90% of countries see decline in human development

Multiple crises are halting progress on human development, which is going backwards in the overwhelming majority of countries, according to the UN.

The 2021-22 human development report "Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World," released Thursday, paints a picture of a global society lurching from crisis to crisis, and which risks heading towards increasing deprivation and injustice.

For the first time in the 32 years that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been calculating it, the Human Development Index, which measures a nation's health, education, and standard of living, has declined globally for two years in a row.

Human development has fallen back to its 2016 levels, reversing much of the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN report finds that nine out of 10 countries have fallen behind on life expectancy, education and living standards.

Heading the list of events causing major global disruptions are Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which have come on top of sweeping social and economic shifts, dangerous planetary changes, and massive increases in polarization.

This signals a deepening crisis for many regions, and Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia have been hit particularly hard as 30 years of continuous human progress is unravelling.

"The world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises," said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator. "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."

The UN study's authors identified three layers of today's "uncertainty complex" – dangerous planetary change, the transition to new ways of organising industrial societies, and the intensification of political and social polarization.

"It is not just that typhoons are getting bigger and deadlier through human impact on the environment," the report said. "It is also as if, through our social choices, their destructive paths are being directed at the most vulnerable among us."