The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Report 2021 reflected the full devastating weight of the COVID-19 pandemic on global progress. It concluded that the world was still far off track and that the crisis had reversed years of development gains, pushing the 2030 targets even further out of reach.
The key message was that the pandemic exposed fragility and magnified structural inequalities, demanding a coordinated global effort to recover better, focusing on people and the planet.
Short Summary of the 2021 SDG Report
The report documented a sharp and immediate reversal across many Goals, particularly in poverty, hunger, and health, based on 2020 data.
| Area | The Pandemic’s Toll (Report Data) | Impact |
|---|---|---|
Hunger (Goal 2) | The number of people suffering from hunger soared. | An estimated 811 million people were undernourished in 2020, an increase of 151 million from 2019, reversing decades of progress. |
Poverty (Goal 1) | Global poverty saw its first increase in a generation. | An estimated 120 million additional people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020. The global poverty rate rebounded to the level last seen in 2017. |
Health (Goal 3) | Essential health services were severely disrupted. | Vaccine coverage for children, a key indicator, dropped for the first time in 20 years, increasing the risk of diseases like measles and polio. |
Gender (Goal 5) | Progress toward gender equality stalled or reversed. | Violence against women intensified, and women were more likely to lose their jobs and face disproportionate challenges due to school closures. |
Climate (Goal 13) | Environmental recovery was temporary, and emissions were rebounding. | While global emissions fell temporarily in 2020 due to lockdowns, they were expected to rebound sharply in 2021. The report stressed that concentration reached a record high in 2020. |
Reference
Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) / UN Statistics Division (UNSD).