Environment and Climate Change
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
The Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2024 provides an overview of current progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets in the Asia-Pacific region. The report shines the spotlight on success stories and trends and the unique challenges faced in the different parts of the region. It draws out priorities and opportunities for enhancing data availability on SDG indicators especially for the most vulnerable population groups which could help to shape more equitable and inclusive development pathways.
Acknowledgements
The Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) are very grateful to the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) for its financial support of the global data collection on voluntary sustainability standards and the production of this publication.
National trends and transformative actions
The success stories of individual countries demonstrate strategies to strengthen both data systems and policies to improve biodiversity and nature conservation public digital infrastructure social protection and access to education. Examples in this chapter from around the region illustrate these strengths. The integrated approach to climate change adaptation mitigation and marine and coastal biodiversity conservation in Maldives serves as a holistic model for climate action in SIDS. The establishment of national environmental portals in 14 Pacific SIDS highlights the value of enhancing regional collaboration and partnerships underpinning a much broader sustainable development effort.
Selected commodities grew, but slowly
This chapter examines the harvested area and the production volume of the selected commodities on an aggregate level. As multiple certification remains an issue for some commodities global totals were computed by adding the country minimums (leading to a global minimum value for each commodity) the country maximums (leading to a global maximum value for each commodity) and the country minimum–maximum averages (leading to a global average value for each commodity).