SDG Final Decade of Action: Resilient Pathways to Build Back Better from High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) Events

Abstract

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a blueprint for global peace and prosperity, while conserving natural ecosystems and resources for the planet. However, factors such as climate-induced weather extremes and other High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) events on their own can devastate lives and livelihoods. When a pandemic affects us, as COVID-19 has, any concurrent hazards interacting with it highlight additional challenges to disaster and emergency management worldwide. Such amplified effects contribute to greater societal and environmental risks, with cross-cutting impacts and exposing inequities. Hence, understanding how a pandemic affects the management of concurrent hazards and HILP is vital in disaster risk reduction practice. This study reviews the contemporary literature and utilizes data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to unpack how multiple extreme events have interacted with the coronavirus pandemic and affected the progress in achieving the SDGs. This study is especially urgent, given the multidimensional societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic amidst climate change. Results indicate that mainstreaming risk management into development planning can mitigate the adverse effects of disasters. Successes in addressing compound risks have helped us understand the value of new technologies, such as the use of drones and robots to limit human exposure. Enhancing data collection efforts to enable inclusive sentinel systems can improve surveillance and effective response to future risk challenges. Stay-at-home policies put in place during the pandemic for virus containment have highlighted the need to holistically consider the built environment and socio-economic exigencies when addressing the pandemic’s physical and mental health impacts, and could also aid in the context of increasing climate-induced extreme events. As we have seen, such policies, services, and technologies, along with good nutrition, can significantly help safeguard health and well-being in pandemic times, especially when simultaneously faced with ubiquitous climate-induced extreme events. In the final decade of SDG actions, these measures may help in efforts to “Leave No One Behind”, enhance human–environment relations, and propel society to embrace sustainable policies and lifestyles that facilitate building back better in a post-pandemic world. Concerted actions that directly target the compounding effects of different interacting hazards should be a critical priority of the Sendai Framework by 2030.

Socio-Economic Vulnerability Assessment for Supporting a Sustainable Pandemic Management in Austria

“…Climate change and environmental degradation will further increase the outbreak of infectious diseases, leading to potential epidemics and pandemics in the future [11]. Donkor et al [12] analyzed the impact of hazards and diseases on the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thereby, they showed the impact of COVID-19 on the SDGs through the enhancement of vulnerabilities, such as poverty, injustice, and inequalities.…”

Dynamic Analysis of the EU Countries Sustainability: Methods, Models, and Case Study

“…There is no single approach to the definition of sustainability, as the methods of assessing sustainable development are diverse. We conducted systematization of existing approaches to analyze the sustainability of countries and regions and the economicmathematical models used in them, is based on research of contemporary authors and international organizations' documents [3][4][5][6][7][8][9].…”

“…Impact of the pandemic situation on progress towards the SDGs [9] Identification of sustainable development targets with a focus on justifying their relevance [14] The need to link social, environmental, and economic indicators to the public vision of sustainable development and the UN SDGs [3,15] The need for sustainable transformation of markets and society [16] The need to identify positive contributions to sustainable development that facilitate stakeholder decision making [17] Linking digital transformation and sustainability [18] Understanding the political and governance dimensions of sustainability [19] Examining resilience and vulnerability through the lenses of evolutionary dynamics and exposure to shocks [4] Using the concept of hysteresis to examine the possible responses of the economic system to crisis shocks [5] Impact of global shocks on regional resilience [6] A theoretical framework for incorporating sustainability indicators into the decision-making process is proposed [26] Developing urban resilience indicators: adaptive capacity, absorptive capacity, and transformative capacity [31] Table 1. Cont.…”

“…The interaction of multiple extreme events with the coronavirus pandemic and the impact on progress towards the SDGs is the subject of a study [9]. Studies on the identification of sustainable development targets with a focus on justifying their relevance are of interest [14].…”

“…In recent years, the concept of sustainable development has not only attracted much attention from scientists, practitioners, and international organizations, but has also been firmly embedded in politics. The focus is on the problems of resource scarcity, environmental degradation, climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, social disproportions, digital inequality, supply chain instability, rural development problems, the impact of disruptive innovations and new digital business models, and urban sustainability problems [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”