People and planet : addressing the interlinked challenges of climate change, poverty and hunger in Asia and the Pacific

Global collective climate action is not progressing fast enough to reduce carbon emissions or build necessary adaptive capacity to the impacts of changing weather patterns. In the Asia-Pacific region, climate change threatens to worsen hunger and poverty and is undoing gains in sustainable development achieved by the region over recent decades. This edition of the Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Partnership Report — People and Planet: Addressing Climate Change, Poverty and Hunger in Asia and the Pacific — focuses on how the varying impacts of climate change across the region are interacting with poverty and hunger against a backdrop of continuing cost-of-living pressures, global conflict, and increasing climate shocks, at a time when many countries are still recovering from the fiscal strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, over-extended borrowing, and the high cost of debt.   Transformative solutions require us all to row in the same direction, with respect to enablers like education, institutional capacity building, innovative financing, and partnerships. Numerous examples of innovations, good practices, and responses from across the region are highlighted to provide inspiration for action.</p

SDG 11 : Sustainable cities and communities

As the Asia-Pacific region grows increasingly urbanized, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 is a comprehensive and action-oriented blueprint for advancing sustainable cities and communities. It proposes to readdress how we plan, finance, develop, govern and manage cities and human settlements in line with the New Urban Agenda. In essence, SDG 11 acts as a strategic lever to achieve the SDGs by emphasizing and guiding local action. These actions are more important than ever as the region recovers from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic while struggling to adapt to multiple interlinked crises.The lack of spatial, granular qualitative, and quantitative urban data affects the creation of evidence-based policies and programmes designed to respond to urban dynamics and related challenges. The lack of data also undermines efforts towards meeting the 'leave no one' behind promise. As countries and cities move towards increased decentralization and localized decision-making, the need for strengthening local data systems, such as urban observatories that support the tracking of local progress to citizens and national authorities, has grown.The key areas of progress include improvements in air quality and the proportion of those living in slums, along with the growing adoption of national and local disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies. However, this progress is contrasted by significant regressions in persons missing or affected by disasters, economic loss, and damage to infrastructure and services. Road safety measures also remain suboptimal in the Asia-Pacific region.</p

SDG 9 : Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and building back better highlight the importance of a long-term strategy for industrialization, innovation, digitalization and the creation of resilient infrastructure. This strategy is vital to achieving all 2030 Agenda Goals. Economies with a diversified industrial sector and strong infrastructure better weathered the economic impacts of COVID-19 and recovered faster than other economies.The effects of the pandemic were highly heterogeneous across sectors, firms and workers, both globally and in Asia and the Pacific. The most vulnerable were small and medium enterprises, sectors highly integrated into global or regional value chains, and firms and workers in the informal economy. Women, youth and low-skilled workers suffered the most severe losses.Although economic activity in the region has quickly recovered, reaching its highest growth rate since 2010 in 2021, recovery remains incomplete and uneven, impacting progress towards SDG 9. Except for significant advances in two targets (9.a and 9.c), other areas are lagging. Countries in Asia and the Pacific must implement actions to accelerate progress on these targets, particularly those relating to manufacturing employment, transition to higher-technology industrial sectors and research and development (R&amp;D) activity (9.2, 9.5, 9.b). Better and more disaggregated data are also needed to guide and monitor policies to improve infrastructure, promote innovation and enhance green and inclusive industrialization.</p

SDG 14 : Life below water : conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development

Encompassing large and diverse territories with different ocean basins, the Asia-Pacific region is currently not on track to reach key targets, including those related to marine pollution, the conservation of coastal areas, and marine resources for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and least developed countries (LDCs). Regional and transboundary cooperation efforts and mechanisms are necessary for the delivery of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 and are of relevance in the socioeconomic response to COVID-19. Ocean ecosystems are in a constant struggle to moderate the impacts of land-based lifestyles, such as the consequences of climate change for marine habitats in the form of coral bleaching, acidification, eutrophication, ocean warming, rising sea levels, harmful algal blooms, and a long list of pressures. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing challenges, including environmental issues facing marine ecosystems. Although fisheries support the livelihoods of millions of people in Asia and the Pacific and provide a major component of the diets of communities across the region, fish stocks continue to decline, and consumption patterns are unsustainable. This situation is accompanied by additional stressors, such as climate change-induced migrations of species and harmful practices such as persistent illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.</p

SDG 5 : Gender equality

Since the adoption of the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), good progress has been made towards achieving gender equality and women&rsquo;s empowerment in Asia and the Pacific. Efforts have also been directed toward increasing the availability of gender data and statistics to support monitoring and reporting on such progress. Nonetheless, about half of the gender-related SDG indicators still lack data, and progress assessment at the regional level is only possible for one of the nine SDG 5 targets, namely target 5.5 (Ensure full participation in leadership and decision making). For target 5.1 (Eliminate discrimination against women and girls), official data is only available for one point in time, and progress assessment for this target is possible only if proxy indicators are considered (see Annex). Where available, statistics reveal that despite gains made, substantive efforts are needed to&nbsp; accelerate progress and meet the agreed-upon global targets. For instance, women&rsquo;s representation in national parliaments has increased in most countries since 2015, but the regional average of 20.3 per cent still falls behind the global average of 25.6 per cent. While data gaps limit trend analysis, the most recent data highlights the need for more attention to the substantial prevalence of intimate partner violence; the sub-regional prevalence of child marriage in&nbsp;Southern Asia and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand); and the disproportionate unpaid care&nbsp;and domestic work burdens on women. The pandemic has exacerbated these issues. The region is unlikely to achieve SDG 5 by 2030 unless Governments make significant investments to accelerate&nbsp;progress.</p