SDG 1: No poverty

We don't need to do a big research to predict that the pandemic comes hand in hand with poverty for many people. But for how many?

The World Bank warns that "for the first time since 1998, poverty rates will rise as the global economy enters recession. The crisis will reverse almost all the gains made in the past five years and between 40 million and 60 million people will fall into extreme poverty, compared to 2019 data."

60 million people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty.

Do you know what extreme poverty means?

The UN defines it as the worst state of poverty. Action Against Hunger defines extreme or absolute poverty as "a situation in which a person does not have the basic needs of life. They lack basic goods and services, especially food, housing and access to safe drinking water or basic hygiene and health services".

1.90 euros per day has been set as the resource threshold for measuring extreme poverty.

To recap: 60 million people in the world are at risk of living with less than 1.90 euros a day as a direct consequence of the pandemic.

But wait, we have to add the more than 700 million people who were already living in extreme poverty before the pandemic. 760 million people.

And this is not all. In 2019, before Covid-19 arrived, 1.3 billion people, including 663 million children, were already affected by poverty.

In other words, we are not only counting those affected by extreme poverty, but also those who live their daily lives in relative poverty, i.e. "people who are at a disadvantage compared to other people in the same environment with regard to the economic and social sphere".

Poverty is a problem in Spain too and has become much more acute in the last two years. During the pandemic, queues for basic foodstuffs in churches and institutions have soared in our country.

The effects of Covid-19 have left us with many middle-class people who have lost almost everything, their jobs and their savings.

In Spain, only in the first year of the pandemic, the rate of people suffering from severe material deprivation has increased by 2.3%, that is, 1,000,000 more people than before the pandemic cannot go on holiday for at least one week a year, cannot afford to eat a meal of meat or fish every two days, cannot afford to keep their homes at an adequate temperature, cannot afford to meet unforeseen expenses, have had delays in paying expenses related to their main home and cannot afford a car, telephone, television or a washing machine.

On the top of the list of countries with the highest rates of severe material deprivation we can find Bulgaria (19% of its population), Greece (16%), Romania (15%) and Spain (7%). On the other hand, the countries with the lowest rates of severe material deprivation are Luxembourg (1%), the Netherlands (2%), Denmark and the Czech Republic (2.4%), Finland and Poland (2.6%).

In short, we are living in a historic moment, in which, for the first time since 1990, the world is worsening its poverty levels, something not very flattering if we take into account that target 1 of the first Goal is to achieve the eradication of extreme poverty for all people in the world by 2030.

But there is still hope. According to economist Jeffrey Sachs, ending extreme poverty by 2030 has a cost we can afford. Specifically, $175 billion a year. This is less than 1% of the combined income of the world's richest countries.

The problem is that after the pandemic, even the richest countries are in difficult situations, economically speaking. All of them have suffered losses and setbacks, so this is a clear obstacle to the achievement of the SDGs.

In light of this situation, the UN has created a Framework for an immediate socio-economic response, which comes from its Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund. It is clear that we cannot work in isolation. An effective response requires joint action by all people, institutions, agencies and organisations. We must ensure policies that truly improve the situation of real people. Only within the framework of these guarantee policies and with the action of all sectors, will we be able to move towards the eradication of extreme poverty.