Bangladesh shows rapid progress in strengthening human well-being, capabilities
Bangladesh has made a rapid progress in life expectancy, mean years of schooling, and other human well beings as well as moved fast towards improving access to electricity, safe drinking water and sanitary defecation system.
Revealed a report published on Asian Development Bank's (ADB) website on May 20.
The study was prepared as part of the Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership between UNESCAP, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and UNDP.
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ADB with UNESCAP and UNDP, measure the progress of the Asia and the Pacific countries on achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) under six transformative approaches in their publication named Fast-Tracking the SDGs: Driving Asia-Pacific Transformations.
The six transformative entry points are --
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Strengthening human well-being and capabilities
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Shifting towards sustainable and just economies
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Building sustainable food system and healthy nutrition patterns
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Achieving energy decarbonization and universal access to energy
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Promoting sustainable urban and peri-urban development
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Securing the global environment method
These transformative entry points can help the economies to achieve SDGs, including in the context of efforts to respond to Covid-19 pandemic.
The regions are categorized into four groups: Fast-risers, Sprinters, Aspirants and Last-milers according to their progresses in the transformative entry points.
Fast-riser countries are those who are progressing fast, but a long way to go and Sprinters are racing ahead with high levels of achievement.
The other two groups -- Aspirations and Last-milers -- are the countries who are progressing with slower than average.
Here, Aspirant countries are categorized for their slow rates of change and these countries urgently need to speed up their progress.
On the other hand, Last-millers have good track record, but slowing progress due to "last-mile" challenges such as hard-to-reach policy targets.
Bangladesh enlisted in the Fast-riser group in strengthening human well-being, capabilities and promoting sustainable urban and peri-urban development.
On the other hand, in shifting towards sustainable and just economies and securing the global environment method, the country is in Sprinters group.
Shifting towards sustainable and just economies indicates progress in real GDP per employed person, unemployment rate, income inequality and consumption.
However, Bangladesh is still lagging behind in achieving a sustainable food system and healthy nutrition patterns as well as universal access to energy. Sadly the country shows very slow progress on these approaches and falls in Aspirants group in the sectors.
Bambang Susantono, ADB vice-president for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, said, "Resilience must be central to our strategies and interventions."
He added, "Shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic do not respect borders, so the pathway to saving lives and securing livelihoods lies not in national isolation, but in cooperating across borders on information sharing, capacity building and policy coordination."
