Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries - SDGs

LDC Insight #1: COVID-19 recovery and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Why LDCs can’t just ‘build back better’

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 06:42:00 +0000

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12 August 2022 / Federica Irene Falomi and Taffere Tesfachew

In 2019, the �鶹APP Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, noted that “despite considerable efforts these past four years, we are not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030”^[1], suggesting that the global growth and development model was already suboptimal and unsustainable. Three years and a global pandemic later, years of progress towards SDGs have been revered or wiped out. Global poverty rate sharply increased from 8.3% in 2019 to 9.2% in 2020 due to COVID-19, representing the first increase in extreme poverty since 1998 and the largest since 1990, and setting back poverty reduction by around three years. The losses have been much higher for low-income countries, which have been set back by 8-9 years^[2]. Furthermore, the pandemic has not only exposed large inequalities across countries in terms of access to finance, health care services, medicines and vaccines but has also intensified them and widened the gap even further.

We have entered the Decade of Action to deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity is more relevant than ever. However, if the SDGs are to be achieved globally by 2030 - in line with the principle of “leaving no one behind” - they must be achieved everywhere. To date, progress towards achieving the SDGs in the least developed countries has been uneven and is not on track to achieve the targets set in the 2030 Agenda. The pandemic abruptly interrupted a prolonged period of sustained growth for some least developed countries, which are collectively home to 14 per cent of the global population but comprise more than 50% of the world’s extremely poor and account for only 1.3 per cent of global GDP.

Given the post-COVID-19 trend and the persistent challenges facing the LDCs, it is highly likely that they will end up being “the battleground on which the 2030 Agenda will be won or lost”. Indeed, the SDGs recognize that these countries require special attention as demonstrated by the fact that 12 of the 17 SDGs directly and specifically target the least developed countries^[3].

LDCs require huge amounts of resources to recover from the recessions caused by the COVID-19 shock, but especially to set themselves on the path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. UNCTAD has estimated that between 2021 and 2030 LDCs require investments of:

$462 billion annually to meet the growth target (Sustainable Development Goal 8.1);
$485 billion annually to eradicate extreme poverty (Sustainable Development Goal 1.1); and
$1,051 billion annually to double the manufacturing share of GDP (Sustainable Development Goal 9.2)^[4].

Thus, a key component of ‘building forward better’ should be the introduction of new sets of international support measures and a renewed international commitment to ensure that low-income countries, particularly LDCs, are not left behind – but instead regain the growth momentum that they lost with the COVID-19 shock. These are countries with structural impediments, limited productive capacity, low income, and low skills and knowledge base. Hence the need for special international support measures to assist them with transfer of technologies and the development of their science, technology, and innovation capacities, which are essential requirements for promoting technological learning and innovation.

According to the World Bank and recent UN projections, during 2022, the global economy is expected to experience uneven recovery and most low-income countries will register lower economic growth and deterioration in social indicators. While the Ukraine crisis and its negative impact on food and energy prices have contributed to this outcome, the single most important reason for the unequal recovery is the unequal access to the COVID-19 vaccine. Despite WHO’s ambitious target of 70% global vaccination coverage by mid-2022, the number of people in the poorest countries who have received a single dose of vaccine remain less than 10% compared to the average 80% in high-income countries. If the gap in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries persists, it is likely that the goals of early recovery and building forward better will remain distant dreams.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how far the world has come in technological and scientific knowledge accumulation as demonstrated by the speed in which vaccines were developed and the role played by technologies in sustaining economic and social interactions. When lockdown measure was introduced across countries to slow down the spread of coronavirus, lack of affordable access to internet in most LDCs meant that many people and businesses in these countries were denied of the high-speed networks required for remote learning, e-commerce, digital-based healthcare services, access to e-government and online business interaction. In this respect, the COVID-19 shock was a wake-up call for the LDCs and other low-income countries and an important lesson that they cannot afford to lag behind in their technological capabilities or miss active engagement in the new wave of rapid technological change.

At this time of current heightened uncertainty and multidimensional global crisis, LDCs need special international support measures more than ever. The right mix of policies and financial support to help them develop their science, technology and innovation capacities must be at the core of renewed international support measures for LDCs. International organizations can play a key role in assisting the LDCs to close the digital gap by facilitating opportunities for technology transfer, including through South-South cooperation, and drawing lessons from countries that have advanced digital ecosystem. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be remembered as the Great Digital Accelerator, especially for its role in accelerating the need for digital transformation in the least developed countries. For this reason, the UN Technology Bank for LDCs calls upon the international community to give priority to the implementation of SDG’s Target 9c, which has already been missed. Target 9c focuses on the need to “significantly increase access to information and communication technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the internet in the Least Developed Countries by 2020”. Unfortunately, this target remains unmet, except in Bangladesh and Bhutan. The fact that this critical target remains unmet is a signal to the international community to act without delay and to bear in mind that the vision of meeting the SDGs by 2030 will not be achieved unless such persistent challenges in LDCs are addressed. To this end, with support of the Government of Türkiye and other Turkish institutions and drawing lessons from an initiative developed by the Ministry of Industry and Technology in Türkiye, the UN Technology Bank is piloting the Technology Makers Lab, a digital transformation training programme for youth in the LDCs to transform their skills base and enable them to face future shocks.

As countries dive into the promises of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it must be noted that no country has yet shown to be convincingly able to meet a set of basic human needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use^[5]. Indeed, even before the pandemic, trends along several dimensions with cross-cutting impacts across the entire 2030 Agenda were not moving in the right direction: rising inequalities, climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing amounts of waste from human activity. Countries have a duty to build forward better and put sustainable development at the heart of their recovery agenda, to enable fairer economic systems, reduce inequality and the number of people living in extreme poverty, create stronger health systems, a healthier natural environment, and more resilient societies. The impacts of unsustainable development are unevenly borne by countries. Although the least developed countries contributed the least to climate change, they suffer the most from its impacts and are expected to compensate for others. For instance, many developed countries export their post-consumer plastic waste passing on the problem to typically poorer countries to deal with. Climate change-induced rising sea levels have severe impacts on small Pacific atoll nations, including the two LDCs of Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, with entire islands at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to coastal flooding, storm surges, cyclones and land loss. LDCs experienced 70 per cent of the deaths caused by climate-related disasters over the last 50 years and reported more than 8.5 million people displaced due to disasters in 2020.

Hence, poorer countries need increased support from the rest of the world, counteracting current trends of shrinking overseas development assistance (ODA), fulfilling the promises made by the international community to advance climate finance, and placing people and the environment at the core of COVID-19 recovery packages. There will be no shared peace and prosperity unless we aim to achieve a truly inclusive recovery from the current global crisis and attain the 2030 Agenda through collective responsibility and renewed commitment to multilateralism. In the ‘Decade of Recovery and Action^[6], the SDGs should be used as a shared global framework to drive support for structural transformation in LDCs and build global systemic resilience.

Federica Irene Falomi is Economic Affairs Officer of the UN Technology Bank. Taffere Tesfachew is Acting Managing Director of the UN Technology Bank.

[1] Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the Secretary-General, Global Sustainable Development Report 2019: The Future is Now – Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, (�鶹APP, New York, 2019).

[2] Advance Unedited Version: Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: Report of the Secretary-General 2022

[3]Target 1.a, 2.a, 3.c, 4.b/4.c, 7.b, 8.1/8.a, 9.2/9.a/9.c, 10.a/ 10.a.1/10.b, 11.c, 13.b/13.b.1, 14.6/ 14.7/14.7.1, 17.2/ 17.2.1/ 17.5/17.5.1/ 17.8/ 17.8.1/ 17.11/ 17.11.1/ 17.12/ 17.12.1/ 17.18.

[4] UNCTAD (2021). The Least Developed Countries Report 2021. The least developed countries in the post-COVID world: Learning from 50 years of experience. �鶹APP. New York and Geneva.

[5] Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the Secretary-General, Global Sustainable Development Report 2019: The Future is Now – Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, (�鶹APP, New York, 2019).

[6] G. Schmidt-Traub (2020). The SDGs can guide our recovery. UNA-UK.

Front Page Article:

UN Technology Bank and UNOOSA partner to expand the use of satellite data in LDCs

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 18:21:00 +0000

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The Sahara Desert.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Follow

Gebze – Satellite data will be easier to access and use in least developed countries, thanks to a new partnership between the �鶹APP Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the UN Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

The new collaboration will enhance the capacity and skills of policy and decision makers to access different types of space infrastructure. This will include data and applications that can help in disaster management cycles, planning for climate change adaptation and natural resource management.

Both organisations will also join forces to identify and support the acceleration of sustainable development through the use of space technologies and contribute to global health-related challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo said: “Through this agreement, we aim to bring space technology where it is most needed, helping some of the countries most exposed to disasters, to the effects of climate change and to challenges such as pandemics, acquire tools and capabilities to counteract them effectively. This cooperation will combine the UN Technology Bank’s established network among LDCs and its knowledge of their specific challenges with UNOOSA’s expertise in space applications for sustainable development, helping save and improve lives.”

"Access to timely satellite data allows governments and industries to share information, to make informed decisions, to act on time, and to provide new applications in critical areas of development for Least Developed Countries," said Joshua Setipa, UN Technology Bank’s Managing Director. "The partnership and collaboration between the two agencies will focus on enhancing the capacity of experts and supporting policy- and decision-makers to access and use all types of space-based information that support the full disaster management cycle. Improving the understanding of how LDCs use space-based solutions to address climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, and natural resources management will promote the achievement of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda."

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World’s least developed countries to benefit from Turkish expertise and support through UN Technology Bank

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 18:21:00 +0000

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Bringing solar irrigation to farmers and solar home systems to families in Bangladesh.

Dominic Chavez / World Bank

Gebze - Turkey will provide increased specialist expertise and support to the newly established Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries. As the first official visitor from the Turkish Government, Mr. Naci Ağbal, President of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget, reinforced Turkey’s commitment to the Technology Bank this week, highlighting Turkey’s role as champion for the world’s poorest nations.

“As part of our international development cooperation understanding, we give importance to addressing the needs of the Least Developed Countries and we are proud of hosting UN Technology Bank. We are dedicated to continue the support which started from the beginning of the establishment process,” said Mr. Ağbal.

Mr. Ağbal and his delegation were met in Gebze by Mr. Joshua Setipa, Managing Director of the Technology Bank and his team, to discuss ways forward for the bank and to exchange ideas on future partnerships and resource mobilization.

“It is fitting that Mr. Ağbal and his team are the first high-level visitors we have received at the Technology Bank since it was inaugurated last year. Turkey is a key strategic partner and their generous support is helping to ensure that the world’s least developed countries gain much needed access to science, technology and innovation,” said Mr. Setipa.

Turkey has reaffirmed its commitment to support the Technology Bank as it works with least developed countries to utilise critical technologies for sustainable development and achievement of the 2030 Agenda. The Bank will also facilitate professional exchanges between Turkish scientific institutions and their counterparts in the least developed countries.

As the first UN entity to be headquartered in Turkey, the premises of the Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries were inaugurated in Gebze in 2018. The Bank champions better access to science, technology and innovation for the world’s least developed nations. It identifies and safeguards knowledge, builds partnerships and acts as a gateway for research, technological solutions and training.

The establishment and full operationalization of the Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries in 2018, is the first UN Sustainable Development Goal target, (17.8), to be achieved, speaking directly to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s principle of leaving no one behind.

The Bank is financed by voluntary contributions and Turkey has committed to support the Banks resource mobilization programme to secure additional resources from state and non-state actors in all UN members.

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