Julio S. Gorres II
In my opinion, The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major effect on our lives. Many of us are facing challenges that can be stressful, overwhelming, and cause strong emotions in adults and children. Public health actions, such as social distancing, are necessary to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but they can make us feel isolated and lonely and can increase stress and anxiety. Learning to cope with stress in a healthy way will make you, the people you care about, and those around you become more resilient.
As a student, COVID-19 is a global challenge that demands researchers, policy makers, and governments address multiple dimensions which go far beyond the implications of this pandemic for health and wellbeing. Just as the UN Sustainable Development Goals call for focus on the connections between development policy sectors, the pandemic has exposed the complex global interdependencies that underpin economies and highlighted fault lines in societal structures that perpetuate ethnic, economic, social, and gender inequalities.
Here, we highlight the pandemic's emerging potential consequences for achieving sustainable development with respect to the six global challenge areas we collectively address at the UK Research and Innovation's Global Challenges Research Fund: food systems; education; cities and sustainable infrastructure; security, protracted conflict, refugee crises, and forced displacement; environmental resilience; and global health.
As the immediate health consequences of the pandemic unfold and begin to be superseded by the impact of public health containment measures, we call for a refocusing of research and action not only to mitigate these impacts but to build sustainability and strengthened resilience into future recovery.
For me as a student, COVID-19 is also creating an education crisis. Most governments around the world have temporarily shut schools in an effort to enforce social distancing and slow viral transmission. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) estimates that 60% of the world's student population has been affected, with 1·19 billion learners out of school across 150 countries. Loss of access to education not only diminishes learning in the short term but also increases long-term dropout rates and reduces future socioeconomic opportunities. The consequences of COVID-19 school closures are predicted to have a disproportionately negative impact on the most vulnerable and risk exacerbating existing global inequalities.
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