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UN/DESA Policy Brief #98: Risk-informed finance
All financing must be risk-informed and resilient, and sufficient financing must be available for investments in risk reduction and resilience, at national and global levels.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #97: COVID-19 and Beyond: Scaling up Private Investment for Sustainable Development
Further action is needed to better channel investment to countries and SDG-related sectors that are most in need. The development of innovative and scalable global platforms, instruments and funds would be an important first step in this regard.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #92: Leveraging digital technologies for social inclusion
COVID-19 is accelerating the pace of digital transformation. In so doing, it is opening the opportunities for advancing social progress and fostering social inclusion, while simultaneously exacerbating the risk of increased inequalities and exclusion of those who are not digitally connected.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #87: Integrated national financing frameworks—a framework to build back better
Financing has emerged as a key challenge in SDG implementation. Yet, a recent study found that 79 out of 107 national sustainable development plans are not costed. Integrated national financing frameworks (INFFs) can help countries to close this gap.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #78: Achieving the SDGs through the COVID-19 response and recovery
The impact of COVID-19 on SDG achievement will only be known with certainty in the months to come, but assessments for 2020 are bleak. If responses are ad hoc, underfunded and without a view to long-term goals, decades of progress stand to be reversed. However, as countries begin to move towards recovery, coherent and comprehensive actions can place the world on a robust trajectory towards achieving sustainable development.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #77: How can investors move from greenwashing to SDG-enabling?
Companies must adapt their business model to reflect growing risks and uncertainties, and help build a sustainable world; doing so is necessary to preserve their financial performance in the long run
UN/DESA Policy Brief #73: The impact of COVID-19 on sport, physical activity and well-being and its effects on social development
This policy brief highlights the challenges COVID-19 has posed to both the sporting world and to physical activity and well-being, including for marginalized or vulnerable groups. It further provides recommendations for Governments and other stakeholders, as well as for the UN system, to support the safe reopening of sporting events, as well as to support physical activity during the pandemic and beyond.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #72: COVID-19 and sovereign debt
Without aggressive policy action, the COVID-19 pandemic could turn into a protracted debt crisis for many developing countries. High debt servicing hamstrings developing countries’ immediate response to COVID-19 and rule out needed investment in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A debt crisis would dramatically set back sustainable development.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #59: Corona crisis causes turmoil in financial markets
Financial sector measures should complement other national and international actions to address the health, social and economic impact of the crisis.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #54: Global development trends at the turn of the century
From the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, there are three major issues that shaped the world economy: the convergence of developing countries’ income with respect to the average income of developed economies; the growing unbalances in the global economy which led eventually to the global financial crisis; and the adoption and implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #53: Reflection on development policy in the 1970s and 1980s
After almost three decades of remarkable progress since the end of the Second World War, economic conditions started to deteriorate in the 1970s. Economic growth slowed down in all parts of the world during the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. Before the oil price shock of 1973, the annual growth of world gross product had been at 5.3 per cent, while during the rest of the 1970s, annual world growth reached only 2.8 per cent.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #52: The Marshall Plan, IMF and First UN Development Decade in the Golden Age of Capitalism: lessons for our time
The Golden Age of Capitalism spanned from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the early 1970s, when the Bretton Woods monetary system collapsed. It was a period of economic prosperity with the achievement of high and sustained levels of economic and productivity growth. During the Golden Age, the themes taken up by World Economic and Social Survey, henceforth referred to as the Survey, varied from year to year, in response to pressing development concerns.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #51: Reflecting on the World Economic and Social Survey's 70 years of development policy analysis
In drawing the most relevant lessons for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Economic and Social Survey 2017 systematically reviews the seven decades of development discussions contained in the publication – the oldest continuous publication of its kind.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #50: International finance to support climate change resilience
In the past 20 years, weather-related disasters affected 4.2 billion people worldwide, with a large loss of life and livelihoods. The global annual average cost of climatic disasters, including floods, storms, droughts and heat waves, is estimated to have risen from $64 billion during the period 1985-1994 to $154 billion in the period 2005-2014. A more complete estimate of global costs, taking into account the loss associated with slow-onset climate events (e.g., sea-level rise and desertification), is likely to yield a larger figure.