Covid, war made SDGs harder for Bangladesh: Report

Among the United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), Bangladesh has achieved progress in major indicators and moved close to achieving a few mileposts until the Covid-19 pandemic that reversed many of the gains and the Russia-Ukraine war made further progress harder, says an official assessment report.

The Bangladesh Progress Report 2022 on SDGs elaborates on how seriously the Covid-19 along with stringent containment measures impacted the country's long-standing macroeconomic stability, and disrupted people's livelihood, thereby creating adverse consequences on the progress towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.  

For instance, it says, the pandemic has created many 'new poor' due to socioeconomic dislocations, frustrating the previous success in the SDG1, 'no poverty', by bringing down upper poverty to 20.5% and extreme poverty to 10.5% in 2019, the year before the pandemic struck the world.

The pandemic has also overstressed the country's health system, education, human development and basic public services delivery. Though Bangladesh witnessed a short-term recovery, there remain significant uncertainties relating to medium- and long-term recoveries from pandemic, whose full impacts are yet to be exposed.   

"Bangladesh will have to become more innovative and productive to complete the remaining stages for achieving the SDGs -- a journey in which development partners will have to play a more supportive role," reads the report, third of its kind since the government started assessing the progress on SDGs from 2015.  

The macroeconomic impacts include Tk800 billion loss in GDP, $8 billion in exports, Tk500 billion in investment and Tk200 billion in tax revenues, in addition to short-term rise in unemployment and inequality, it estimates.

Though the government's prompt steps helped the economy to be back on the growth track, bouncing back to an accelerated growth path will depend on how quickly the global economy gets back to normal from a situation worsened further by the war, says the 300-page report prepared by the planning commission's General Economics Division.

A rise in global commodity prices and sluggish economic activities caused by the war-induced supply chain disruptions affected the whole world as well as Bangladesh, and overcoming the situation will depend on many global factors and the domestic economy's capacity to adjust to emerging impediments, the report points out.

To remain competitive and keep the growth trajectory upwards in a steady manner after graduation from LDC in 2026, Bangladesh needs to focus on a knowledge-based economy, utilise geographic dividends, mobilise increased local resources, ensure a congenial business environment, shift towards manufacturing high-value goods, promote export-oriented industries and increase regional and global connectivity, the assessment report believes.

Of the 17 UN goals, Bangladesh is on track with some key goals such as 'no poverty' and 'quality education,' and has improved in several other goals like zero hunger, good health and well-being, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy and sustainable cities.

"More efforts are needed in areas like decent work and economic growth; life below water; peace, justice, strong institutions; and partnerships for the goals," it says as it finds achieving the goals in the remaining 8 years before 2030 will be an uphill task requiring more support from the global community.

Although access to primary education is in good shape, the quality of education is a matter of concern, it says, stressing the need for universal access to good education to achieve SDG4 that deals with quality education.

Assessing Bangladesh's progress in SDG7 relating to energy, the government report says Bangladesh has achieved yet another milestone by bringing 100% of the population under electricity coverage by March 2022, renewable energy still remains insignificant.

Bangladesh is close to achieving the milepost for 2025 of reducing the prevalence of undernourishment under SDG2 target of 'zero hunger' as well as reduction in food waste.  

Although many of the health-related indicators were on the right track before the outbreak of the Covid-19, the pandemic has once again demonstrated the importance of universal health coverage and multi-sectoral coordination for health emergency preparedness.

It cites the country's past successes in reducing maternal and under-5 mortality rates, and ranking well above India and Pakistan in the Global Gender Gap index. However, it refers to the high prevalence of gender violence and child marriage, which remain major problems.

Despite achieving several milestones in SDG6 relating to clean water and sanitation, high level of arsenic contamination, extreme reliance on limited groundwater resources and high vulnerability to climate change remain concerns, the progress report says.