Human Development in the Anthropocene

Session Notes Human Development in the Anthropocene: Transformations to Expand Human Freedoms in Balance with the Planet Virtual Regional Consultation for Europe and CIS on the 2020 Human Development Report Presentation Pedro Conceição, Director, Human Development Report Office, UNDP Panelists Panelists Prof. Jaya Krishnakumar, Full Professor of Econometrics, University of Geneva Dr. Bina Desai, Head of Department, Policy and Research, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Geneva Dr. Rosie Day, Senior Lecturer in Environment and Society, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham Moderated by Mirjana Spoljaric Egger Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations; Assistant Administrator of UNDP and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS Introductory Presentation – Pedro Conceição • There are three questions with which we are struggling in this report: o What does a Human Development narrative look like in the Anthropocene? o What are the implications for action of a potentially new Human Development narrative? o What are the implications for metrics? • What does the Human Development narrative look like in the Anthropocene? o The HD concept is fairly simple, but powerful. It is based on the idea that people are the ultimate ends of development, and that we should focus on these ends, not on means such as income, to both assess progress and as an evaluative framework for policies. o Development is then seen as a process of expanding freedoms to enable people to be and do what they have reason to value. This is called capabilities in Human Development literature. o From the first report 30 years ago, aspects related to sustainability and the environment have made their way to the report in different ways. E.g: the link between environmental degradation and poverty in developing countries and overconsumption in rich countries. HD and links to water and climate change have also been developed. o However, now we have something novelty. We confront the Anthropocene. The core of the concept is that human activity is interacting with the planet in ways which are disrupting planetary processes at a very fundamental level. Examples of this include climate change, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss. o This reality intersects with existing inequalities in Human Development, described in the 2019 HDR. Many of these interactions with the planet may be deepening or widening these 1 inequalities. For instance, the 2019 report already highlighted how climate change can exacerbate inequalities and have an asymmetric impact on the most vulnerable and deprived. o Looking at the Anthropocene gives us an opportunity to go deeper and, for instance, look at how Human Rights violations sometimes are associated with overexploitation of natural resources. This is well documented in the seafood supply chain, where extraction in fisheries is tied to human trafficking and slave labor. o New ethical questions are also raised by the Anthropocene. With regards to biodiversity, mass extinctions have happened from natural causes in the past. But nowadays, we’re potentially facing a 6th mass extinction attributed to human activity. o The debate is often framed in terms of looking at nature and the planet as a constraint. Here’s where the HD narrative could open a new framing. The focus is the expansion of human freedoms, and what the new narrative calls for is a deeper understanding of the interdependence between people and nature and between societies and ecosystems. • What are the implications for action of a potentially new Human Development narrative? o Our premise is that this HD approach narrative opens up space for a wider range of arenas for public deliberation and policy. o Market incentives play a role as long as the allocation of resources in our economy is linked to formal markets, so we certainly need to address the pricing of externalities. o Technology is key not just in terms of specific solutions that could contribute to, for example, decarbonization, but more broadly in terms of how the digital economy offers a chance for us to interact in richer and more creative ways. o Shifting values and social norms can also be seen within the action scope of enlarging human freedoms in balance with the planet. Social movements, for example, have been able to change social norms throughout history. o Nature should not be looked at as a constraint or limitation, but rather as a source of opportunities to address some of the challenges we confront in the Anthropocene. • What are the implications for metrics? o We have different indices to measure different dimensions of Human Development. The question we confront is whether it’s possible to combine, in a single indicator, something that speaks to current capabilities and something that speaks to the sustainability of future capabilities. o Another challenge we confront is the availability of data. Nature is composed of complex interacting systems and it’s difficult to find indicators that describe this complexity as well as the pressures we are putting on nature and the ways in which we’re interacting with it. Mirjana Spoljaric • 30 years ago, we didn’t have the experience of climate change, of the digital transformation, and of the accelerating technological advancement we have today. We have a true opportunity to introduce a paradigm shift into our work. 2 Panelists’ Presentations Dr. Rosie Day • Our earth system is very important in sustaining our capabilities. Earth’s resources are implicated in practically all of our capabilities and the realization of them. But, as we know, we’re putting way too much stress on the earth system. Most obviously, there is climate change. But there’s also resource depletion, pollution, loss of biodiversity, and many other disruptions. • The challenge is to reverse some of these damages without going back on Human Development or impeding future progress. Here, it’s important to think about inequalities. We’re facing overuse of sinks and resources, both really important for supporting our capabilities, and in Europe we have a very rich span of capabilities. • We need to question the extent of our capabilities and think more in terms of sufficiency. This means thinking about overall capability sets, but also about the amount of any given capability that we may have. Example of mobility: it is an important capability, but we can’t expect it to be an unlimited capability. Having parcels delivered is an important capability for us now, but we shouldn’t expect to be able to buy online and get the parcel the next day. • We have to think about alternative ways in which we can support multidimensional well-being which are not so resource intensive. We must look at how we can support our health, our recreation, our security, etc. in ways that don’t have such a big impact on the earth systems. Sustainable freedom concept. • On horizontal inequalities, there’s inequality in the consumption of resources (causes) and inequality on the impacts of degradation of earth systems on people (effects). Both are intertwined. Examples: heat waves, which have become more common in recent years, have bigger impacts on older people, people in poor quality housing who may not be able to get out of the heat, people working outdoors or on workplaces that are not well managed. Flooding events have bigger impacts on people who are socioeconomically vulnerable, people who lack support networks, people who aren’t able to get insurance, people with disabilities, women, and minorities. Basically, they exacerbate a lot of existing vulnerabilities. • Fossil fuels exacerbate climate change but also create problems with air pollution. This has a lot of health impacts and affect other capabilities as well. With regards to energy, even in the comparatively privileged Europe there are people with constrained energy access. 11% of people in the UK suffer energy poverty. A part of the 35,000 to 55,000 excess deaths in winter could be explained due to fuel poverty. • We mostly think of energy poverty as affecting people’s ability to keep warm, but if looked at from a capabilities approach it becomes apparent that it has multidimensional effects. Living in energy poverty has a detrimental effect on relationships, social respect, on education, and others. In the UK energy poverty is higher amongst the unemployed, single parents, and ethnic minorities. • The aim is to ensure everyone has a decent set of capabilities while also reducing overconsumption of resources and impacts on earth systems. We need to consider capability ceilings and sufficiency as well as supporting capabilities that are less resource intensive. Some interesting examples in Europe: Poor quality housing: Approaches like grants for insulation of homes and refurbishment have been successful where governments have been able to afford them. Regulation of rented housing 3 and energy efficiency are also important. Renewable energy: a faster transition to RE is important, Europe had been doing well but now isn’t doing a lot to support small scale generation of energy that may be done by households or communities. • Transport is a good example of where we might need to think about sufficiency. We can think of economic instruments like higher taxes on additional cars, or higher taxes on larger vehicles (a problem in Europe now), but we can also think of how to support our capability with less reliance on personal vehicles and potentially less reliance on mobility. Investment on good quality public transport is important, it needs to be affordable, reliable, and attractive. We also need to get more infrastructure for electric vehicles. We need to be designing our cities better for walking and cycling and taking more measures to keep cars away from vulnerable areas like schools, hospitals, older people communities, and basically from vulnerability.

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