It is now clear that a narrow focus on the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) is insufficient to achieve humanity’s aspirations for sustainable prosperity. Wellfunctioning ecosystems and educated populations are requisites for sustainable wellbeing.

Investors in 66% of listed companies are collectively at risk of losing US$8.4 trillion due to declining ocean health and climate change if business as usual continues.

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing unprecedented challenges, making it difficult for policy makers to design appropriate policies.

Carbon pricing is increasingly used by governments to reduce emissions. The effect of carbon pricing on economic outcomes as well as mitigating factors has been studied extensively since the early 1990s. One mitigating factor that has received less attention is education quality.

The 2021 issue of ESCAP’s Financing for Development Series, Financing the SDGs to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia and the Pacific, reviews a range of financing instruments, strategies and mechanisms that can help Asia-Pacific economies recover from the pandemic and effectively pursue the SDGs.

Economies in the Asia-Pacific region need to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including to maintain their trade competitiveness as carbon taxes at borders threaten to rise, according to this new United Nations report   

South Asia’s recovery continues as global demand rebounded and targeted containment measures helped minimize the economic impacts of the recent waves of COVID-19. But the recovery remains fragile and uneven, and most countries are far from pre-pandemic trend levels, says the World Bank in its twice-yearly regional update.

This report examines the region’s economic prospects in 2021, forecasting that the recovery will be both tenuous and uneven as per capita GDP level stays below pre-pandemic levels. COVID-19 was a stress-test for the region’s public health systems, which were already overwhelmed even before the pandemic.

In 2021, Sub-Saharan Africa emerged from the recession, but its recovery is still timid and fragile. The region is projected to grow at a rate of 3.3 percent—a weaker pace of recovery than that of advanced and emerging market economies.

COVID-19 economic recovery can be advanced by greater efforts to boost longer-term resilience and sustainability in Asia and the Pacific.