Our Vice President for Policy and Strategic Initiatives unpacks five key global issues to watch in 2022, laying out both the challenges and opportunities of global cooperation in ensuring an equitable, sustainable global response and recovery.
As if 2020 and 2021 weren’t unpredictable and challenging enough, there is no doubt that 2022 will be another year of tests: from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to worsening climate impacts, devastating humanitarian crises, and the continued unraveling of hard-won gains on everything from curbing poverty to closing the gender divide. The coming year will also test our commitment and resolve in our ability to galvanize and build trust within and across communities to address the multitude of challenges that demand we work together.
In the year ahead, here are five key issues to watch.
1. COVID-19 RESPONSE AND RECOVERY REMAIN PARAMOUNT
As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the remarkable speed at which vaccines were developed and the rapid design and implementation of revolutionary new partnership models — including the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and its COVAX pillar — to ensure equitable access to tests, treatments, and vaccines. And yet this year was another cautionary tale for us all. Instead of global solidarity led by science, we saw slow and fragmented action, tepid leadership, and geopolitical infighting. These realities hindered our collective ability to prevent and slow the Delta and Omicron variants, get shots in arms, and protect the world’s most vulnerable people. As a result, reported cases of COVID-19 have surged to more than 270 million people worldwide, and the death toll has surpassed 5 million — though we know the real tolls are far higher.
2022 must be the year that we close the massive gaps in the global pandemic response and meet the global target of getting 70% of people in every country vaccinated by midyear. Without meeting this goal, we are resigning ourselves to a vicious cycle. To meet this target, we need to tackle the vexing persistence of vaccine inequality head-on. While 66% of people in high-income countries had had at least one dose in arms as of Dec. 15, only 9% in low-income countries had. Marshaling high-level leadership of this response will be paramount.