KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 9): Human development has fallen back to its 2016 levels, reversing much of the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals which make up the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations’ (UN) blueprint for a fairer future for people and the planet.

In the flagship UN report on human development released on Thursday (Sept 8), the UN said that for the first time in the 32 years that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been calculating it, the Human Development Index (HDI), which measures a nation’s health, education, and standard of living, has declined globally for two years in a row.

It said this signals a deepening crisis for many regions, and Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia have been hit particularly hard.

UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said the world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises.

“We have seen with the cost of living and energy crises that, while it is tempting to focus on quick fixes like subsidising fossil fuels, immediate relief tactics are delaying the long-term systemic changes we must make,” he said.

Steiner went on to call for a renewed sense of global solidarity to tackle “interconnected, common challenges”, but acknowledged that the international community is currently “paralysed in making these changes”.

He said the study points to insecurity and polarisation of views hampering efforts to bring about the solidarity that is needed to tackle the big global challenges, with data suggesting that those who are most insecure are more likely to hold extremist views.

This phenomenon was observed even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now into its third year, the pandemic is described in the report as “a window into a new reality”, rather than a detour from business as usual.

The development of effective vaccines is hailed as a monumental achievement, credited with saving around 20 million lives, and a demonstration of the huge power of innovation married to political will.

At the same time, the rollout of the vaccines laid bare the huge inequities of the global economy. Access has been paltry in many low-income countries, and women and girls have suffered the most, shouldering more household and caregiving responsibilities, and facing increased violence.

The UN said the successive waves of new Covid-19 variants, and warnings that future pandemics are increasingly likely, have helped to compound a generalised atmosphere of uncertainty that was growing in response to the dizzying pace of technological change, its effect on the workplace, and steadily growing fears surrounding the climate crisis.

The study’s authors warn that the global upheaval of the pandemic is nothing compared to what the world would experience if a collapse in biodiversity were to occur, and societies found themselves having to solve the challenge of growing food at scale, without insect pollinators.

“For the first time in human history anthropogenic [man-made] existential threats loom larger than those from natural hazards,” said the report.

Three layers of today’s “uncertainty complex” are identified: dangerous planetary change, the transition to new ways of organising industrial societies, and the intensification of political and social polarisation.

The report said it is not just that typhoons are getting bigger and deadlier through human impact on the environment.

“It is also as if, through our social choices, their destructive paths are being directed at the most vulnerable among us,” it said.

The UN said uncertainty is not new, but its dimensions are taking ominous new forms today.

It said a new “uncertainty complex” is emerging, never before seen in human history.

Constituting it are three volatile and interacting strands: the destabilising planetary pressures and inequalities of the Anthropocene, the pursuit of sweeping societal transformations to ease those pressures and the widespread and intensifying polarisation.

The agency said this new uncertainty complex and each new crisis it spawns are impeding human development and unsettling lives the world over.

It said in the wake of the pandemic, and for the first time ever, the global HDI value declined — for two years straight.

Many countries experienced ongoing declines on the HDI in 2021. Even before the pandemic, feelings of insecurity were on the rise nearly everywhere.

Many people feel alienated from their political systems, and in another reversal, democratic backsliding has worsened, it said.