Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

The COVID-19 pandemic has compressed global trade by magnitudes last seen during the 2008 global financial crisis. Trade has dropped sharply in developing countries, though with differences between regions.

The short-term impact of the pandemic on employment should be differentiated from its longer-term consequences, involving inter-sectoral changes in labour demand and further acceleration of robotization and automation, necessitating active labour market policies.

While a decade of rapid expansion of the sharing economy increasingly enable better utilization of assets, it shows little signs of delivering fair and equitable welfare gains for all participants in the sharing economy. Instead it has generated unchecked externalities and unintended consequences.

According to the WESP 2020, sluggish global growth threatens sustainable development; 1 in 5 countries will see per capita incomes stagnate or decline this year, notably in Africa, Latin America and parts of Western Asia; across the world, many policies continue to encourage the use of fossil fuels

The global economy has suffered a significant slowdown amid prolonged trade disputes and wide-ranging policy uncertainties. Economists warn that economic risks could inflict severe and long-lasting damage on development prospects.

Genetic technologies—the ability to manipulate and transform the properties of cells, seeds, microbes, insects, plants, animals and even humans—are pushing the frontiers of science and offers us new hope for disease control and cure. Genetic technologies are changing the way we produce food, improving crop yield and preventing catastrophic losses from droughts, floods and pests.