Even as the Caribbean contemplates the mountain that it will have to climb if it is to ascend the lofty peak of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2015 to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all” – a new World Bank Report suggests that the region may be even further away from the realisation of those goals than might have originally been imagined.
While regional governments and multi-national organisations, governments, and international organisations are putting their heads together in pursuit of what many observers believe is the unattainable goal of realising the SDGs by 2030, the World Bank in a report released earlier this month, titled “Recovering Growth, Rebuilding Dynamic Post-Covid Economies Amid Fiscal Constraints,” says that the region must first tackle the socio-economic debris accumulated on account of the COVID-19 pandemic before it can focus on seeking to attain the SDGs.