The global coronavirus pandemic could push the number of people living in extreme poverty to more than a billion by 2030, a new United Nations study released Thursday says.
With new infections and the socioeconomic effects of the virus accelerating, an additional 207 million people could find themselves in extreme poverty over the next 10 years in a worst-case scenario of COVID-19’s long-term effect.
The study by the United Nations Development Program was done in conjunction with the Pardee Center for International Futures at the University of Denver. It maps out three scenarios, all of which have tens of millions of people pushed further into poverty as a result of the pandemic that has resulted in lockdowns, end of employment and economic hardship worldwide.
The pandemic, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said, is a tipping point and the choices leaders take could decide to what degree poverty deepens globally.
“We have an opportunity to invest in a decade of action that not only helps people to recover from COVID-19, but that resets the development path of people and planet towards a more fair, resilient and green future,” Steiner said.
The study’s findings argue that targeted policy interventions that take into account the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals could accelerate people’s emerging from the crisis and offset some of the negative impact of the virus due to a loss in productivity. They could also help lift an additional 146 million people out of extreme poverty, the study said.
Known as the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals are a collection of 17 goals adopted by the UN in 2015 and billed as a means to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure people have a sustainable future. To help meet these goals and help counter some of the negative effects of COVID, the study calls for investments in governance, social protection, green economy and digitization.
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“These interventions are ambitious, even radical, and require behavioral changes on all levels of society,” the study said. “Governments must improve their effectiveness and efficiency. Citizens must change consumption patterns in food, energy and water. And the global collaboration on climate change must improve — including on carbon taxes and fossil fuel subsidies.”
Governments and other partners, according to the study, must increase access to basic services, improve health and social protection transfers and increase connectivity to mobile and broadband services and strengthen investments in research and development. It will also be critical for access to inclusive, effective and accountable governance to be boosted.
The study points out that in the past months citizens in some countries have seen new policies that seemed impossible a few months ago — temporary basic income in Brazil, and expanded access to social protection programs in Colombia through the use of digital databases and digital financial services. More is needed, the study argues.
COVID-19: Millions of job losses, poverty forecast for Latin America, Caribbean
As of Wednesday, there were a total of 62.2 million COVID-19 infections worldwide and 1.49 million deaths.
In the past week, the United States along with other countries in the region reported 1.6 million new infections and 22,000 deaths, Dr. Carissa Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, told journalists during her weekly press briefing on the situation around the Americas.
“In the month of November alone, we had over six million new cases reported in the Americas. That is nearly a 30 percent increase from the numbers at the end of October,” Etienne said. “We’ve seen record-setting daily cases registered in North America.”