National reports
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Finland: Social security with inequalities and big footprint
The presentation by Finland of its second VNR in 2020 initiated a new kind of cooperation between state authorities and civil society, with non-governmental actors presenting their assessment in the official report. Both views are largely in line, but civil society is more critical.
There is no extreme poverty in Finland and a comprehensive social security covers the whole population. Still there are challenges in relation to poverty and inequality. A crucial problem is that increasing in inequalities and social exclusion seem to accumulate and extend across generations, causing intergenerational transmission of poverty.
While gender equality situation is considered “good”, Finland is the second most violent EU country for women. As many as 47 per cent of Finnish women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence.
The biggest challenge of Finland is the consumption of raw materials. It is high in relation to gross domestic product and per capita, the highest in the world. Total energy consumption was 1.38 million terajoules in 2018, and 40 per cent of fossil fuels. Finland’s economy produced 0.21 kg of carbon dioxide per EUR 1 of GDP, more than double that of Sweden or Switzerland. The average material footprint among Finns is over 40 000 kg per person a year, and the trend is rising. The accounting of greenhouse gas emissions does not consider the impact of Finnish consumption beyond its national borders.
“Ecological footprint of Finland is more than three times larger than the global average and our consumption has negative effects abroad”, concludes the Finnish civil society report.
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Brazil: The local fills the national policy vacuum
By the end of June 2020, Brazil was the developing country most affected by COVID-19 in terms of number of cases and of diagnosticzed deaths, second only to the US on both indicators.
The Brazilian federal government, under president Jair Bolsonaro has abandoned many of its SDG commitments. There is no transparency in several policy areas and the government channels for dissemination are out of date or down. In addition, DecreeNo.9.759/2019 extinguished and limits the creation of collegiate bodies in the federal government, and thus the National SDGs Council, created in 2016 ceased to exist.
There is an increase in opacity in the executive's performance and also a lack of political will to respond to the health crisis. However, within states and municipalities, local political leaders are taking the response to the pandemic seriously. This movement of governors, mayors and subnational legislators has produced results in the control of COVID-19, stirring the country's political board in an election year with good experiences of dialogue and participation in the localization of the 2030 Agenda.
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Bahrain: Catastrophic impact of Covid-19
Bahrain has been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, both in terms of the number of people affected (with over 16 thousand cases per million inhabitants at the end of June 2020) and because of the grave plunge of oil prices that has resulted in a major drop in government revenues.
The Parallel Report on Bahrain Implementation of the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals by Bahrain Transparency Society (BTS) covers SDGs 3 (on health), 6 (water and sanitation), 8 (decent work), 13 (climate change) and 16 (governance). It pays particular attention to those ·left behind” both among Bahrainis as well as among migrants and expatriates, that are over half of the population of the islands. It concludes that “the catastrophic impact of the double crises of COVID19 and oil slump, re-asserted the need for radical review of the development model”.
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Intersecting inequalities due to long-term manifestations and impacts of income inequality, embedded structural and developmental issues and social eclusion of women and ethnic minorities.
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