainability Goals could fail

The UN’s Sustainability Goals could fail, argues Christian Kroll, a senior expert on sustainability at the Bertelsmann Foundation. In September, the heads of state and government will meet again for the first time in New York to take stock of the Agenda 2030, but current SDG report shows that the world community talks a lot about sustainability goals but invests too little in their implementation.

Many words, few actions – Why the Agenda 2030 could fail

G20 Japan: Women at Work in G20 countries – Progress and policy action

Considerable policy action has occurred in G20 countries to boost women’s participation in the labour market and reduce gender gaps in job quality. Nevertheless, G20 members and stakeholders may wish to consider further action.

G20 Japan Women at Work Progress and Policy Action

G20 Japan: Update on G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

In 2019, the G20 is delivering on this commitment through the Osaka Update in highlighting 2019 priorities and new collective actions put forward by the Japanese G20 Presidency, strengthening the multistakeholder dialogue on the 2030 Agenda through engagements and partnerships, and continuing the peer learning mechanism on the implementation of the Action Plan. In this regard, we take note of the analysis in the OECD-UNDP independent report “G20 CONTRIBUTION TO THE 2030 AGENDA – PROGRESS AND WAY FORWARD –“.

Update on G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

G20 Japan: Comprehensive Accountability Report on G20 Development Commitments

The Osaka Comprehensive Accountability Report on G20 Development Commitments takes stock the progress on the G20 Development Agenda since the last Comprehensive Accountability Report (CAR) in 2016. Accountability processes support leaning from the implementation of previous commitments and serve the G20’s transparency and credibility.

Osaka Comprehensive Accountability Report on G20 Development Commitments

G20 Japan: Shared Understanding on the Importance of UHC Financing in Developing Countries

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) builds an essential basis for sustainable and inclusive growth. Progress towards UHC, which ensures that all people can access the quality health services they need without experiencing financial hardship, enhances health outcomes, thus helping develop human capital. It promotes job creation, increases financial protection and reduces poverty, promotes economic inclusion, and strengthens health security and thus macro-stability. However, significant challenges remain.

G20 Japan UHC Financing in Developing Countries

G20 Japan: Initiative on Human Capital Investment for Sustainable Development

Based on the G20’s past achievements in education and in close coordination with other G20 working groups and workstreams in areas such as health, food security and nutrition, human resource development, employment, women’s empowerment and digital economy, the G20 supports concrete actions to invest in quality education, with a particular emphasis on developing and low and middle-income countries, focusing on the following three pillars; (1) quality education for achieving sustainable development and inclusive growth, (2) education for creating innovation, and (3) education for a resilient and inclusive future.

G20 Initiative on Human Capital Investment for Sustainable Development

G20 Governance of Africa-Related Issues

This report analyzes the focus of the G20 on Africa and its support for Africa-related issues, including its deliberations and decisions made and delivered in the years 2008-2016. Although G20 performance on Africa-related issues between 2008 and 2015 only showed slow, incremental increases, there was a significant rise in performance in deliberation, direction setting and development of global governance at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou in 2016, the report says.

Research Report: The G20’s Governance of Africa-Related Issues, 2008-2016; by Courtney Hallink

Learning to Love a Multipolar World

The only sane way forward for the US is vigorous global cooperation to realize the potential of twenty-first-century science and technology to slash poverty, disease, and environmental threats. Jeffrey D. Sachs argues that the rise of regional powers is not a threat to the US, but an opportunity for a new era of prosperity and constructive problem solving.

Learning to Love a Multipolar World, by Jeffrey D. Sachs

What to do about the coming debt crisis in developing countries

Emerging markets and developing countries have about $11 trillion in external debt and about $3.9 trillion in debt service due in 2020. Of this, about $3.5 trillion is for principal repayments. Around $1 trillion is debt service due on medium- and long-term (MLT) debt, while the remainder is short-term debt, much of which is normal trade finance.

What to do about the coming debt crisis in developing countries

By Homi Kharas (Brookings)

A Letter to G20 Governments

In 2008-2010, the Great Recession could be surmounted when the economic fault line – under-capitalization of the global banking system – was tackled. Now, however, the economic emergency will not be resolved until the health emergency is effectively addressed, and that requires coordinated global leadership – now.

A Letter to G20 Governments

By Erik Berglöf, Gordon Brown and Jeremy Farrar (Project Syndicate)

Politics of Pandemic: Public Health Can No Longer Wait

The world is currently experiencing a massive public health crisis due to the COVID-19 virus. The virus had already created widespread death and destruction before the WHO declared it a pandemic on 11 March, and the situation has only worsened since then. Most parts of the world are under lockdown, mobility has reduced to its lowest ever level, trade has been disrupted, unemployment rates have risen, and thousands of people have died worldwide.

Politics of Pandemic: Public Health Can No Longer Wait

By Pooja Tripathi (ORF)

Disease, Like Poverty, Does Not Stay at Home

The Corona virus should change global politics. The speed and scale of its transmission, and the severity of its impact is not, we know now to our cost, fake news. As the virus rapidly tracks people vectors world-side, the control of its impact is inextricably linked to the availability of resources and depth of governance. For these reasons, global leaders should focus on its impact among the most vulnerable, and in particular in Africa.

Disease, Like Poverty, Does Not Stay at Home

By Yonas Adepto, Karim El Aynaoui, Thomas Gomart, Paolo Magri, Greg Mill, Karin von Hippel, and Guntram Wolff (ISPI)

The New Inequalities and People-To-People Social Protection

The lockdowns throughout the world are creating a new type of brutal inequality: between those who continue to have a steady source of income and those who do not. The latter group includes not just the already poor but the millions across the world who are now at risk of falling out of the middle class: laid-off workers whose unemployment checks will not cover the rent, drivers, small business owners, contract workers, performing artists, the child care workers at-home parents don’t need and cannot now afford. The latter are those, in the rich and in the emerging market economies at least, that provide the ballast, the invisible glue, that holds societies together.

The New Inequalities and People-To-People Social Protection

By Nora Lustig (IPSP) and Nancy Birdsall (Center for Global Development)

The coronavirus as a yardstick of global health policy

To deal with pandemics there is a global security system and policy that already possesses the elements appropriate to a public policy, such as institutions, norms, instruments and a model of global governance, which has moved from taking reactive, exceptional and case-by-case measures (securitisation) to becoming a more preventive and systematic model of response (medicalisation). As with all policies under construction, the progress made by global health policy depends on the priority it possesses on domestic and international agendas, a priority that acquires fresh urgency with each new pandemic and gets forgotten whenever society’s attention wanes. This paper analyses how the COVID-19 coronavirus has put global health policy to the test once again.

The coronavirus as a yardstick of global health policy

By Félix Arteaga (Elcano Royal Institute)

A Gender-Sensitive Response is Missing from the COVID-19 Crisis

Though the COVID-19 epidemic is a nasty equalizer in affecting people of all regions, races, nationalities, genders, and social strata, the impact is not the same for all. The crisis has exposed the gendered fault lines of structural inequalities, hitting hardest those who are already the most browbeaten, the majority of whom are women. To avert compounding structural inequalities, evidence warns against a gender-neutral response to epidemics or pandemics. Despite multiple commentaries and efforts on gender analysis, a gender-sensitive response to the COVID-19 crisis is missing.

A Gender-Sensitive Response is Missing from the COVID-19 Crisis

By Jamila Razzaq (The Brookings Institution)

Improve Handwashing Access to Combat COVID-19

Medical experts and institutions tell us that a critical but simple lifesaving action to reduce vulnerability to COVID-19 is literally in our own hands—regular handwashing with soap. Public awareness efforts underscore the need for greater behavioral compliance. According to researchers at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and Utrecht University and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, “How individuals respond to government advice on preventing the spread of COVID-19 will be at least as important, if not more important, than government action.” Yet when it comes to handwashing, the challenge runs deeper than personal routine alone.

Improve Handwashing Access to Combat COVID-19

By KE Seetha Ram and Roshan Shrestha (ADBI)

Africa needs debt relief to fight COVID-19

Considering that the combat against COVID-19 is more challenging on the African continent than it is in other parts of the world, the authors of this Op-Ed call for a two-year standstill on all external debt repayments, both interest and principal, for low-income countries. Immediate debt relief would enable African governments to focus on the protection of vulnerable populations, bolstering social safety nets and support of the labour market and private sector.

Africa needs debt relief to fight COVID-19 by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Brahima Sangafowa Coulibaly, Tidjane Thiam, Donald Kaberuka, Vera Songwe, Strive Masiyiwa, Louise Mushikiwabo, and Cristina Duarte