Pandemic, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals.

 

Pandemic, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals.

Roughness of year  2020 have made me reconsidered the various predictions of the decade. In the beginning of the year, the United Nations (UN) has declared 2020 as the decade of action. Hence 2020 was needed to usher in a decade of ambitious action to deliver the goals by 2030. Furthermore, the decade of action calls for world’s biggest challenges – ranging from poverty, gender to climate change, inequality and closing finance gap. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to impact lives and livelihoods, a health crisis has quickly become a human and socio-economic crisis, impeding progress towards achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whilst making their achievement even more urgent and necessary. In making inroads towards implementation of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development of the 2020 was named “a decade of action.” Also, at the SDG Summit in September 2019 world leaders called for a decade of action; pledging to mobilize financing, enhance national implementation and strengthen institutions to achieve the goals by the target date of 2030. Hence, the decade of action asks for transformative economic, social and environmental solutions.

Then came the Pandemic

The early outbreaks of the coronavirus pandemic was witnessed by the world as a shock and devastating to human existence. In essence, coronavirus pandemics temporarily led to the stoppage of social interactions between human beings thereby leading to negative economic growth and social empowerment with the continuous closure of economies of the world due to public health concerns, human beings have been fixed in confinement involuntarily. The increase in coronaviruus deaths have me hoped for a divine attention or a vaccine with the attendant effects on the health and wealth of human lives, our world is dealing with a crisis of monumental proportions. In the first quarter of the year, the novel coronavirus has wrecked havoc across the globe, affecting lives and livelihoods with the increasing cases of mortality worldwide. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that our world has entered into a recession while the full economic impact of the crisis is difficult to predict at an estimate of us and 2 trillion.

Coronavirus and climate change:

Fortunately, the coronavirus is positively affecting the environment as CO2 emissions and human mobility have been reduced – improving air quality. In towns and cities in countries like China, Italy and Spain, the quality of air has improved. This is attributed to the drastic reduction of both air and land movement as a result of imposed lockdowns. The global coronavirus pandemic continue to lead to various disaster such as; decimating lives, livelihood and interrupting energy demand thereby leading to a fall in CO2 emission. According to carbon brief analysis showed that the crisis temporarily cut CO2 emissions in China by 25% with emissions still below the normal more than two months after the country entered lockdown. It report analysed that with dozens more countries enforcing lockdown in response to the pandemic a wide range of indicators show how transport use, electricity demand and industrial activity are being cutdown. The year 2020 has brought the danger of “interlinkness” of different crises to the world stage. To this effect, it has shown how the level of inequality, environmental degradation and climate destabilization can mount to mounting public health threats – disrupting our business-as-usual model of live. Furthermore, it has shown the need to invest in international disease risk and prevention surveillance to mitigate the dangerous effects of “infections mobility.”

In the year 2020:

In the year 2020, the coronavirus has shown the need to give the environment it needed spaces in order to avoid intrusion. With the discovery of a coronavirus vaccine and the alternative use of therapeutics, coronavirus may be less virulent as it was in early 2020 but it effect on human being’s socio-economic lifestyle may lie with us for decades. It is a warming to world powers that it is better to spent on health surveillance than on weapons of mass destruction. As a climate justice activist, fighting against climate change crises is to fight for both human and environment rights.

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