United Nations Sustainability Goal Ending Poverty

ENDING POVERTY

United Nations Sustainability Goal (Poverty)

In the year 2015, the United Nations came up with a total of 15 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations Development Program – UNDP, 2022). The very first sustainable development goal (christened SDG 1) concerns itself with bringing an end to poverty. More specifically, this particular goal seeks to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” (United Nations, 2022). It would be prudent to note that poverty is associated with a number of undesirable outcomes at the personal and societal/community levels. Some of the negative impacts of poverty at the individual level are inclusive of lack of access to quality healthcare, limited educational opportunities, etc. At the societal level, poverty results in poor living conditions for families (which is associated with poor health outcomes, i.e. spread of disease), increased crime rates, increased healthcare costs (i.e. as a consequence of spread of disease), etc. Towards this end, the relevance of putting in place strategies meant to reign in poverty cannot be overstated.

There are various strategies and solutions that have been proposed in the past to end poverty. Some of the said efforts have paid off. Indeed, according to World Bank (2020), extreme poverty has been on a steady decline for the past two and a half decades. This trend, as the World Bank (2020) further observes was, however, halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the other factors that have contributed to the said setback include, but they are not limited to; climate change and conflict – both of which afflict various countries, especially those whose populations are largely poor (World Bank, 2020). In an International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) discussion paper, Debucquet, Martin, and Vos (2020) make an observation to the effect that COVID-19 has worsened global poverty. According to simulations done by the authors, there is likely to be a much deeper global recession triggered by the pandemic than that which was experienced during the financial crisis of years 2008/2009 (Debucquet, Martin, and Vos, 2020). More specifically, in the words of the authors, “the increases in poverty are concentrated in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa with impacts harder in urban areas than in rural” (Debucquet, Martin, and Vos, 2020). There is, thus, an urgent need for the relevant interventions to be embraced to reign in the issue of poverty. This is more so the case given that as has been pointed out above, there are various adverse impacts of poverty at not only the individual, but also at the societal level.