Subject(s)
Famine , Food Insecurity , Hunger , Malnutrition , Nutritional Status , Sustainable Development/economics , Africa , COVID-19 , Child , Child, Preschool , Climate Change , Developing Countries , Humans , Warfare and Armed ConflictsSubject(s)
Goals , Sustainable Development/legislation & jurisprudence , Sustainable Development/trends , Animals , Biodiversity , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/prevention & control , COVID-19/virology , Climate Change , Congresses as Topic , Diet, Healthy/statistics & numerical data , Food Supply/statistics & numerical data , Health Policy , Humans , Poverty/prevention & control , Scotland , Sustainable Development/economics , United Nations/organization & administrationSubject(s)
COVID-19/psychology , Health Planning/organization & administration , Mental Health/statistics & numerical data , Social Determinants of Health/trends , Adult , COVID-19/diagnosis , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/virology , Female , Global Health/economics , Global Health/standards , Healthcare Disparities/statistics & numerical data , Healthcare Disparities/trends , Humans , Male , Mental Health/economics , Publishing/instrumentation , Publishing/supply & distribution , SARS-CoV-2/genetics , Sexism/psychology , Social Responsibility , Substance-Related Disorders/epidemiology , Substance-Related Disorders/psychology , Sustainable Development/economicsABSTRACT
The United Nations' (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are heterogeneous and interdependent, comprising 169 targets and 231 indicators of sustainable development in such diverse areas as health, the environment, and human rights. Existing efforts to map relationships among SDGs are either theoretical investigations of sustainability concepts, or empirical analyses of development indicators and policy simulations. We present an alternative approach, which describes and quantifies the complex network of SDG interdependencies by applying computational methods to policy and scientific documents. Methods of Natural Language Processing are used to measure overlaps in international policy discourse around SDGs, as represented by the corpus of all existing UN progress reports about each goal (N = 85 reports). We then examine if SDG interdependencies emerging from UN discourse are reflected in patterns of integration and collaboration in SDG-related science, by analyzing data on all scientific articles addressing relevant SDGs in the past two decades (N = 779,901 articles). Results identify a strong discursive divide between environmental goals and all other SDGs, and unexpected interdependencies between SDGs in different areas. While UN discourse partially aligns with integration patterns in SDG-related science, important differences are also observed between priorities emerging in UN and global scientific discourse. We discuss implications and insights for scientific research and policy on sustainable development after COVID-19.
Subject(s)
Conservation of Natural Resources/methods , Natural Language Processing , Sustainable Development/trends , COVID-19 , Global Health , Goals , Human Rights , Humans , Public Policy/economics , Public Policy/trends , SARS-CoV-2 , Sustainable Development/economics , United NationsSubject(s)
Climate Change/economics , Cyclonic Storms/economics , Disasters/economics , Poverty , Racism , Social Justice , Vulnerable Populations , COVID-19/epidemiology , Climate Change/mortality , Cyclonic Storms/mortality , Disasters/statistics & numerical data , Goals , Humans , Louisiana/epidemiology , Neoplasms/epidemiology , Politics , Poverty/statistics & numerical data , Racism/economics , Racism/prevention & control , Racism/statistics & numerical data , Sanitation , Social Justice/economics , Social Justice/trends , Sustainable Development/economics , Sustainable Development/trends , Vulnerable Populations/statistics & numerical dataSubject(s)
Agriculture/methods , Agriculture/trends , Famine/prevention & control , Food Supply/methods , Goals , Hunger , Sustainable Development/trends , Agriculture/economics , Animals , Diet, Healthy , Earth, Planet , Efficiency , Famine/statistics & numerical data , Food Supply/economics , Global Warming/statistics & numerical data , Greenhouse Gases/analysis , Humans , Seafood/analysis , Socioeconomic Factors , Sustainable Development/economics , United NationsSubject(s)
Extreme Weather , Global Warming/statistics & numerical data , Goals , Models, Economic , Social Change , Sustainable Development , United Nations/legislation & jurisprudence , Cyclonic Storms , Data Science , Disaster Planning , Floods , Food Supply , Global Warming/economics , Humans , Infrared Rays , Investments , Risk Assessment , Risk Factors , Sustainable Development/economics , Sustainable Development/trends , WildfiresABSTRACT
As the world counts down to the 2025 World Health Assembly nutrition targets and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, millions of women, children, and adolescents worldwide remain undernourished (underweight, stunted, and deficient in micronutrients), despite evidence on effective interventions and increasing political commitment to, and financial investment in, nutrition. The COVID-19 pandemic has crippled health systems, exacerbated household food insecurity, and reversed economic growth, which together could set back improvements in undernutrition across low-income and middle-income countries. This paper highlights how the evidence base for nutrition, health, food systems, social protection, and water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions has evolved since the 2013 Lancet Series on maternal and child nutrition and identifies the priority actions needed to regain and accelerate progress within the next decade. Policies and interventions targeting the first 1000 days of life, including some newly identified since 2013, require renewed commitment, implementation research, and increased funding from both domestic and global actors. A new body of evidence from national and state-level success stories in stunting reduction reinforces the crucial importance of multisectoral actions to address the underlying determinants of undernutrition and identifies key features of enabling political environments. To support these actions, well-resourced nutrition data and information systems are essential. The paper concludes with a call to action for the 2021 Nutrition for Growth Summit to unite global and national nutrition stakeholders around common priorities to tackle a large, unfinished undernutrition agenda-now amplified by the COVID-19 crisis.