Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic crisis is threatening our progressive social, ecological and economic development toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Studies of its impacts on sustainable development in emerging economies and on fast-growing regional development, such as Southeast Asia or the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), are scarce to date. This paper aims to investigate the COVID-19 impacts and identify challenges and opportunities for possible sustainable recovery solutions with respect to the UN SDGs. We employed a qualitative research method through analytical literature reviews and in-depth interviews with 33 organizations. Our results reveal various pandemic effects, challenges and opportunities for cooperative regional sustainability development and recovery strategies, such as intra-trade strategy, green economy and public–private–people partnerships. The findings provide practical guidance on policy implications for transformative regional sustainability and innovative recovery strategies to achieve the sustainable development agendas (i.e., ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and UN 2030 Agenda). Overall, the paper contributes to advance our limited understanding in this realm and benefits diverse stakeholders toward our sustainable futures.
Highlights
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has adversely affected our world.The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has compromised all walks of life at all levels of our society far
Derived from the preceding discussion and data analysis, our study proposes that the cooperative regional sustainability development in Southeast Asia is much needed for post-COVID pandemic recovery in order to achieve the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) 2025 Vision and the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for sustainable development
To quickly revive from the crisis and prosper in the long run, our research suggests that the ASEAN community needs to take the priority on the people-centered and inclusive values and principles through adaptive capacity-building for resilience, linking to transforming quality education (SDG 4)
Summary
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has adversely affected our world. The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has compromised all walks of life at all levels of our society far. It has become the massive global health and development crisis that has prompted all governments to apply health and safety measures such as lockdowns, shelter in place, social distancing and limited foreign entries to prevent populations from the infection. The pandemic has affected health and had severe socio-economic and environmental impacts, globally, regionally and domestically [2]. The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global catastrophe and a development challenge for all nations [3,4]. Its impacts have severely affected our progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development
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