UNDP's COVID-19 Adaptation and response: What worked and how?

In 2019 the world committed to a Decade of Action to push for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a commitment that came in recognition that the achievement of the 2030 Agenda was becoming increasingly unlikely. The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening this commitment, pressuring past SDG gains in many countries and threatening further regression in yet more. COVID-19 has required UNDP and many of its projects to ‘pivot’ to address the new and prominent issue of a global pandemic and its socio-economic consequences, especially on the most vulnerable. The pandemic has led many projects and agencies to be flexible and innovative in addressing this new challenge, assigning funds for COVID-19-related support or broadening target groups to include those impacted or to include new needs. This paper explores some of the emerging evaluative evidence exploring the challenges faced by UNDP’s projects and programmes during COVID-19 and whether, when the world emerges from the pandemic, projects could return to the objectives they were once designed for, having reassigned budgets away from core goals, expanded beneficiaries and expectations or having lost commitments from partners now focused on the pandemic. This paper offers some early lessons from UNDP’s COVID-19 adaptation and response during 2020 and through to May 2021: What worked and how?