- Home
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Climate Action
Climate Action
Acknowledgements
How to make sense of producing a Human Development Report at a time of war? Not only of wars between and within countries but also with our planet with ourselves and with our future? These questions weighed heavily on our minds. But over time they strengthen the resolve of the team fuelled by the conviction that the recurring messages of successive Human Development Reports are more relevant than ever. They bear repeating and reaffirming because even though they may have been said many times before they seem to be pushed more and more into the background. The primacy of people as the purpose and agents of development. The crucial importance of enabling people to live free from want fear and indignity still relevant 30 years after the introduction of the concept of human security in the 1994 Human Development Report. Redressing inequalities in human development.
Foreword
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.
Breaking the gridlock: A snapshot of the 2023/2024 human development report
We can do better than this. Better than runaway climate change and pandemics. Better than a spate of unconstitutional transfers of power 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.
Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged
Divergence between the very high and the low human development index groups of countries after decades of convergence is going up. The path of improvement in the global average human development index has shifted downwards.
Global interdependence persists—but is being reshaped
People continue to live in globally interdependent societies. Despite a slowdown in economic globalization interdependence—rather than fraying—is being reconfigured by drivers that will persist well into the future.
Providing global public goods to manage interdependence
Mismanaged interdependence imposes costs or even setbacks to human development. But managing it can be enhanced by framing it as providing global public goods such as global peace and climate change mitigation as explicit goals.
Expanding agency for collective action
Enhancing human development—including agency—expands possibilities for people to act as “agents who can do effective things.” So how best to expand agency to foster collective action to address global challenges?
Breaking the gridlock to enhance collective action
Polarization divides societies into belligerent and opposing camps poisoning domestic and international cooperation.
Examining how to enhance collective action
Examining how to enhance collective action to manage interdependence can be explored through different assumptions about human behaviours interactions with institutions. Different explanations for behaviour can inform ways of advancing collective action to provide global public goods.
Human Development Report 2023/2024
Today collective action on challenges ranging from climate change mitigation to peace and security is frustratingly slow or stymied altogether. Lack of trust and polarization--both associated with insecurity--exacerbate the gridlock. Shared interlinked global challenges like the pandemic and its recovery are outpacing our willingness and our institutions capacities to respond to them.Why despite all our riches and technologies are we so stuck? How do we get unstuck? Is it possible to mobilize action to address globally shared challenges in a world that is intensively polarized? The 2023-2024 Human Development Report explores these issues and offers a platform for strategic discussion on how to move beyond narrow zero-sum thinking and support cooperation even as we have diverging interests and views. The e-book for this publication has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
Executive summary
As more countries commit to net-zero emissions and include ocean-based climate action in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) the energy transition of the fishing industry and its fleets is becoming a pressing issue. The fisheries sector is a contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because of its heavy reliance on fossil fuels.
Climate change, fishing fleets and fishing ports
Climate change has a significant impact on the fisheries sector fishing fleets and fishing ports. It is causing rising sea levels warmer water temperatures ocean acidification and deoxygenation which affect fishing activities especially in LDCs and SIDS.