The UN Common Meeting on Tuesday formally launched a brand new data-driven “vulnerability” index that may assist small island states and creating nations achieve entry to low-interest financing.
The “Multidimensional Vulnerability Index” (MVI) is ready to behave as a complement to GDP and different growth metrics.
For the reason that Nineties, small island creating states (SIDS) that aren’t poor sufficient when it comes to GDP per capita to entry low-interest growth financing however nonetheless face vulnerability to exterior shocks like local weather change have been calling for such a measure.
After years of worldwide discussions to outline the contours of the brand new instrument, the Common Meeting lastly adopted a decision by consensus on Tuesday that mandates the UN and a committee of impartial consultants preserve it updated.
Primarily based on the findings of a UN high-level panel, it incorporates indicators linked to a state’s structural vulnerabilities and lack of financial, environmental and social resilience.
These elements embody import dependency, publicity to excessive climate occasions and pandemics, impacts of regional violence, refugees, demographic strain, water and arable land sources and mortality of kids below 5.
Though initially proposed by small island states, the MVI “goals to seize exogenous vulnerabilities and lack of resilience to exogenous shocks of all creating nations, in order to make sure credibility and comparability,” the decision says.
The decision notes that use of the index is voluntary, however calls on organs of the UN and multilateral growth banks to think about using the brand new instrument to enrich current insurance policies.
In a press release, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) welcomed the passage of the decision as a “monumental step ahead.”
“AOSIS holds no notion of a rose-tinted world. We all know that the MVI is not going to strip away the system we all know,” stated Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr Pa’olelei Luteru, Samoa’s ambassador to the UN, who chairs the alliance.
“We want to see the MVI deployed in real-world contexts, and thru its testing and eventual refinement, that it’ll unlock a brand new mind-set and appearing on growth,” he stated.
