The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Report 2022 delivered a critical warning that the world was facing a “great peril” and that the cascading and interlinked crises dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and conflicts (especially the war in Ukraine) were reversing years of progress and placing the 2030 Agenda in grave danger.
The report, released midway through the Decade of Action, called for an urgent “rescue effort” for the SDGs.
Short Summary of the 2022 SDG Report
The main conclusion of the 2022 report was that progress on nearly all goals was stalling or reversing due to a convergence of global shocks, which disproportionately affected the most vulnerable.
| Area | Crisis & Data Point | Impact/Finding |
|---|---|---|
Poverty & Hunger (Goals 1 & 2) | Multiple shocks created a severe reversal. | 93 million additional people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020. Hunger levels returned to levels not seen since 2005, with 161 million additional people having slid into chronic hunger in 2020. |
Conflict & Displaced (Goal 16) | The world was enduring the highest number of violent conflicts since 1946. | A record 100 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide by May 2022. The war in Ukraine caused food, fuel, and fertilizer prices to skyrocket, fueling the threat of a global food crisis. |
Climate & Energy (Goals 7 & 13) | Environmental progress from pandemic lockdowns was quickly erased. | Energy-related emissions surged by 6% in 2021 to reach their highest level ever. The world is on the verge of a climate catastrophe, with current national commitments leading to a 14% rise in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. |
Health & Education (Goals 3 & 4) | Services were severely disrupted. | 15 million "excess deaths" were directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19 by the end of 2021. 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person instruction during the 2020-2021 period, potentially derailing their education permanently. |
III. Reference
Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) / UN Statistics Division (UNSD). You can find more details on the UN Statistics Division website: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/