ADB's Support for the Sustainable Development Goals

Enabling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through Strategy 2030

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• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9789292627386
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Sviluppo sostenibile

This publication explains the approach of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to integrate the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their associated targets into its strategies, programs, and financing under Strategy 2030. The publication draws on project examples to highlight how ADB operations contribute to clusters of interconnected SDGs related to people, planet, prosperity, and sustainable infrastructure. It also details ADB's efforts to help developing member countries mobilize the finance and knowledge necessary to achieve the SDGs.

II. Highlights of ADB’s Support for the 2030 Agenda

Most ADB projects have direct links to multiple SDGs and associated targets (Figure 6), and there are many more indirect links between ADB projects and the SDGs. This section draws out key features of ADB’s support for SDG implementation in the DMCs and in the overall region in the context of Strategy 2030 priorities. It is organized around the four interlinked themes anchored in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development: people, planet, prosperity, and sustainable infrastructure. These clusters, like the SDGs themselves, relate to each other in many ways. The fifth theme of this section highlights ADB’s support for partnerships for finance and knowledge, which contribute to SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.

Figure 7: How does ADB support the SDGs in Asia and the Pacific?

The projects featured in this section were approved after the SDGs came into force on 1 January 2016. They are firmly anchored in the official SDG framework of goals, targets, and indicators, and have been identified by ADB’s sector and thematic groups and operations departments as having a strong rooting in the agenda. The projects take a holistic approach to sustainable development by addressing multiple SDGs and at least two of the three social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. They also include features that reflect the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda, such as a focus on the needs of the most vulnerable to leave no one behind; partnerships that attract, mobilize, or catalyze additional financing for the SDGs; and/or other factors that will enable the project or program to be scaled up or replicated.

A. People

New life. A mother looks over her newborn in a hospital in the Kyrgyz Republic (photo by Rasanakunov Kanat Djaparovich).

Figure 8: ADB Support for People-Related Sustainable Development Goals in 2019

TVET = technical and vocational education and training.

Source: Asian Development Bank. 2020. 2019 Development Effectiveness Review: Scorecard and Related Information.

1. Context

Regional progress. Investing in human capital and ensuring access to services that allow people to realize their full potential is imperative. These efforts are closely related to the SDGs focused on promoting prosperity and eradicating poverty in all its forms, discussed further in section II C. Asia and Pacific DMCs have been working to expand access to health care. The quality of universal health coverage service coverage has improved, although coverage remains incomplete and uneven (footnote 3). Realizing the economic potential of women can drive prosperity, yet only 50% of women participate in the formal labor force and gender pay gaps persist. Women have had to take on even more unpaid care and have been affected in many other ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational enrollment rates in the region made significant progress although lower secondary graduation rates stagnated, and there is a recognized need to focus on the quality of educational attainment and equipping people with the skills needed to thrive in fast-changing economies. Despite improvements, food security remains a major challenge, highlighted by disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2016, about 489 million people remained undernourished and about 20% of children under the age of 5 were stunted.¹⁵ Rural–urban transitions across the region complicate efforts to ensure social inclusion and realize human potential. COVID-19 has posed major challenges in all these areas, highlighting glaring gaps in social protection systems and food insecurity.

Key features of ADB’s approach. The SDGs commit to end poverty and hunger and to ensure that all human beings can fulfill their potential in dignity, equality, and in a healthy environment. Strategy 2030, in turn, envisions an inclusive Asia and the Pacific where extreme poverty is eradicated. ADB’s first operational priority of Strategy 2030 aims to address remaining poverty and reduce inequalities by increasing the emphasis on human development and social inclusion, facilitating quality job creation, improving education, achieving better health for all, and strengthening social protection systems and service delivery for those in need.

ADB helps its DMCs reduce hunger; enhance the efficiency, productivity, and sustainability of their agriculture; and ensure food safety for their citizens through programming related to operational priority 5—promoting rural development and food security. Operational priority 2 promotes gender equality, both by encouraging gender mainstreaming throughout ADB’s operations—setting an ambitious target that at least 75% of ADB’s committed sovereign and nonsovereign operations will support gender equality by 2030—and through a strong focus on women’s empowerment, as envisioned in SDG 5. ADB’s fourth operational priority promotes livable cities in a rapidly urbanizing region, emphasizing the need for integrated solutions to realize green, competitive, resilient, and inclusive cities that address the social dimensions of urbanization, such as human centered design, and the particular needs of women, aging populations, people with disabilities, and migrants.

Investing in human capital is inextricable from efforts to eradicate poverty.

2. Investing in Human Capital: Health and Education

Support for education (SDG 4) and health (SDG 3) throughout people’s lives as their needs change is fundamental to human capital development. Box 3 highlights how ADB is supporting the elderly, a vulnerable group targeted under operational priority 1. ADB has also created systems to track its efforts to target other vulnerable groups, such as people with disabilities. It supports diverse knowledge work aimed at helping countries identify opportunities to understand and manage changing demographics.¹⁶

Keeping fit. An elderly man does tai chi in People's Square of Urumqi in the People's Republic of China (photo by Deng Jia).

Box 3: Leaving No One Behind: Supporting Older People

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is facing a major transition in its demographic structure. In 2017, 158 million people—11% of the population—were aged 65 years and above, and the elderly share of the population is projected to reach 14% in 2025 and 21% in 2035. At the same time, rapid urbanization, increased migration, and expanded female labor market participation have eroded traditional family support systems for the elderly.

Through the Hubei Yichang Comprehensive Elderly Care Demonstration Project, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is working with the Yichang Municipal Government to establish a comprehensive, three-tiered elderly care service. The project will improve home- and community-based care services and facilities, including for elderly people suffering dementia; build a geriatric hospital and nursing home; and help develop a management scheme to ensure proper services and monitoring.

ADB is also supporting the Demonstration of Guangxi Elderly Care and Health Care Integration and Public–Private Partnership Project to establish an elderly care facility in Hezhou Municipality and improve coordinated care services and facilities in the municipalities of Hezhou and Nanning. The project will build four elderly care facilities and a medical institution with age-friendly designs and will showcase how coordinated care can be developed to provide better long-term services for the elderly. This is the first initiative in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to use public–private partnership principles and standards for elderly care.

Source: Asian Development Bank.

In Bhutan, ADB is helping to improve health services, especially in underserved areas. Aligned with Bhutan’s efforts to progress toward universal health coverage based on the principles of primary health care, the Health Sector Development Program aims to establish five satellite clinics on the outskirts of urban areas, upgrade primary health care facilities, provide medical equipment, improve quality assurance, and promote healthy behavior changes. The program includes policy measures to enhance disease surveillance, develop a national e-health strategy, and achieve equitable health financing and a sustainable Bhutan Health Trust Fund with a core mandate to finance vaccines and essential medicines.

The adoption of digital health information systems also strengthens health care systems. In Tonga, the Introducing eGovernment through Digital Health Project aims to improve health services delivery by helping the government develop a gender-sensitive digital health strategy and improve legislation, policies, and regulations related to the health sector and the use of digital solutions. Such solutions can help better manage patient care, collect data for strategic decision-making, and track progress toward universal health coverage.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted ADB to substantially scale up its health sector engagement and mitigate the impact of the pandemic on SDG 3, as described in Box 4.

Box 4: ADB’s Health Sector Response to Coronavirus Disease

Bayanihan. ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa hands over donations to residents in Manila, Philippines affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (photo by Ariel Javellana).

As the development of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines progressed, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has allocated $20.3 million in technical assistance to help its developing member countries (DMCs) access the vaccines and establish systems to enable equitable and efficient vaccine distribution. In collaboration with the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX), Gavi, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and other partners, ADB is helping its DMCs conduct vaccine-related health system assessments and develop country readiness plans to strengthen their capacity to access, introduce, and safely deploy and deliver vaccines, and to monitor their rollout effectively.

In late 2020, ADB also launched the Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility, a $9 billion initiative to help the DMCs procure vaccines. The program includes a rapid response component that provides timely support for critical vaccine diagnostics, procurement, and transport from the place of purchase to the DMCs; and a project investment component to support investments in systems for delivery and administration of vaccines along with associated investments in capacity building, community outreach, and surveillance. The program may also help develop or expand vaccine manufacturing capacity in the DMCs.

Source: Asian Development Bank.

Education is also a key element of ADB’s support for human capital development. Quality education is an important enabler of progress across the SDGs, helping to foster entrepreneurship, industrial transformation, investment policy, and more sustainable urban development. Several recent ADB projects have focused on the intersection of innovation, technology, and skills development in sectors such as agriculture and health. Education is also a catalyst for the digital transformation that many countries are pursuing. ADB makes extensive investments in technical and vocational education and training in the context of its efforts to support decent jobs, which are discussed further in relation to ADB’s contributions to SDGs linked to prosperity.

In Armenia, ADB is assisting the government’s efforts to reform education and health services with a focus on helping women and girls. The Human Development Enhancement Program is helping the government lay the foundations to improve access to education and health services, remove structural impediments affecting the quality of services, improve financing and sector management, and promote healthy practices among children. Policy actions under this program will help expand preschool education coverage by adopting alternative preschool models, including community-based services. To improve the quality of education, new standards are being set for teachers, including teacher performance monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

The Sindh Secondary Education Improvement Project will construct secondary school blocks, in the most deprived districts in southern Sindh Province, Pakistan. These will feature solar power and gender-segregated sanitation facilities and prayer rooms. A notable part of this project is the education management organizations (EMO) program, under which the government contracts private partners to operate public schools. Although the EMO-operated schools are privately managed, students do not pa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures and Boxes
• Foreword
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• I. ADB’s Approach to the Sustainable Development Goals
• II. Highlights of ADB’s Support for the 2030 Agenda
• III. Reinforcing ADB’s Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals at a Critical Juncture
• Contributors
• Footnotes
• Back Cover