The 2020 UN Human Development Report (HDR), namely, The Next Frontier—Human Development and the Anthropocene, the 30th anniversary edition, was released on December 15, 2020 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The report reflects average achievement in key dimensions of human development—a long and healthy life (assessed by life expectancy at birth), being knowledgeable (measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more, and expected years of schooling for children of school-entering age), and a decent standard of living (measured by gross national income per capita). The report presents the geometric mean of normalised indices for each of the three dimensions mentioned above, and offers a new measurement of human progress, which illustrates how challenging is it to address poverty and inequality while easing planetary pressure. It warns that world leaders must take bold steps to reduce the immense pressure being exerted on the environment and the natural world, or else humanity’s progress will stall.
As per the report, no country in the world has yet achieved very high human development without putting immense strain on the planet. However, this wrong could be righted and could pave the way for human development. People and planet have entered an entirely new geological epoch, the Anthropocene (the age of humans). So, all the countries should redesign their paths to progress by fully accounting for the dangerous pressures, exerted on the planet by humans. For this purpose, the report introduces an experimental new lens by including two more elements—a country’s carbon dioxide emissions and its material footprint. Thus, the report shows that the global development landscape would change if the well-being of people and the planet were central to defining humanity’s progress.
According to Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index (PHDI), over 50 countries dropped out of the very high human development group, because of depending on fossil fuels and material footprint. The top five countries on the index are: Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Iceland.
On the other hand, countries like Costa Rica, Moldova, and Panama moved upwards by at least 30 places, which proves that lighter pressure is possible on the planet. The need is to transform social norms, values, government, and financial incentives.
As per the International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures, the full cost of publicly financed subsidies for fossil fuels, including indirect costs, is estimated at over US$ 5 trillion a year, i.e., 6.5 per cent of global GDP. By 2100, the poorest countries in the world could experience up to 100 more days of extreme weather due to climate change each year. This figure could be cut to half if the Paris Agreement on climate change is fully implemented and forests are properly taken care of. Reforestation alone could account for about a quarter of the pre-2030 actions with regard to stopping global warming from reaching above pre-industrial levels.
Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI) is HDI value adjusted by the level of carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint per capita to account for excessive human pressures on the planet. It is being regarded as an incentive for transformation.
Due to inequalities, within and between countries, people who have more, capture the benefits of nature and export the costs, choking opportunities for people who have less, and rendering them unable to do anything about it.
Highlights
Confronting a new reality: people versus trees Given the complex and interdependent relationship between people and planet, between socioeconomic and natural systems, it can be said that dangerous planetary and social imbalances are linked with each other. They interact and often reinforce each other. Planetary imbalances engender risks that can materialise in shocks to human development, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is considered to have reversed development progress by decades, and has hit more harshly, more quickly, and more deeply those already vulnerable, marginalised or with few resources and capabilities, leading to increasing inequalities in human development.
Human agency is at the core of the processes of change and transformation, to enhance equity in human development while easing pressures on the planet. Thus, reassessing capabilities with a new sense of possibility and responsibility to respect the planet, reaching those who have the fewest opportunities, and eliminating the persistent patterns of inequality, discrimination, and exclusion are the need of the hour.
Decoupling economic growth from emissions In order to ease pressure on the planet, decoupling economic growth from emissions and material use is of crucial importance, in order to alleviate pressure on the planet while improving living standards. Green growth or green economy approaches should shift towards more resource-efficient and less emission-intensive production and consumption to allow for relative or absolute decoupling. According to a study, between 2005 and 2015, 18 developed countries—Sweden, Romania, France, Ireland, Spain, UK, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Italy, the US, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Finland, and Croatia—brought about absolute decline in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, both due to production within the country (territorial emissions) and those that account for the effects of trade in shifting high-emission production activities to other countries and then importing goods, produced elsewhere (consumption-based emissions).
Impact of disturbances in life systems and climate change Disturbances in life systems and climate change have resulted in many shocks. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is a glaring example. These disturbances have affected the main components of human development with unprecedented magnitude, synchronicity, and global reach. Simulations of the pandemic’s real-time impact indicate that all the capabilities accounted for in the index were severely affected during 2020, though systemic risk had been on the rise even before the pandemic—often overshadowed by average progress in economic development and poverty reduction. In most countries, the GDP per capita is lower than in the counterfactual without climate change, particularly in lower income countries (17–31 per cent). Overall, cross-country income inequality is estimated to be 25 per cent higher due to climate change.
For developing countries, the effect of climate change (measured as days of extreme temperatures below -0 °C and above +35 °C) on human development may probably be heterogeneous with a greater burden. Without mitigation, the number of days a year with extreme temperatures is expected to increase by 100 in low human development countries, 66 in medium human development countries, and 37 in high human development countries (median values) by 2100. This number is expected to fall by 16 in very high human development countries. However, the number of days with extreme temperatures in developing countries is expected to increase by 49 days in low human development countries and 21 days in medium human development countries by the year 2100.
Mortality The effects on mortality might be regressive due to greater exposure and lower ability of poor countries to adapt to the impact of natural hazards an temperature rise. In developed countries, the number of deaths is expected to decline by 2100 due to adaptation spending to cope with higher temperatures. On the one hand, the economic burden of adaptation may be much lower in low-income countries, but, on the other, the human cost in terms of lives lost may be extremely high.
Sea level rise Sea levels are expected to rise considerably in the coming decades due to climate change, which has already caused a rise of 11–16 cm in the 20th century. As an estimate, the sea level may increase in the range of 50–100 cm in the 21st century. It could also reach 2 metres in some (extreme) scenarios of no-mitigation and early instability of the Antarctic ice sheet.
Over a billion people live in contiguous areas along the coast that are less than 10 metres above sea level. More than three-quarters of people reside at low elevation—less than 5 metres above sea level. Similarly, the number of those who are vulnerable to permanent sea level rise is estimated to increase from 110 million to more than 200 million by 2100. Globally, the number of additional people on land at risk may probably increase by 80 million in the high mitigation scenario, by 90–140 million in the moderate mitigation scenario, and by 120–230 million people in the no-mitigation scenario.
Increase in hunger The number of undernourished people increased from 628 million in 2014 to 688 million in 2019, an increase of 60 million in only five years. Estimates for 2020 range from 780 million to 829 million (including the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic). By 2030, 900 million people could be undernourished. Similarly, 2 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure in 2019, i.e., 367 million more than in 2014. It shows that hunger is increasing and impacting a large share of the global population. The increasing extreme weather events and change in environmental conditions are the major factors to contribute to poverty and hunger. Due to these factors weather no more supports our crop production.
COVID-19-led human development inequalities Environmental hazards exacerbate existing within-country inequalities as was witnessed during the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic: in the US, Black and African American, Hispanic, and Latino people are nearly three times as likely as white people to test positive for COVID-19 and five times as likely to be hospitalised as white people. In Latin America, the pandemic spread across rural indigenous communities, home to nearly 42 million people, 80 per cent of them in Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. In Peru, 75–80 per cent of the population in villages with the indigenous communities of Caimito, Pucacuro, and Cantagallo was infected. In Mexico, indigenous people who contracted COVID-19 had a higher risk of pneumonia, hospitalisation, and death. Women and girls were disproportionately affected because of their traditional roles and responsibilities, including around three-quarters of unpaid care work at home. Consequently, the female labour force participation rate reduced in Mexico, Chile, and Colombia by 10 per cent because of the lockdowns.
School closures affected about 90 per cent of children worldwide. While some had the opportunity to continue learning online, others experienced an almost complete loss of formal learning during 2020. As an estimate, short-term out-of-school rate in primary education was 20 per cent in high human development countries, compared with 86 per cent in low human development countries. This might lead to a loss of key capabilities and of effective empowerment for the first generation embarking on the human development journey in the Anthropocene.
Food systems About half the world’s food production depends on mineral micronutrient fertilisers like nitrogen (N2), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K), which have a disruptive effect on biogeochemical cycles and the local environment. The earth’s natural nitrogen cycle steered by microbial processes is disrupted. The use of nitrogen fertiliser increased by about 800 per cent from 1960 to 2000, in growing wheat, rice, and maize.
The fertiliser abuse began in the early 20th century, when the Haber-Bosch industrial process (directly synthesising ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen) was developed by the German physical chemist Fritz Haber, that enabled the production of ammonia, which is a chemically reactive and a very usable form of nitrogen. It was to be synthesised using atmospheric nitrogen, heralding the age of large-scale production and application of agricultural fertilisers. Since then, reactive nitrogen has increased 120 per cent in the earth system, over the Holocene baseline, leaving the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle in 2.5 billion years.
The Holocene refers to the last 11,700 years of the earth’s history since the end of the last major glacial epoch, or ‘ice age’. Though there have been small-scale climate shifts like the ‘Little Ice Age’ between about 1200 and 1700 A.D., the Holocene has been a relatively warm period in between ice ages.
It ends up in nitrogen-limited ecosystems, leading to unintentional fertilisation, loss of terrestrial biodiversity, and lower quality surface water and ground water in coastal ecosystems. About 4 million new paediatric asthma cases a year (64 per cent of them from urban centres) are attributable to nitrogen dioxide pollution, the world over.
Biodiversity The report noted that biodiversity reduces disaster risk, enhances ecosystem protective functions, and improves ecological resilience and community resilience. Seagrass, for instance, ensures the generation of oxygen, affects fisheries’ efficiency, and captures sand, dirt, and silt particles, leading to water quality improvement. Indonesia is home to the world’s largest concentration of seagrass, consisting of more than 30,000 square kilometres (10 per cent of the world’s seagrass). But only 40 per cent of Indonesian seagrass is healthy. Different combinations of seagrass species were transplanted in 2013 in Indonesia. The survival and coverage of seagrass increased with the number of species transplanted, which proved that species richness is important for restoration.
Water availability and its quality Water covers about 70 per cent of the earth’s surface but less than 1 per cent is available as freshwater because of increasing pressure from households and productive activities. Enhancing availability and quality of water is a major challenge.
Global water use has increased six times over the last 100 years. Some 80 per cent of wastewater is released back into the environment and about half of it is appropriated for human use on yearly basis.
Water pollution in rivers increased more than 50 per cent between 1990–2010 in Africa, Asia, and Latin America due to agriculture, economic activity, population growth, and so on.
Some 64–71 per cent of natural wetland area worldwide has been lost due to human activity since 1900.
About 4 billion people (60 per cent) live in regions with nearly permanent water stress, and 3 billion people lack basic handwashing facilities at home. Global demand for water is expected to surpass supply by 40 per cent by 2030. Similarly, about 6 billion people might face clean water scarcity by 2050. Therefore, enhancing water’s availability and quality is a major challenge.
Food security Biological diversity including, soil microbials, genetic seed divesting, pollinators, crop, livestock and fist etc., has underpinned global food security at all levels. More than 7,000 species are eaten today, but only wheat, rice, and maize now provide more than half of our calories, and just 12 plant crops and five animal species account for 75 per cent of our entire planetary food system.
For instance, in 1900 seed growers in the US offered 3,879 varieties of 10 common vegetables in 1983 that number came down to 310.
Populations of wild crop and livestock relatives, plants, and animals are also decreasing. There is a sharp decline in pollination due to use of pesticides. About 85 per cent of the global food crops, consumed by humans, rely on animal-pollinated food and pollinated crops which account for 35 per cent of global food production with over 90 per cent of availability of vitamin C, and over 70 per cent vitamin A. Loss of pollinators would mean a decline in production by more than 90 per cent for 12 per cent of globally leading crops.
Forests are important for food security as more than 1.25 billion people depend directly on them for shelter, livelihoods, water, fuel, and food security. Wild foods provide a wide range of nutrients and micronutrients to more than 2 billion people who experience micronutrient malnutrition. Similarly, wild animals provide more than 6 million tonnes of food a year to communities in the Congo and Amazon Basins alone.
Tropical forests are increasingly vanishing—over 60 million hectares since 2002.
Pastoralist activities, carried out by more than 200 million people worldwide, are essential to food security, especially in dryland areas, such as, the Horn of Africa. But they are also some of the most vulnerable to climate change. Increasing demand for animal products, droughts, and climate variability have put pressure on pastoralist systems.
Territorial and net national emissions Today, global carbon emissions from human activities amount to about 56 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or about 7 tonnes per capita a year. By definition, territorial emissions must equal net emissions at the global level. Presently, total territorial emissions for North America are 7.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (about 15 per cent of the world total) and for Europe, the emissions are 4.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (10 per cent of the world total). Net emissions are 8 per cent above territorial emissions in North America and 27 per cent above territorial emissions in Europe if imported emissions are considered.
In Europe, there is a relatively clear downward trend in territorial emissions since 1990, but net emissions linked with Europeans’ lifestyles have actually been stable over the past three decades. In the US also, territorial emissions have been stable with important variations and a slight increase overall in net emissions in the past three decades. China’s net emissions (8 gigatonnes) are 34 per cent below its territorial emissions (12.5 gigatonnes), compared with 19 per cent in India and 15 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although net emissions are lower than territorial emissions in China and India, they have followed a similar trend over the past three decades with a sharp increase in the 1990s and 2000s.
If emissions linked with wealth ownership and investment are considered, emissions at the top of the income distribution may be quite substantial. The annual emissions of the wealthiest 1 per cent of individuals in 2019 averaged 146 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita, which was 110 in 1980 (responsible for more than 20 per cent of global emissions). On the contrary, the global poorest 50 per cent emits on an average 1.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita a year, a hundredth of what the wealthiest 1 per cent emit and just 9 per cent of global emissions. This group’s emissions have remained stable over the past five decades. The world’s poorest individuals emit about as much today as they did in 1980, whereas the annual emissions of the richest 1 per cent of individuals have increased on an average by 35 tonnes per capita.
In the middle 40 per cent of the income distribution, individuals emitted 7 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita on average, or about 41 per cent of global emissions in 2020. The top wealthiest 10 per cent individuals emitted 37 tonnes per capita, (51 per cent of global emissions). Fossil fuels for heating, cooking, transportation, and the consumption of goods were major factors for the emissions of the bottom 50 per cent, whereas the emissions of richer individuals are embedded in the assets they own and the investments they make. That’s why investment-related emissions totalled 73 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita among the wealthiest 1 per cent of individuals, or about half of their total emissions. This share has been increasing for the past forty years.
Stimulus packages The global COVID-19 pandemic affected global energy demand which was expected to contract by 6 per cent in 2020, the largest drop in more than 7 decades. Greenhouse gas emissions were expected to reduce by 8 per cent in 2020 across the world. This much reduction should be maintained every year from 2020 to 2030 to keep global warming below 1.5 0C. But out of more than 300 policies in G20 countries, 4 per cent were deemed ‘green’ and 4 per cent ‘brown’, while 92 per cent were deemed ‘colourless’. Climate experts opine that pollution and emissions could bounce back after the COVID-19 pandemic due to a carbon-driven recovery and the relaxation of environmental regulation. So, despite reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, the overall climate impact would depend on the greenness of recovery packages and investment choices.
A limited number of policy responses which targeted the environment like in Kenya, where US$ 8 million were spent to enhance the provision of water facilities, US$ 9 million for flood control measures, and US$ 5 million for a Greening Kenya Campaign. Barbados announced a massive environmental clean-up programme. On the other hand, some measures actually harmed the environment in the short term.
In Vietnam, a deduction of 30 per cent of the current environmental protection tax was allowed for jet fuel between August and December 2020. In Fiji, though the government cut the environmental tax, it eased credit for renewable energy businesses. The greenness of emergency rescue packages should be much higher than 4 per cent as documented. The report also pinpoints to clean physical renovations and retrofits, education and training, natural capital and ecosystem resilience, and clean research and development as key investment priorities.
India and the HDI 2020
As per the UNDP, India’s journey in human development between 1990 and 2019 was as follows:
India was ranked 131 on the HDI, 2020. With an HDI value of 0.645, the country fell in the medium human development category.
The HDI value of India has increased from 0.429 in 1990 to 0.645 in 2019.
- As against India’s rank of 131, Pakistan was placed at 154 and Bangladesh at 133. The HDI of India is above the South Asian average (0.641) and above the average value of the medium HDI category countries (0.631).
- In terms of health measured by life expectancy at birth, the females are measured at 71 years, while males are at 68.5 years.
- The expected years of schooling also rose by 4.5 years. The expected years of schooling for males in India were valued at 11.7 years, while for females, they were 12.6 years. However, mean years of schooling for males were 8.7 years and for females, 5.4 years.
- The estimated gross national income (GNI) per capita for males, in 2019, was at 10,702 (2017 PPP US$) and for females 2,331 (2017 PPP US$).
- The Gender Development Index (GDI) value of India is 0.820: 0.573 for females and 0.699 for males. It is lower than the average GDI for South Asia which is 0.824 and that for medium HDI countries, 0.835.
- The Gender Inequality Index (GII), taken on three measures—economic activity, reproductive health, and empowerment—valued the country at 0.488, giving it 123rd place among 162 nations. Economic activity, measured by the labour market participation, stood for Indian males at 76.1 per cent and for females at 20.5 per cent. The index measured reproductive health using maternal mortality ratio at 133 deaths per 1 lakh live births and adolescent birth rate at 13.2 births per 1,000 women (aged 15–19). In terms of empowerment, the percentage of female seats in Parliament was at 13.5 per cent. With at least some secondary education, females and males (both aged 25 and older) were 27.7 per cent and 47 per cent respectively.
- Solar capacity in India increased from 2.6 gigawatts in March 2014 to 30 gigawatts in July 2019, achieving its target of 20 gigawatts four years ahead of schedule. In 2019, India had been ranked 5th for installed solar capacity. (In 2008, India had launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change. Under the Paris Agreement, India had pledged to reduce the emission intensity of its GDP from the 2005 level by 33–35 per cent by 2030 and to obtain 40 per cent of electric power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030).
Measures needed Some of the suggestions and observations of the report are as follows:
- There is a need to shift towards (1) renewable energy, the goal being decarbonisation and moving towards solar energy, and (2) closing material cycles; these are important for transformation change to ease planetary pressures.
- A circular economy can effectively decouple production from planetary pressures. It requires closing loops through reuse and recycling all along the supply chain to form circular supply chains. But strong incentives for a circular economy cannot simply displace linear economic activities to places lacking those incentives.
- Digital technologies, from mobile payments to crowdfunding may directly ease planetary pressures. This was evident during the Covid-19 pandemic when they ensured connectivity in work, education, health care.
- The ‘greenness’ of emergency rescue packages should be much more than 4 per cent of the 300 policies in G20 countries that are deemed green. In this context, major investment priorities are clean physical renovations and retrofits, education and training, clean R&D, and natural capital and ecosystem resilience.
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