INTRODUCTION
New threats to human security in the Anthropocene: Demanding greater solidarity
Covid-19 has affected everyone, imperiling every dimension of our well-being and injecting an acute sense of fear across the globe. It is not hard to understand how Covid-19 has led people to feel more insecure but fears were growing pre-pandemic. While the world was reaching unprecedented levels of the Human Development Index (HDI); an estimated 6 out of 7 people globally felt insecure in the years leading to the pandemic. And this feeling of insecurity was not only high—it had been growing in most countries with data, including a surge in some countries with the highest HDI values.
Figure 1 Perceptions of human insecurity are widespread worldwide
For the first time, indicators of human development have declined—and drastically. In 2021, even with the availability of very unequally distributed Covid-19 vaccines, the economic recovery that started in many countries and the partial return to schools, the crisis deepened in health, with a drop in life expectancy at birth. And the HDI, adjusted for Covid-19, had yet to recover about five years of progress, according to new simulations (figure 2).
Figure 2 The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented decline in Human Development Index values
It is not hard to understand how Covid-19 has made people feel more insecure. But what accounts for the startling split between improvements in wellbeing achievements and declines in people’s perception of security? That is the motivating question for this Report. In addressing it, we hope to avoid returning to pathways of human development with human insecurity.
