UN calls for urgent shift to planet-friendly development

Under huge pressure from Covid-19, climate change and natural destruction, warning lights for the planet and societies are "flashing red" - and now is the time to choose a safer, fairer path for human development, the United Nations said yesterday. 

"We are at an unprecedented moment in the history of humankind and in the history of our planet," it said in a report, urging efforts by governments, business and citizens to pursue a new kind of progress that protects the environment.

"The Covid-19 pandemic is the latest harrowing consequence of imbalances writ large," said the Human Development Report 2020, adding that the health catastrophe comes on top of pre-existing crises of global warming, species loss and inequality.

The report, which for the first time used a new global index factoring in environmental indicators, concluded that no country had yet been able to achieve a very high level of development without putting strain on natural resources.

"Many countries have achieved a great deal of progress but they also have done so at the expense of great damage to the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which produces the report.

Over the past three decades, the Human Development Index has ranked nations each year according to health, education and standards of living.

But this year, the new version draws on two additional elements: a country's per capita carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint, which measures the amount of things like fossil fuels and metal used to make the goods and services it consumes.

The results paint "a less rosy but clearer assessment of human progress", the UNDP said. More than 50 countries dropped out of the very high human development group as measured by the new index, reflecting their large impacts on the climate and nature.

They include, for example, small nations such as Singapore and Luxembourg, with high levels of trade, movement and fossil-fuel energy, as well as oil and gas-rich Gulf states. Australia fell 72 places in the ranking of about 190 nations, while the United States lost 45 places and Canada 40.