Conversation on the Human Development Report 2020

8 March 2021. UNDP and the European Commission jointly organized a virtual discussion around the Human Development Report 2020, ‘The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene’ and implications for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The COVID-19 crisis is exposing and exploiting existing inequalities, as well as weaknesses in social, economic, and political systems, and threatens reversals in human development. 

While its devastating effects have taken the world’s attention, other layered crises, from climate change to rising inequalities, continue to take their toll. For the first time in a relationship spanning 300,000 years, instead of the planet shaping humans, humans are shaping the planet. This is the Anthropocene: the age of humans. How should we react to this new age? Do we choose to strike out on bold new paths striving to continue human development while easing planetary pressures? Or do we choose to try—and ultimately fail—to go back to business as usual and be swept into a dangerous unknown? The new Human Development Report highlights that people can bring about the action we need if we are to live in balance with the planet in a fairer world. Nothing short of a great transformation – in how we live, work and cooperate – is needed to change the path we are on. The Report explores how to jumpstart that transformation.

Related: Human Development Report 2020

The report argues that as people and planet enter an entirely new geological epoch, the Anthropocene or the Age of Humans, it is time to for all countries to redesign their paths to progress by fully accounting for the dangerous pressures humans put on the planet, and dismantle the gross imbalances of power and opportunity that prevent change. 

To illustrate the point, the 30th anniversary edition of the Human Development Report, The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene, introduces an experimental new lens to its annual Human Development Index (HDI). By adjusting the HDI, which measures a nation’s health, education, and standards of living, to include two more elements: a country’s carbon dioxide emissions and its material footprint, the index shows how the global development landscape would change if both the wellbeing of people and also the planet were central to defining humanity’s progress. 

With the resulting Planetary-Pressures Adjusted HDI – or PHDI - a new global picture emerges, painting a less rosy but clearer assessment of human progress. For example, more than 50 countries drop out of the very high human development group, reflecting their dependence on fossil fuels and material footprint.