TY - JOUR
T1 - The COVID-19 Pandemic Not Only Poses Challenges, but Also Opens Opportunities for Sustainable Transformation
AU - Pradhan, Prajal
AU - Subedi, Daya Raj
AU - Khatiwada, Dilip
AU - Joshi, Kirti Kusum
AU - Kafle, Sagar
AU - Chhetri, Raju Pandit
AU - Dhakal, Shobhakar
AU - Gautam, Ambika Prasad
AU - Khatiwada, Padma Prasad
AU - Mainaly, Jony
AU - Onta, Sharad
AU - Pandey, Vishnu Prasad
AU - Parajuly, Keshav
AU - Pokharel, Sijal
AU - Satyal, Poshendra
AU - Singh, Devendra Raj
AU - Talchabhadel, Rocky
AU - Tha, Rupesh
AU - Thapa, Bhesh Raj
AU - Adhikari, Kamal
AU - Adhikari, Shankar
AU - Chandra Bastakoti, Ram
AU - Bhandari, Pitambar
AU - Bharati, Saraswoti
AU - Bhusal, Yub Raj
AU - Bahadur BK, Man
AU - Bogati, Ramji
AU - Kafle, Simrin
AU - Khadka, Manohara
AU - Khatiwada, Nawa Raj
AU - Lal, Ajay Chandra
AU - Neupane, Dinesh
AU - Neupane, Kaustuv Raj
AU - Ojha, Rajit
AU - Regmi, Narayan Prasad
AU - Rupakheti, Maheswar
AU - Sapkota, Alka
AU - Sapkota, Rupak
AU - Sharma, Mahashram
AU - Shrestha, Gitta
AU - Shrestha, Indira
AU - Shrestha, Khadga Bahadur
AU - Tandukar, Sarmila
AU - Upadhyaya, Shyam
AU - Kropp, Jürgen P.
AU - Bhuju, Dinesh Raj
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank all the experts for participating in the online survey, workshop, review, and validation process. We acknowledge the support of Inisa Shrestha for our SDG 9 survey and workshop. We thank Anne Warchold and Lipy Adhikari for their valuable suggestions for our study and Adrian Foong for language editing. We thank Wiley for waiving the Open Access Article Publication Charge. P.P. acknowledges funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the BIOCLIMAPATHS project (grant agreement No 531 01LS1906A). D.K. acknowledges the support from the Research Initiative on Sustainable Industry and Society (IRIS) at the ITM School, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. M. R. acknowledges the support provided by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and the Brandenburg Ministry for Science, Research and Culture (MWFK). The complete findings from this study are available Table S1 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors.
PY - 2021/7/1
Y1 - 2021/7/1
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted social, economic, and environmental systems worldwide, slowing down and reversing the progress made in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs belong to the 2030 Agenda to transform our world by tackling humankind's challenges to ensure well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. We explore the potential impacts of the pandemic on SDGs for Nepal. We followed a knowledge co-creation process with experts from various professional backgrounds, involving five steps: online survey, online workshop, assessment of expert's opinions, review and validation, and revision and synthesis. The pandemic has negatively impacted most SDGs in the short term. Particularly, the targets of SDG 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13 have and will continue to have weakly to moderately restricting impacts. However, a few targets of SDG 2, 3, 6, and 11 could also have weakly promoting impacts. The negative impacts have resulted from impeding factors linked to the pandemic. Many of the negative impacts may subside in the medium and long terms. The key five impeding factors are lockdowns, underemployment and unemployment, closure of institutions and facilities, diluted focus and funds for non-COVID-19-related issues, and anticipated reduction in support from development partners. The pandemic has also opened a window of opportunity for sustainable transformation, which is short-lived and narrow. These opportunities are lessons learned for planning and action, socio-economic recovery plan, use of information and communication technologies and the digital economy, reverse migration and “brain gain,” and local governments' exercising authorities.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted social, economic, and environmental systems worldwide, slowing down and reversing the progress made in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs belong to the 2030 Agenda to transform our world by tackling humankind's challenges to ensure well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. We explore the potential impacts of the pandemic on SDGs for Nepal. We followed a knowledge co-creation process with experts from various professional backgrounds, involving five steps: online survey, online workshop, assessment of expert's opinions, review and validation, and revision and synthesis. The pandemic has negatively impacted most SDGs in the short term. Particularly, the targets of SDG 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13 have and will continue to have weakly to moderately restricting impacts. However, a few targets of SDG 2, 3, 6, and 11 could also have weakly promoting impacts. The negative impacts have resulted from impeding factors linked to the pandemic. Many of the negative impacts may subside in the medium and long terms. The key five impeding factors are lockdowns, underemployment and unemployment, closure of institutions and facilities, diluted focus and funds for non-COVID-19-related issues, and anticipated reduction in support from development partners. The pandemic has also opened a window of opportunity for sustainable transformation, which is short-lived and narrow. These opportunities are lessons learned for planning and action, socio-economic recovery plan, use of information and communication technologies and the digital economy, reverse migration and “brain gain,” and local governments' exercising authorities.
KW - COVID-19
KW - impacts
KW - Nepal
KW - opportunities
KW - pandemic
KW - sustainable development
KW - sustainable transformation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85111430037&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1029/2021EF001996
DO - 10.1029/2021EF001996
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85111430037
VL - 9
JO - Earth's Future
JF - Earth's Future
SN - 2328-4277
IS - 7
M1 - e2021EF001996
ER -
