Insights from the United Nations Human Development Report for 2024

The latest progress report from the UN is a sobering and somewhat depressing look at global conditions, but can serve as a wakeup call for reforms and positive action.?

Pedro Concei??o, Director and lead author for the UN Human Development Report for 2024 argues passionately, “ We can do better than this. Better than runaway climate change and pandemics. Better than a spate of unconstitutional power transfers amid a rising, globalizing tide of populism. Better than cascading human rights violations and unconscionable massacres of people in their homes and civic venues, in hospitals, schools and shelters. We must do better than a world always on the brink, a socioecological house of cards. We owe it to ourselves, each other, our children, and their children.”

?The following are excerpts from this critical report that have implications for all of us.

?Achim Steiner, Director of the United Nations Development Program says “We live in a tightly knit world. Yet shared, interlinked global challenges, such as runaway climate change, are outpacing our institutions’ capacities to respond to them. We face “a global gridlock, exacerbated by growing polarization within our countries, which translates into barriers to international cooperation."

The human toll of this growing gridlock is huge. In lives lost, in opportunities forgone, in feelings of despair. After 20 years of progress, and for the first time on record, inequalities in Human Development Index (HDI) values— which measure a country’s health, education and standard of living—are growing between countries at the bottom and at the top of the index. Following the declines in global HDI value in 2020 and 2021, the world had the opportunity to build forward better. Instead, this Human Development Report shows that our global community is falling short. Deaths in battle and displacement from violent conflicts are increasing, reaching the highest levels since World War II. Leading up to a decade of increasingly higher temperatures, 2023 has been the hottest ever recorded. The path of human development progress shifted downwards and is now below the pre-2019 trend, threatening to entrench permanent losses in human development. Unless we change course.

?Wars

?From wars in Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere to gang violence and civil insecurity, peace and stability are under strain or breaking down at alarming rates. Large-scale conflicts involving major powers are escalating. War fatalities have jumped. Sadly, we live in a violent new era characterized by the highest level of state- armed conflicts since 1945 and a growing share of one- sided conflicts where unarmed civil populations are being attacked. Violence and peace can both be contagious. Major political events such as coups, revolutions and democratic transitions have a habit of spilling across borders. Conflicts often change the perception of war, making it more acceptable and increasing the likelihood of violent outbreaks elsewhere. In 2022 the number of forcibly displaced people globally reached 108 million, the highest level since World War II ?and more than two and a half times the level in 2010.

?War fatalities are growing at an alarming rate, including those borne by civilians. Armed conflicts are pushing millions of people into forced displacement. Over the past decade the number of countries involved in conflicts outside their borders has been rising, demonstrating how geopolitical interdependence plays out. Of the 55 state-based conflicts in 2022, 22 were internationalized, compared with 4 of 37 civil conflicts in 2000 — a more than fivefold increase. While countries depend on each other to break out of conflicts and move towards long- term peace agreements, it is not evident that foreign involvement helps achieve such objectives any faster. Instead, the proliferation of actors and conflicting motives, along with the risks of added military and funding, as well as perceptions of external support— have made conflicts more difficult to resolve. External involvement often leads to deadlier outcomes by prolonging conflicts' duration and increasing casualties.

?Conflicts are also intensified by nonstate actors, leading to more violent outcomes. Interdependence remains relevant before, during and after conflicts, and its mismanagement amplifies the overall impacts. Emerging from conflicts, persecution and human rights violations, the number of people forced to flee their homes reached 108 million, the highest level since World War II and two and a half times the number in 2010. And this does not include the latest displacements—Palestinians in Gaza and the Armenia refugee crisis, among others. One in five children globally lives in or is fleeing conflict. Forcibly displaced people (more than half of whom are internally displaced)—particularly those with acute needs, including pregnant women, the elderly, the very young, people with disabilities and people with chronic diseases— often face acute shortages of food, clean water, medicine, electricity and basic means for survival.

Millions of people, including children, who have been forced to flee their homes due to no fault of their own could live a life of dignity if countries (involved or not involved in conflicts) could find mutually agreeable solutions for displaced people. These issues come at a time of heightened hostility towards refugees, particularly in high-income countries, where the public discourse on refugees has become more polarized. Some 80 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted in mostly low- and middle-income countries. In 2024 the number of people needing humanitarian aid is expected to reach 300 million. Concurrent increases in funding are not commensurate with the sharp increases in humanitarian aid required. Drought on top of rising conflicts is escalating risks of food insecurity and disease outbreaks in many countries.

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Climate Change

?Last year was the hottest in more than 140 years. The average belies considerable regional differences that the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Climate Horizons platform projects will worsen under business- as-usual climate scenarios (figure O.2), with climate change resulting in an explosion of inequalities. The consequences of climate change are already shaking communities and societies, exacting social, emotional and mental tolls. Among the various stressors of climate change is a crippling eco- anxiety, a “generalized sense that the ecological foundations of existence are in the process of collapse.” Disappearing biodiversity, landscapes and ways of life can be paralysing, skewing major life decisions such as investing in school or having a child.

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Projections from the UNDP Human Climate Horizons platform show that if we continue on the current path of intense planetary pressures, climate change will have devastating—and highly unequal—impacts on human development. Even with moderate mitigation, almost 40 million people are expected to die because of higher temperatures from now to the end of the century. In a scenario of very high emissions, the death toll could surpass 190 million people. Moreover, the impacts are highly unequal. Climate change can result in an explosion of inequalities in human development, with the Arab States, South Asia and

Sub-Saharan Africa regions expected to see sharp increases in death rates. The effects of climate change are multidimensional. For example, the global mean sea level has already risen by 23 centimetres since the late 19th century. Even under a moderate emissions scenario, sea levels will continue to rise by 40.7 centimetres by century’s end. Sea level rise implies greater risk for permanent land inundation and extreme flooding. Coastal zones are among the world’s most densely populated areas and will be hit disproportionately. For some small island developing states, already vulnerable to climate change impacts because of their geographic location and their relative lack of resources to invest in adaptation, the share of the population living in 1-in-20 year floodplains may triple by century’s end.

?Polarization of Politics

?Effectively, this is a restriction on human development— in freedoms and possibilities in life owing to both the reality of human- induced planetary pressures and how that reality is mediated by technical reports, the popular press and political leaders. Narratives of shared futures rooted in denialism, fatalism or fearmongering leave little space for agency and imagination. Political systems mediate, for good or ill (or both), the impacts of crises on people, and the systems themselves are often shaken by crises, including those from mismanaged global interdependence. The destabilizing effects of shocks, alongside the perceived inability of institutions to protect people from them, can stir populism. Owing to a shock or other cause, populist turns often upset democratic norms and practices and tend to be very costly economically. In parallel, recent literature suggests that the economic losses of certain kinds of shocks are never fully recovered, that trajectories on growth or poverty reduction permanently downshift following crises. When crises and other shocks precede populist turns, and in some cases precipitate them, these populist turns can function as crisis refractors and compounders rather than buffers and mitigators, twisting and propagating shockwaves in an interdependent world.

?The Erosion of Democracy

?The erosion of democratic norms and practices is associated not so much with a crisis of support for democracy as an ideal but with a crisis in institutions perceived as not delivering on that ideal. There is an emerging democracy paradox: nearly 9 in 10 people believe that democracy is a fundamental pillar of political systems. But support for leaders who may bypass the fundamental rules of the democratic process has markedly increased. Today, more than half of those polled express support for such leaders. People are questioning some core principles of collective action. The increase in support for leaders who might undermine democratic norms and practices has been accompanied by a rise in preferences for military rule, which today reaches 39 percent of the population. This apparent paradox (commitment to democracy along with increasing support for leaders who undermine it) mirrors the gridlock in adjusting current institutions— not fit for purpose amid shifting patterns of interdependence— to the evolving demands from people around the world.

The Human Development Index

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The Power of Agency

?Agency is a cornerstone of human development. Albeit difficult to measure directly, agency in pursuit of collective action49 may be eroding, at least for a sizeable portion of people around the world. For many there is a sinking feeling— evident in widespread increases in self- reported measures of stress, worry and despair that options for exercising choice in their lives, based on what they have reason to value, is shrinking. From among a diminishing set of options, they are less sure—more insecure—that a choice they want to make can be realized. These are threats to the human psyche— to our sense of self and autonomy, to our sense of securely belonging and commitment to shared intentionality, to our ability to decide what we value and howwe can and do act on those values— of no less importance than the threats posed by a super typhoon, a disease outbreak or violence. Conventional metrics such as GDP or even the Human Development Index are missing something important that is being voiced loudly on the streets, at the ballot box and in the increase in support for leaders that may undermine democracy. Agency may be a way of understanding the gaps and, alongside concepts of insecurity, is an area ripe for innovative measurement. Indeed, across all regions human security and agency gaps go hand- in--hand. Now add inequality. There is a steep decline in the share of people reporting having very low control over their lives along the income distribution for the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution . That is, agency increases as income grows for the bottom 50 percent of the distribution. At the very bottom lack of agency is particularly heightened (agency gaps are three times greater among people in the lowest income decile than in decile 6 and above). Moreover, the share of people reporting having very high control over their lives is low and relatively equal for the bottom 50 percent of the population but rises with income for deciles 6 and above. Thus, income inequalities, which often intersect and are associated with other inequalities in human development, shape agency. To help narrow agency gaps, institutions need to be people-centred, co-owned and future oriented.

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