Once the Covid-19 pandemic is under control, and the world economy is back on its tracks, the status and fate of the 2030 Agenda, also known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), needs to be reassessed. The year 2020 was supposed to kick-off the Decade of Action. With just 10 years to go, plans were made to undertake “ambitious global efforts” to deliver the 2030 promise—by mobilising more governments, civil society, businesses, and calling on all people to make the Global Goals their own.

Before the worldwide lockdown began in March, various stakeholders of the SDG movement were planning to undertake a full-scale five-year evaluation. Fifty-one countries had signed up to conduct voluntary national reviews (VNR) by May 2020, a process through which countries assess and present progress made in achieving the 17 goals. The process came to a complete halt with the current pandemic crisis.

The “pandemic pause” is a blessing in disguise. It gives all the stakeholders a chance to undertake a thorough review of where we stand as well as what needs to change. Are all the 17 goals equally important? A partial answer was provided by Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee. “Think of the bureaucratic capacity it takes to achieve these things. How are countries going to keep track? We need to go back to the drawing board,” he said.

The next question is, how do we reprioritise and revamp the SDGs? While advances made in some SDG indicators have been eroded, this should not deflate our energy. However, a few SDG targets now assume greater priority. The health aspect of SDGs is more important and can be used as an entry point. Experts suggest that the experience of Covid-19 can be used to redesign the food supply chain. Furthermore, there is an urgent need for engagement with the private sector and civil society to chart the path that lies ahead and to cope with future pandemics.

Even before Covid-19 hit us, concerns were voiced in SDG progress review meetings as evidence mounted about the slow progress and lack of scale required to reach the targets before the decade ends. Earlier this year, the UN reacted by sending out a clarion call for action. “Today, progress is being made in many places, but, overall, action to meet the Goals is not yet advancing at the speed or scale required. 2020 needs to usher in a decade of ambitious action to deliver the Goals by 2030,” it cautioned. According to one estimate, more than five billion people will lack access to essential health services by 2030. Those services include the ability to see a health worker, access to essential medicines, and running water in hospitals.

Covid-19 thus poses a real challenge, to put it mildly, and some have gone as far as to warn the developing countries that the looming crisis threatens to devastate employment gains, food security and equity in education. The World Bank also raised a low-level alarm when it declared that the coronavirus is a serious obstacle for 240 million Asians trudging along on the road to poverty elimination.

If things had gone as planned, by end-May, each of the 51 countries was expected to submit its SDG voluntary national review report describing its experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned during the five years of implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Bangladesh had signed up for its second VNR. All this will now cease.

Concurrently, on pause is the next meeting of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), the central global platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was scheduled to convene the 2020 session of HLPF in New York from July 7-16, and receive a progress report in the completion of the 2020 targets: responsible consumption and production (SDG12), biodiversity (SDG15) and some selected indicators of SDG13 and SDG14.

Turning to Bangladesh, after the hiatus period forced by Covid-19 ends, the Prime Minister’s SDG Directorate needs to evaluate two key metrics: the impact of the pandemic on the poor and the status of SDGs. All economic crises adversely affect the poor and the present crisis is no exception. From all accounts, the short-run impact of the pandemic and the lockdown is being felt very strongly by low-income people. In line with its SDG commitment, the government’s immediate goal ought to be to facilitate the re-employment of workers (SDG8), feed those who lost their sources of income (SDG2) and strengthen healthcare and provide medical support (SDG3).

Apart from lost jobs, hungry mouths and deteriorating health conditions, other collateral damages will emerge due to the interlinkages between the SDGs. Poverty (SDG1) will take a hit and so will the quality of education (SDG4). Other goals to asses are water and sanitation (SDG6), reduced inequalities (SDG10) and peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG16). One should not be too surprised if our post-pandemic review shows that it has not only devastated the economy, but also wiped out many of the SDG gains.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ provisional estimates, GDP growth this year will be 5.5 percent, in contrast to the 8.2 percent projected earlier. This is higher than the 3.8 percent and 2-3 percent forecast by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, respectively. On the positive side, we have already seen an increase in the budget allocation on health and an improvement in the environment.

Recovery is a complex and non-linear process. The pandemic has exposed fundamental weaknesses in our global system. It has shown how the prevalence of poverty, weak health systems, subpar education, and a lack of global cooperation exacerbate a health crisis. In our effort to return to normalcy, we must not lose sight of the lessons gained from the pandemic.

Globally, the pandemic has exposed the widening SDG needs gap. The world currently (pre-pandemic) spends approximately USD 7.5 trillion on health each year or 10 percent of global GDP. While spending has increased steadily, dangerous public health gaps exist, especially in rural or conflict-ridden areas where access is difficult and infrastructure is lacking.

This access is complicated by a shortage of trained healthcare workers. The 2020 State of the World’s Nursing report found that the world would need six million more nurses by 2030 to reach global health targets. Shortages of healthcare workers are felt most acutely in low- and middle-income countries.

As cities and societies start emerging from the crisis, governments should focus on key factors that contribute to the spread of epidemics and other public health risks: inadequate infrastructure, lack of services, and substandard housing.

In a sense, the process of recovery might strengthen our SDG efforts if the government of Bangladesh, in collaboration with civil society, NGOs, and the private sector, look afresh at the 17 goals and focuses its attention and resources on those that need reinforcement.

Dr Abdullah Shibli is an economist and works in information technology. He is Senior Research Fellow, International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI), a think-tank in Boston, USA.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Central American migrants walk along the highway near the border with Guatemala, as they continue their journey trying to reach the US. PHOTO: THOMSON REUTERS

By Abdullah Shibli
Feb 6 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Jeanine Cummins, the author of the latest American best-seller novel “American Dirt”, is taking a lot of flak for her story based on the experience of a Mexican woman named Lydia and her eight-year-old son who flee their home and cross over to the USA. Several critics have pointed out that Cummins exploited the harrowing experience of an illegal migrant but at the same time used “harmful stereotypes”. Some have even hinted that the novel glamorises the life of migrants and their struggles.

The criticism of insensitivity towards the plight of migrants who have been trying to enter the USA has been a major public issue in the recent past since the Trump administration launched a major operation to stem the flow of Latin Americans entering the USA illegally. While those who are waiting at the southern border to come to the USA do not face the extreme hardships that humans on the move at other locations face every day, the story of a migrant anywhere is a heart-breaking one. Whether we are talking about the migrants from war-ravaged Middle East, the hunger-driven droves in Yemen and East Africa, the Venezuelans temporarily living in Cordoba or, closer to home, the Rohingyas chased out of their own country, migrants are the modern equivalent of the Jews in exodus fleeing torment in ancient Egypt.

Regardless of the criticism of American Dirt, the central character in the novel has a lot in common with the typical Latin American migrant at the US-Mexico border seeking to get in. They are escaping danger or deprivation at their homeland, but also face incredible dangers along the way. In December 2018, the Associated Press found in an exclusive tally that almost 4,000 migrants had died or gone missing in the previous four years after embarking on their journey through Mexico. That’s 1,573 more than the previously known number calculated by the United Nations. “And even the AP’s number is likely low—bodies may be lost in the desert, and families may not report missing loved ones who were migrating illegally.” These Latin American migrants are among about 56,800 worldwide who died or disappeared over the same period, the AP found.

We all know that migrants anywhere face considerable risks. Unfortunately, migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador also have to cope with the danger of drug trafficking and gang violence in Mexico. More than 37,000 people have gone missing throughout Mexico because of this violence, with the highest number in the border state of Tamaulipas, through which many migrants cross. “The sheer numbers of the disappeared, along with crushing bureaucracy and the fear of gangs, makes it difficult for families to track what happened to their loved ones,” said the Associated Press report.

The southern flank of the USA has witnessed several humanitarian crises in recent years, regardless of the best attempts of the NGOs, the press, and civil society to head off major disasters like in the Middle East. Most of the migrants who flock to the US border originate from the Central American republic of Honduras where decades of misrule, corruption, and marauding gangs have created a living hell for 10 million Hondurans. They cross over to Guatemala and El Salvador before they can enter Mexico. The Hondurans, who often travel in a caravan for safety and camaraderie, are joined by other Latin Americans mostly from neighbouring countries. It is common knowledge in the USA that an average citizen of these countries is a victim of violence, pillage, government atrocities, repression, and economic deprivation. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the “northern journey” is perilous for these people, who are only trying to save their own lives.

“People move to survive. They move in search of food. They move away from danger and death. They move towards opportunities for life. Migration is tied to the human spirit which seeks adventure, pursues dreams, and finds reasons to hope even in the most adverse circumstances. Such movement affects the communities [that] migrants leave and the communities that receive these migrants. This movement also impacts communities along the route of transit,” states a report titled “Ethical Dimensions of Migration, Diversity and Health” published the Faculty of Public Health in UK.

US government agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol have cracked down hard on the movement of migrants at its southern border. Between October 2018 and May 2019, it was reported that 444,309 Central Americans were caught at the border, which is double the 223,564 apprehended in all 12 months of the fiscal year 2018. Over 80 percent of those apprehended are families with children or minors travelling alone.

Take the case of a mother of two minor children who faced insurmountable obstacles on a border crossing known as the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge last November. Laura walked, rode, and travelled by other means from Nicaragua, stood on the pavement of the bridge over Rio Grande between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Laredo, Texas, all without nearly any protection from the elements and freezing temperature. For three days, she and her children have been waiting in a no-man’s land between these two countries.

“They said that they were going to let us through but that it’s full inside,” Laura said as a CBP agent standing on the Gateway Bridge a few feet away from her was checking documents. A dozen adults and small children were bundled up, single-file, in front of her. It was gusty, and they had tied their blankets to the side of the bridge as a makeshift curtain. A Salvadoran woman in line next to Laura glanced at the city behind her, among Mexico’s most dangerous, and said, “No, no, we cannot go back.”

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) is in a very difficult situation thanks to his neighbour in the north, President Donald Trump. In the past, refugees, asylum seekers or desperate Latin Americans hoping to reach the USA have been able to use the US-Mexico border as the gateway. Now, after the USA threatened the Mexican government with dire consequences should the latter fail to stop the desperados from crossing over to the USA, President Obrador has been obliged to resort to some extraordinary measures to stem the flow to the north. The current US administration has threatened not only to cut any foreign assistance to Mexico, but also to hurt the Mexican economy in other ways if the refugees are not forcibly turned back and blocked from travelling through Mexico to reach the US border. Advocates for migrants say that the Trump administration has all but slammed the door on migrants fleeing violence and persecution, exposing children and other vulnerable populations to grave risks.

In a press briefing on October 2019, Mark Morgan, the acting CBP commissioner, declared, “If you come to our borders with a child, it’s no longer an immediate passport into the interior of the United States.”

Dr Abdullah Shibli is an economist and works in information technology. He is Senior Research Fellow at the International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI), a think-tank in Boston, USA.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The Eleventh Ministerial Conference (MC11) of the World Trade Organization will be held on December 10-13 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The meeting of this highest decision-making body of the WTO, which meets at least once every two years, is taking place at a critical moment of the free trade movement. WTO and free trade are threatened by the emergence of protectionist and anti-trade sentiments amongst many of the organisation’s 164 members, and squabbling among the world’s largest traders, including the USA, China, and even the generally free-trade oriented European Union. If countries lower the tariff rates against imports and refrain from imposing non-tariff barriers against trade, it benefits free trade and promotes growth.

The upcoming ministerial-level meeting of WTO comes at a time when trade, and the future of trade, is at a crossroads. Credit: RUBEN SPRICHREUTERS

WTO was set up in 1995 under the Marrakesh Agreement and regulates international trade in goods, services, and intellectual property between participating countries “by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements and dispute resolution.” Unfortunately, the key mission of WTO—to lower tariffs and facilitate increased global trade—suffered a major setback with the collapse of the Doha Round, whose objective was to lower trade barriers around the world, and thus facilitate increased global trade.

The last ministerial conference of WTO took place in December 2015. To stay relevant, the next conference needs to address five issues: (1) trade in non-agricultural goods, (2) trade in services; (3) e-commerce; (4) improved rules on distortions regarding state-owned enterprises (SOE), local content requirements (ROO) and export restrictions; and (5) investment. Obviously, it would be too much to expect that MC11 will address all these issues in four days, but the trade ministers and senior officials attending the conference must make a commitment to move forward with them. For developing countries, trade is their “engine of growth.”

In the last few years, globalisation and trade liberalisation have been buzzwords at international forums and the media. However, some statistics have shown that decline in trade volume took a downturn in the early 1990s. According to IMF data, the global trade elasticity peaked in 1991-1995, much before the recent financial crisis, and has been declining since then. Trade Elasticity (TE) refers to the ratio of trade growth to GDP growth rates. TE was 1 during 1981-1985, meaning that trade grew at the same rate as GDP, and started to climb, reaching a level over 2.5 during 1991-2000. As mentioned, trade growth has not been robust in recent years and is hovering below 1.5 as this decade winds down.

Many factors have contributed to this slowdown; the ones that readily come to mind are protectionist measures taken by all countries since the financial crisis in 2009, and backpedalling on trade reforms. Even voters in major western countries are turning their backs on globalisation as evidenced by recent electoral results in the USA, UK, and Germany. According to a Wall Street Journal-NBC polls conducted in the US, just 31 percent of GOP respondents in December 1999 said free trade deals hurt the US. “By February 2017, when the question was posed slightly differently, a majority of GOP voters polled said free trade hurt the country.”

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, attributes this resurgence in protectionism to the failure of governments to protect workers and vulnerable population who equate trade with job losses.

How can WTO help reverse the trend described above? First of all, the meeting of MC needs to address the anti-trade sentiment. Retraining of workers and employment generation must work hand in hand with lower tariffs. Member-countries must also check their impulses to look for quick fixes to correct trade deficits as the USA is doing. “Nearly all WTO members engage to one degree or another in backsliding, sometimes through the use of legal but restrictive measures (e.g. raising tariffs up to the bound rate or employing the trade-remedy laws) and sometimes imposing measures that are found to violate their WTO commitments.”

The upcoming ministerial-level meeting comes at a time when trade, and the future of trade, is at a crossroads. Many in the international business community have voiced their concern, to cite an example, against “European Commission (EC) proposals to adopt new rules for taxing the digital economy within the single market, which would essentially create new tax barriers and ultimately undermine global efforts to establish a consistent international tax landscape.” From mid-October 2016 to mid-May 2017, WTO members implemented 74 new trade-restrictive measures, amounting to an average of almost 11 new measures per month.

WTO needs to recognise the concerns of developing countries particularly their micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). “Despite their economic importance in developed, developing and least-developed countries, MSMEs’ share of trade is disproportionately small, often because they are unaware of the potentially wider market and because they traditionally have not had the resources to navigate sometimes complex trading procedures. But new technologies are helping to pare back these obstacles and create a more level playing field for smaller companies in international trade. Helping more MSMEs to trade internationally is an important step in building a more inclusive trading system that benefits a wider array of citizens.”

Recently IMF, WTO and the World Bank came out with a policy document entitled, “Making Trade an Engine of Growth for All: The Case for Trade and For Policies to Facilitate Adjustment” with a clarion call for liberalisation and better rules. The role of trade as a driver of growth is threatened, according to the report, which called for action to better communicate the benefits of open trade to a public that may have become more sceptical, especially in advanced economies.

Dr Abdullah Shibli is an economist and Senior Research Fellow at the International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI), a think-tank based in Boston, USA.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The United Kingdom is now in the midst of a Shakespearean dilemma, “to stay or not to stay”. Voters will decide in a referendum on June 23 whether to stay in the European Union or to break the four decades old relationship they forged, i.e. opt for “Brexit” as it is popularly known. If the majority decides to leave, it will have implications for Britain across the spectrums, political, economic, and social. While in the last referendum on this issue in 1975, an overwhelming 68 percent of the electorate had decided to stay, this time the margin will be narrower, one way or the other. Britain’s departure from the EU will also undoubtedly set a bad example for advocates of Customs Union, an economic arrangement of sovereign countries set up to facilitate trade and economic integration through trade.

While there are many issues relating to the current mood of disillusionment with Britain’s ties with EU, they are not all economic. The most important ones are: immigration, excessive EU regulations, budgetary contributions, loss of sovereignty, and EU social policy. However, all of them have economic side-effects, including the non-economic ones, immigration and EU’s regulatory influence. Prima facie, Brexit appears to be a dramatic move; nonetheless most analyses show that the most important long-term impact could be minor in terms of GDP and unemployment rate. As one meta-analysis points out, the decision to leave the EU appears to be mainly a political consideration about sovereignty and self-determination.

From the policymaker’s perspective, the most important lesson is that the forecasts on GDP are very uncertain. Nine out of ten economists surveyed indicate that in the short-run the economy will experience a downward adjustment, but the loss of income is small. But in the long run, there is a potential for greater loss, and the risk of bigger losses is large.

Fortunately, Britain is not in the same shoes as Greece, since the former has its own currency – the pound sterling – and has not embraced the Euro. It has also been doing much better than its EU partners in recent years. However, EU is Britain’s most important trading partner, accounting for half of all UK exports and imports. UK exports to the EU correspond to almost 15 percent of national output (GDP). Eurosceptics, i.e., those who believe that membership in EU is hurting the UK, counter that “membership of the single market imposes too many regulations on Britain in exchange for too little opening of European markets and that Britain’s trade with countries outside Europe would be higher if it left”.

Unfortunately, should Brexit occur, the UK will need to negotiate a new trade relationship with the EU, and outcomes will depend on the terms of the subsequent trade arrangement and the regulatory framework that it adopts once it is free of EU’s regulatory framework. And there are many alternative trade regimes that have been circulating in the research and media world to capture the short and long-term economic impacts in the post-Brexit world. A sampling of these include joining the European Economic Area (EEA, like Norway), entering into a Customs Union (like Turkey), negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (that eliminates export tariff barriers, like Canada), and the Swiss model (continued bilateral negotiation). Some of the core metrics include GDP growth, trade volumes, inflation, household spending, employment, property values, and assets prices.

A quick survey of economic forecasts based on quantitative models indicates that Britain might benefit or lose from breaking up with the EU. However, the most important conclusion seems to be that the magnitude of the economic impact is hard to predict. Any divorce lawyer will tell you that. Most domestic relationships don’t go sour for economic reasons, rather due to social or personality conflicts. But, any breakup affects both parties and other family members. Britain’s mood until June 23 is captured by a song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the English punk rock band The Clash written in 1981. The latest opinion poll indicates that there is a greater than even chance that the Brits will decide to leave, unless Prime Minister Cameron can get the voters out in droves.

The writer is an economist, and writes on public policy issues for this newspaper.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh