T among top in meeting SDGs in pandemic year: Report
Visakhapatnam: The Covid-19 pandemic has not only created a global health crisis, but has exposed the vulnerability to the vagaries of the disease – be it malnourishment, underemployment, school dropouts, exodus of migrants. The State of India’s Environment (2021) report by the Centre for Science and Environment, released on Thursday, has substantiated the fallout of the pandemic. Amid the pandemic, India ranked a poor 117th among 192 nations in terms of sustainable development, but the saving grace is that the two Telugu states – Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – have found a place among the top five performing states in India in meeting the sustainable development goals. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana could successfully contain the disease by the third quarter of 2020 by sticking to the scientific evidence in pandemic preparedness, response and management. From the initial days of panic with no definitive treatment, inadequate health infra and no testing facilities in February-March, the two Telugu states have tweaked their strategies for the changing transmission dynamics. The states witnessed a drastic decline in cases in fourth quarter of 2020. Sunita Narain, director general, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said Covid-19 has made world’s poor poorer. “About 115 million additional people might get pushed into extreme poverty by pandemic and most of them live in South Asia. The defining event of the year that has gone by has been Covid-19 pandemic, something which the world is struggling to come to terms with. The time has now come to investigate what the pandemic is going to leave behind for us in the long term – a lost generation, scarred by ill-health, malnourishment, acute poverty and a debilitating break in educational accomplishments,” said Narain.
