Humanity recorded an unexpected and “unsettling” slowdown in development last year, as the global post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery began losing steam, well before US President Donald Trump dramatically cut US international aid, the UN said yesterday.
The world had rebounded from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic by 2023, as measured by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), which charts living standards, health and education.
However, that rebound appears to be losing momentum, the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) annual report released yesterday said.
Photo: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
If that “unsettling” slowdown becomes the new normal, achieving levels of human development once hoped for by 2030 “could slip by decades — making our world less secure, more divided and more vulnerable to economic and ecological shocks,” UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said.
Recent drastic cuts to international aid announced by several countries — most notably the US, where Trump has slashed programs and dismantled the US Agency for International Development — would exacerbate the issue, Steiner said in an interview.
If wealthy countries stop funding development, “this will ultimately impact economies, societies, and yes, I think it will also register maybe a year or two down the line in the Human Development Index, lower life expectancy, declining incomes, more conflicts,” Steiner said.
UNDP experts are not yet certain of the underlying causes of the slowdown observed last year. However, they have identified one of the driving forces as a slackening of progress in life expectancy, perhaps linked to the side-effects of COVID-19, or to the wars that are multiplying around the world.
There is a potential glimmer of hope: Artificial intelligence (AI) could create the conditions for kickstarting development, the UNDP said.
AI “is perhaps the greatest potential pivot in putting development of individual economies, but also of maybe poor people, wealthy people, on a different trajectory. It will change virtually every aspect of our lives,” Steiner said.
However, it would come down to how people use the technology, the report said.
There are risks. Access to AI in poorer countries is not the same as in wealthier ones, and cultural biases could influence the way the tools are developed, it said.
However, “we can design for reducing that risk,” Steiner said, adding that it should not be an impediment to using AI for medical research, for example.
“The future is in our hands,” the report said. “Technology is about people, not just things. Beneath the razzle-dazzle of invention lurk important choices, by the few or the many, whose consequences will reverberate across generations.”
“With the right policies and focus on people, AI can be a crucial bridge to new knowledge, skills, and ideas that can empower everyone from farmers to small business owners,” Pedro Conceicao, who headed the production of the report, said in a statement.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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