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Thirty years ago, UNDP created a new way to conceive and measure progress. Instead of using growth in GDP as the sole measure of development, we ranked the world’s countries by their human development: by whether people in each country have the freedom and opportunity to live the lives they value. The 2020 Human Development Report (HDR) doubles down on the belief that people’s agency…

Influenced by international trends, as well as in response to population, climate, resource and development needs, the standards, norms, mechanisms and incentives in natural resources law at the national level have evolved in recent years. Natural resources laws are influenced by developments in the international arena, either through international treaties that are binding or through ‘soft law’…

The official launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 ushered in a period of remarkable transformations in Central Asia. The development of new regional transit corridors linking north to south and east to west and the modernization of telecommunications networks are connecting the people in the region to each other and to the rest of the world. Chinese investments and technologies provide…

Land degradation threatens the livelihoods and the food and nutrition security of the poorest, most vulnerable smallholder farmers and pastoralists. As a result, migration is accelerating, with an estimated 60 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa at risk of being displaced by desertification and land degradation by 2050. Restoration of degraded land can be a key pathway to achieving…

"Youth must be prepared for the jobs of the future – not the jobs of the past," African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said on Thursday at the launch of the Bank's flagship African Economic Outlook. "Given the fast pace of change, driven by the 4th industrial revolution – from artificial intelligence to robotics, machine learning, quantum computing – Africa must invest…

The new goal is to establish targets that are useful and relevant both locally and globally; and to “decouple” economic growth and improvements to standards of living from environmental degradation and unsustainable resource use. The proposed solutions are varied. There are suggestions, for example, to keep the food system within environmental limits by encouraging dietary changes: it seems…