Human Development is a development paradigm that is about much more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests. People are the real wealth of nations. Development is thus about expanding the choices people have to lead lives that they value. And it is thus about much more than economic growth, which is only a means if a very important one of enlarging people’s choices.
Fundamental to enlarging these choices is building human capabilities the range of things that people can do or be in life. The most basic capabilities for human development are to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community. Without these, many choices are simply not available, and many opportunities in life remain inaccessible.
Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All
The 2011 Human Development Report argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together – and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals. Bold action is needed on both fronts, the Report contends, if the recent human development progress for most of the world's poor majority is to be sustained, for the benefit of future generations as well as for those living today. Past Reports have shown that living standards in most countries have been rising - and converging - for several decades now. Yet the 2011 Report projects a disturbing reversal of those trends if environmental deterioration and social inequalities continue to intensify, with the least developed countries diverging downwards from global patterns of progress by 2050.
20th Anniversary Edition The Real Wealth of Nations:
Pathways to Human Development
The first Human Development Report in 1990 opened with the
simply stated premise that has guided all subsequent
Reports: “People are the real wealth of a nation.” By
backing up this assertion with an abundance of empirical
data and a new way of thinking about and measuring
development, the Human Development Report has had a profound
impact on development policies around the world. This 20th
anniversary edition features introductory reflections by the
Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen, who worked with
series founder Mahbub ul Haq on the conception of the
first Human Development Report and contributed to and
inspired many successive volumes.
Migration, both within and beyond borders, is a prominent theme in domestic and international debates, and is the topic of the 2009 Human Development Report (HDR09). The starting point is that the global distribution of capabilities is extraordinarily unequal, and that this is a major driver for movement of people.
Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity at the start of the 21st Century. Failure to meet that challenge raises the spectre
of unprecedented reversals in human development. The world's
poorest countries and poorest people will bear the brunt.
This year's Human Development Report explains why we have
less than a decade to change course and start living within
our global carbon budget.
Water is a source of life and a natural resource that
sustains our environments and supports livelihoods but it is
also a source of risk and vulnerability. In the early 21st
Century, prospects for human development are threatened by a
deepening global water crisis. Debunking the myth that the
crisis is the result of scarcity, this report argues
poverty, power and inequality are at the heart of the
problem.
This year's Human Development Report takes stock of human development, including progress towards the MDGs. Looking beyond statistics, it highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken promises. Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is identified as one of the main barriers to human development and as a powerful brake on accelerated progress towards the MDGs.
Accommodating people's growing demands for their inclusion in society, for respect of their ethnicity, religion, and language, takes more than democracy and equitable growth. Also needed are multicultural policies that recognize differences, champion diversity and promote cultural freedoms, so that all people can choose to speak their language, practice their religion, and participate in shaping their culture so that all people can choose to be who they are.
The range of human development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations, rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of possibilities to all people.
This Human Development Report is first and foremost about the idea that politics is as important to successful development as economics. Sustained poverty reduction requires equitable growth-but it also requires that poor people have political power. And the best way to achieve that in a manner consistent with human development objectives is by building strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society.
Technology networks are transforming the traditional map of development, expanding people's horizons and creating the potential to realize in a decade progress that required generations in the past.
Human Development Report 2000 looks at human rights as an intrinsic part of development and at development as a means to realizing human rights. It shows how human rights bring principles of accountability and social justice to the process of human development.
Lao PDR
