The Sustainable Development Report 2021 (SDR), is a joint annual publication of Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Bertelsmann Stiftung, published by the Cambridge University Press. The report has been written by a group of authors, notably the economist Jeffrey D Sachs. The report does not reflect the views of any organisations, agencies or programmes of the United Nations.

An annual publication, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Index claims to track a country’s performance on the 17 goals. The report combines data and analyses produced by official and non-official data sources. Most of the data (around two thirds) is developed by international organisations, including the World Bank, the OECD, the WHO, the FAO, the ILO and the UNICEF. Where insufficient data are available for an official indicator, or to close data gaps, other metrics from official and unofficial providers are used.

The index is not an official SDG monitoring tool. Instead it complements efforts of national statistical offices and international organisations to collect data on and standardise SDG indicators. Owing to changes in the indicator selection, the 2021 rankings and scores are not comparable with the last year’s results. The report points to countries’ performances at the goal and indicator level.

The 2021 report includes 91 global indicators as well as 30 additional indicators for the OECD countries. The 2021 SDG Index covers 165 countries. As one of the limitations regarding data availability, to minimise biases from missing data, the SDG Index only includes countries that have data for at least 80 percent of the variables included in the global SDG Index.

The report highlights that the Covid-19 pandemic has been a huge setback for sustainable development. For the first time since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, the global average SDG Index score for 2020 has shown a decrease from the previous year: a decline driven to a large extent by increased poverty rates and unemployment following the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic.

The index score signifies a country’s position between the worst (0) and the best target (100) outcomes. The countries are only grouped in their geographic regions. The population context, level of conflict or issue of political stability are ignored. South Asian countries are categorised in the East and South Asia region that comprises 21 countries, including China and Singapore, pushing the regional scores upward. Afghanistan is included in Eastern Europe and Central Asian region.

South Asian countries’ SDGs achievement

Despite global Covid-19 push-backs, South Asian countries’ SDGs scores have improved consistently since 2015 or stagnated but not deteriorated. Progress in South Asia holds promise for 1.836 billion people, almost one fourth of the global population. The pandemic is estimated to have caused 48 to 59 million people to become or remain poor in 2021. Hit hard by the Covid-19 economic shock, between 2019 and 2020, South Asia’s annual GDP growth rate dropped to -5.7 percent from 4.04 percent.

Case studies should be developed, and knowledge exchanges should occur among SAARC countries to leverage this knowledge and best practice collaboration to improve the lives of the people of this region. 

South Asia’s average annual growth is forecast to be 3.4 percent over 2020-23, which is 3 percentage points less than it was in the four years preceding the pandemic. Some of the South Asian economies will begin to recover in 2021-222. According to the World Bank projections, India’s economy, South Asia’s largest, is expected to grow by 8.3 percent in the fiscal year 2021-22. Recovery in exports and consumption will help growth rates recover and pick up to 6.4 percent in the fiscal year 2021-22 in Bangladesh.

South Asia has an annual average Index score of 63.58 in 2021. This means that the region is on average 63.58 percent on its way to the best possible outcome across the 17 SDGs. This score is 2.64 percent higher than the region’s baseline score in 2015, the year of the beginning of the SDGs. With the ongoing curtailment of Covid-19 cases and start of the economic recovery, the region is poised to show better performance in the achievement of SDGs in coming years.

Within the South Asian region, the top three performers are Bhutan (70.02), Maldives (69.27) and Sri Lanka (68.1). Afghanistan (53.56), Pakistan (57.62) and India (60.07), remain the worst performers. Nepal (66.56) and Bangladesh (63.45) are middle performers in the region.

Most of the South Asian countries face major challenges in achieving the SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). In particular, the performance of all South Asian countries is off-track on SDG 15 (Life on Land).

Due to a low carbon footprint, most of the South Asian countries are on track to achieve SDG 13 (Climate Action). Performance on SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) is stagnating in most of the South Asian countries.

Regional platforms, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) must be used for South-South learning. The government of Pakistan convened the first meeting of the SAARC planning ministers on November 25, 2020. The meeting was devoted to the theme, Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in South Asia: Shaping the SAARC Vision-2030. The meeting agreed to revitalise regional approaches to successfully attain the Sustainable Development Agenda-2030, particularly in respect of poverty, food security, hunger, health, education, inequality and financing for sustainable development.

SAARC countries lack the fiscal space to finance emergency response and investment-led recovery plans aligned with the SDGs. The planning ministers’ meeting also raised an important point for collectively raising a voice for debt relief and the availability of concessional financing for the SAARC region to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic proficiently.

There are several opportunities for South-South learning and adopting regional approaches. Achieving the SDGs is a globally shared responsibility. All SDGs are interconnected. A collective approach that enhances regional economic integration, so far, the worlds’ least connected economic region, can offer huge dividends to increase the quality of life of the people.

The SDR 2021 shows that the Maldives and Sri Lanka are the only two South Asian countries on track to achieve SDG 4 (Quality Education). Maldives is the only country in the region that is on track to achieve SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 7 (Clean Energy). Case studies should be developed, and knowledge exchanges should occur among SAARC countries to leverage this knowledge and best practice collaboration to improve the lives of the people of this region.

The writer is an  economist and  development practitioner based in Islamabad. He can be reached at arehmancheema@gmail.  com