Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021

July 9, 2021

Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021 was recently published by UN department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). It was launched at 2021 session of High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

Highlights

Report highlights the impacts of COVID-19 on SDG implementation. It also identifies areas which require urgent and coordinated action. Report was prepared using data and estimates in Global SDG Indicators Database comprising of global, regional and country data & metadata on official SDG indicators.

Key findings of report

As per report, there has been progress in availability of internationally comparable data on SDGs. Number of indicators included in global SDG database has increased from 115 in 2016 to 211 in 2021. However, covid-19 pandemic has disrupted data operations like population censuses, worldwide.
SDG 1: Global poverty rate is estimated to be 7% in 2030, missing the target of eradicating poverty.
SDG 2: 22% of children under 5 are stunted, 6.7% suffer from wasting, while 5.7% are overweight.
SDG 3: covid-19 has halted or reversed progress in health. It has reduced life expectancy.
SDG 4: 9% of children in grades 1-8 have come below minimum reading proficiency levels in 2020.
SDG 5: 25.6% of national parliamentarians are women, 36.3% are local government representatives while 28.2% are occupied at managerial positions.
SDG 6: 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and 3.6 billion people are deprived of safely managed sanitation.
SDG 7: 2.6 billion people are vulnerable to dangerous and inefficient cooking systems.
SDG 8: covid-19 led to loss of 255 million full-time jobs.
SDG 9: Manufacture of medium- and high-tech products contributed for economic recovery in 2020;
SDG 10: For every 100,000 persons, 311 are refugees in 2020.
SDG 11: Half of world’s urban population has access to public transport.
SDG 12: Global material footprint has increased by 70% between 2000 and 2017.
SDG 13: Global average temperature was at 1.2 Degree Celsius in 2020.
SDG 14: Dead zones have increased from 400 in 2008 to 700 in 2019.
SDG 15: During 2000-2020, 100 million hectares of forest were lost.
SDG 16: Child labor has increased to 160 million in 2020. It accounted for first increase for two decades.
SDG 17: About 3.7 billion people (half of world’s population) are still not online.