SDGs revision on the light of digital revolution innovation and climate integration, global conflicts, pandemics and disasters, Prof. Elsadig Ahmed

Professor Elsadig Musa Ahmed
Faculty of Business, Multimedia University, Melaka
Mlaysia
Email: elsadig1965@gmail.com

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global call to action to end poverty, protect the earth’s environment and climate, and ensure that people everywhere can enjoy peace and prosperity. These are the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda that replaced the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. This study’s objective is to assess and review the SDGs in the light of digital technology brought by the digital revolution introduced by industry 4.0 or what is called the Fourth Industrial Revolution and COVID-19 and Russian Ukraine war implications.

In a report published on Tuesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said that all the 17 development goals set by world leaders in 2015 would be missed unless cutting-edge solutions emerged. It said that without new innovation, some goals, such as gender equality, would not be hit until 2108 – three generations later than expected. “We’d need to speed up the pace of our progress five times faster to meet most of our goals,” the report, titled ‘The Future of Progress’ said. Today, at the halfway point, it is unlikely the world will meet even a handful of the targets set.

At the start of 2022, war broke out in Europe. The large-scale aggression by Russia against Ukraine constitutes a direct threat to peace and stability on the continent and puts the most elementary human rights at risk. Beyond the humanitarian crisis that the war brought about, this conflict also casts a dark cloud over the economic and social outlook far beyond the European continent. In addition, the war imperils the world's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: inflation, food security, energy security and further supply-chain pressures have emerged in connection with, or have been exacerbated by, the war. As Russia and Ukraine are large-commodity exporters, the war has sent energy and food prices soaring, making life much harder for many people across the world. In addition, the extent to which growth will be lower and inflation higher will depend partly on how the war evolves, but it is clear that the poorest will be hit hardest (OECD, 2022).

The COVID-19 pandemic has not been the only disruption affecting our lives in recent times. In recent years, there have been huge wildfires (e.g. in Mediterranean countries in 2019, in Australia in 2019 and 2020 or in California in 2020), unprecedented heatwaves and droughts (such as in western North America in 2021 or in Europe in 2022), extreme cold weather events and destructive floods (including in Germany, Belgium and western Canada in 2021).All have caused thousands of fatalities, major destruction of property and disruption of economic activity. Such storms, along with other weather-related disasters, have become more frequent and severe due to rising sea and air temperatures (OECD, 2021; IPCC, 2021; World Meteorological Organisation, 2021).

Meanwhile, Goal 16 (Peace, Justice, and strong institutions) is the priority goal for Sudan a country went through large scale war via the implementation of the peace agreements and restructuring of the government institutions including implementing good governance and rule of law needed to build the country. In the walk of the digital revolution and iIndustry4.0, there is an urgent need to transform Sudan's economy into a sustainable digital economy through developing national economy digital economy flagships and pillars needed to apply the economic plans. Besides, other SDGs should be planned and implemented to develop the Sudanese economy into a sustainable digital economy such as (Education and health services, a conducive environment for saving and investment, research and development, innovation, public utilities, and other goals to transform the sectors of the economy).

It should be recalled that data gaps become even starker when focusing on indicators measuring performance over time. Hence, data is lacking to track progress on at least 60% of the targets under 7 of the 17 goals. Four of these goals are in the Planet category – Responsible consumption and production (Goal 12), Climate action (Goal 13), Life below water (Goal 14) and Life on land (Goal 15) – the others are Gender Inequality (Goal 5), Sustainable cities (Goal 11) and Partnerships for the goals (Goal 17). Beyond pure data availability, many other statistical gaps influence the understanding of progress toward the 2030 Agenda. Data availability is one of the most salient challenges standing in the way of a more robust assessment of the progress made by countries in meeting their commitments under the 2030 Agenda. Yet, other statistical gaps such as timeliness or granularity also weigh heavily on this assessment. For instance, given the lag in available data, the effects of the pandemic on current distances and trajectories are not fully reflected yet in available estimates.

Ensuring that all countries have the capacity to track progress towards the SDGs is critical for the overall success of the 2030 Agenda. Data gaps influence our understanding of progress toward the 2030 Agenda – not carefully understood, they may lead to biased conclusions. If the SDG reporting framework is incomplete, not up to date, or misses important segments of the population, any inference about what the good policies are risks being flawed.

The same is true if diagnostic tools cannot provide a comprehensive assessment of the most recent trends – especially in the times of uncertainty we are facing. In addition, preliminary research – which tends to confirm previous work focusing on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Jacob, 2017) – suggests that countries’ performance on measuring progress is positively associated with actual progress toward the goals. Tracking SDG performance requires high-quality data and a comprehensive monitoring framework. Implementing and monitoring progress towards the SDGs is challenging. The targets are universal – applicable to all countries – and they focus on more than problems related to development. Many of them are complex, interlinked and multifaceted, requiring new concepts and measures. A strong multilateral system remains key to addressing today’s most critical challenges. The world is more interconnected than ever due to increasing globalisation and enhanced technological progress.

Keywords: SDGs Revision; Digital Revolution; Innovation and Climate Integration; Global Conflicts; Global Conflicts Pandemics And Disasters; Data Gaps.