Global coronavirus death toll passes 1 million

The coronavirus pandemic shows no signs of slowing with rising death toll while economic impact continues to threaten decades of human development growth.

New York, 29 September 2020 – The world passed a grim milestone this week as the World Health Organization announced that 1 million people have now died from the coronavirus. More than 33 million people have been infected with the virus since it began in late 2019, and those numbers expect to grow as more countries sound the alarm about second waves.

The pandemic has also taken a dramatic socio-economic toll on the world with governments pumping as much as US$11 trillion into economies to keep them afloat. Stopping the virus while protecting people from the economic devastation remains top priority, says United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Achim Steiner.  

"The climbing death toll is staggering, and we must work together to slow the spread of this virus," Achim Steiner says. "The world is at a breaking point. In almost every country and territory our socio-economic impact assessments have revealed economies slowing down and contracting. The IMF forecasts a grim end of year with 172 countries expecting negative growth.  Economists predict that GDP levels will not return to pre-Covid19 levels until 2023. Those low to medium development countries will be hit the hardest, not just economically, but also socially. The people living in those countries are on the brink."

The impact from the coronavirus pandemic has put enormous strain on world economies and for the first time in 30 years has sent human development into reverse. In 2020, as many as 100 million more people could fall into extreme poverty (UNDP), while 270 million people are in danger of acute food insecurity (World Food Programme).

Safeguards could prevent further shocks for people in low development countries who face further harm to education, health, and access to livelihoods. For example, countries can roll out a temporary basic income that would provide a social safety net against poverty while also stopping the spread of the virus.

However, safeguards are not enough, according to Steiner. Moving forward from the crisis requires a complete transformation on how the world views prosperity and progress, putting people and planet at the core of recovery rather than GDP metrics.

It also requires shifting toward tomorrow's economies that include renewable energies and carbon pricing, and away from outdated economies built on fossil fuel reliance. Depending on GDP metrics to determine debt, credit and access to international markets will exacerbate the crisis.

"Today, it is 64 times cheaper for the richest economies of the world to access international credit than for a developing country on the African continent," Steiner says.

"When countries are looking to bolster their economic landscape, we hear across continents and communities the call for a future that is green, fair and equitable. We cannot continue on this collision course with nature, and ultimately ourselves," Steiner says.

For more information on the socio-economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, visit www.undp.org.

 

Digital finance can deliver long-term financing of the SDGs

Unleashing potential of digital finance could have transformational impact on sustainable development says group of financial, business, government and development leaders convened by the UN Secretary-General

 

New York City, 26 August - The unprecedented social and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the role of digital finance in providing relief for millions around the world, supporting businesses and protecting jobs and livelihoods.

 

While the pandemic demonstrates the immediate benefits of digital finance, the disruptive potential of digitalization in transforming finance is immense. Mobile payment technologies have transformed mobile phones into financial tools for more than a billion people. Digital is supporting big data and artificial intelligence in advancing cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets, peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding platforms, and online marketplaces. Banks have invested over US$1 trillion in developing, integrating and acquiring emerging technologies. In 2018, 'fintech' investment reached US$120 billion, one third of global venture capital funding.

 

Today a new report, "People's Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future", by the UN Secretary-General's Task Force on Digital Finance sets out an ambitious, practical Action Agenda. Centrally, it spells out how digital finance can be harnessed in ways that empower citizens as tax-payers and investors in envisaging a digital transformation at scale that better aligns people's money with their needs, collectively expressed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

 

The report highlights how billions of people around the world are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic using digital tools to work, spend and socialize. It argues there is an historic opportunity to harness digitalization in placing citizens, the ultimate owners of the world's financial resources, in control of finance to ensure that it meets their needs, today and in the future.

 

The Task Force identifies five catalytic opportunities for harnessing digitalization in aligning financing with the SDGs. Together they cover much of global finance: 1) Aligning the vast pools flowing through global capital markets with the SDGs; 2) Increasing the effectiveness and accountability of public finance that makes up a major part of the global economy; 3) Channeling digitally-aggregated domestic savings into long-term development finance, 4) Informing citizens how to link their consumer spending with the SDGs and 5) Accelerating the lifeblood financing for the employment and income-generating world of small and medium-sized businesses.

 

The Task Force's Action Agenda is a call to action to businesses, policy-makers and those governing finance to do what it takes to deliver on these opportunities. It spells out not only the 'what' but also the 'how': investments, new capabilities and governance innovations can get the job done.

 

The Task Force concludes that harnessing digitalization for the good is a choice, not an inevitability driven by technology.  Its Action Agenda points to actions needed to overcome digital risks that, unmitigated, could deepen exclusion, discrimination and inequalities, and separate finance further from the needs of an inclusive, sustainable development.

 

"Digital technologies, which are revolutionizing financial markets, can be a game-changer in meeting our shared objectives. The Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals provides leadership to harness the digital revolution," said UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.

Maria Ramos, Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General's Task Force on Digital Finance said: "We have an historic opportunity to accelerate and expand the transformative impact of digitalization. In particular, digital finance, which in this crisis became the lifeline for millions across the world, extends the boundaries of financial inclusion by empowering citizens as savers, investors, borrowers, lenders and tax-payers in a way that gives them choice and power over their money."

"Digital finance's dramatic potential for transformative impact is being revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital transfers enable governments to get support to people in need, crowdfunding platforms have mobilized funds for medical supplies and emergency relief, and algorithmic lending means small businesses have quicker access to funds. The speed of the recent spread of these technologies is astonishing, but progress is not automatic. For digitalization to be a true force for delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals, technological advances must combine with sound policy that empowers citizens and enables our financial system to meet the urgent investment challenges that must be overcome to build forward better," said Achim Steiner, Administrator of UNDP and Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General's Task Force on Digital Finance

The Report is available here (download here).

COVID-19 Recovery Must Deliver Universal Health Insurance, Safety Nets and Affordable Internet Access, says UNDP

 

Bangkok, April 28, 2020

 

Governments must dramatically overhaul policies and invest in public health, economic stimulus, and social safety nets, to help countries recover faster from the COVID-19 pandemic, says a new report from the UN Development Programme. 

 

The economic report warns that a patchwork of preexisting solutions won't work and points out that governments must coordinate with each other to hasten the recovery. This is a global crisis and working in silos is not an option, it says.  

 

The report: "Position Note on the Social and Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Asia-Pacific," calls on countries in the region to avoid returning to the pre-pandemic environmentally unsustainable development path, and to capitalize on the opportunity to build a better future. 

 

It argues for a new human rights-based, just and fair social contract between governments and people, and advocates for social safety nets with a broader reach, universal health insurance, and affordable access to digital connectivity, as the new normal. 

 

"While we must focus on the immediate needs of a health crisis, the accompanying economic and social crises also need urgent attention. These feed on pre-pandemic vulnerabilities that will be a fire hard to contain, if not addressed together," said Kanni Wignaraja, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific. "Bold proposals in this report address the multiple shocks together, by proposing a different set of choices today to build a different tomorrow." 

 

"As the Government of Nepal and many other development practitioners have started to analyze the impact of the pandemic on the lives of people in Nepal, we hope this report will bring some of the early observations from the region. We hope this will be useful and inform Nepal's ongoing assessments," said Ayshanie Medagangoda-Labe, UNDP Resident Representative in Nepal. "I hope that some of the learning and good practices from the countries from the region, on fiscal stimulus, access to treatment, medicine and care, critical supply chains, technological solutions, and more importantly trust, included in this report would help us shape our own recovery programmes here in Nepal that would leave no one behind."

 

While both crises are exacting a huge human toll, with a heavy burden and crisis of care falling disproportionately on the shoulders of women, the report calls on governments and businesses to invest in building more sustainable and resilient supply chains and to foster circular and sharing economies, which will allow us to tread lighter on the environment and ecosystems, according to the report.

 

The report contributes to the UN's work that supports the socio-economic recovery from the pandemic in Asia and the Pacific. It calls for policies and actions that immediately strengthen health systems, to save lives and prevent the spread of the virus. And advocates for the rapid expansion of social protection measures, to sustain incomes, especially for the most affected and vulnerable. Regular public communication of measures taken is a must to strengthen trust of people in government, the report adds.

 

Governments will need huge resources to bolster public health, for the economic stimulus, and for social safety nets, which will place an enormous strain on budgets. To meet that challenge, the report asks governments to revise priorities reflected in budget revenue, spending and financing. Budget revisions may be painful but are necessary, to meet this emergency and to contain fiscal deficits and surges in public debt, at manageable levels.

 

Given the deeply interconnected nature of the world, the report stresses that the twin global emergencies, the pandemic and the economic crisis, require a global response. Global coordination and solidarity are needed to chart a shared sustainable and resilient development path, as no country will be able to pull this off on its own.

 

A key step is to collaboratively resolve the long-standing issue of so called 'fiscal termites' that undermine national budgets: tax competition, tax evasion via transfer pricing and tax havens, large fossil fuel subsidies, and finding ways to tax the digital economy. 

 

Further steps include restarting trade in goods, even as borders are closed for people – starting from essential goods such as medical supplies and food; and effectively coordinating the movement of stranded migrants and refugees.