Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week, progress regress,
Speaker 1: and a grand vision for the future. Human development over
Speaker 1: the past hundred years can be easily measured in rapidly
Speaker 1: increasing wealth, health, and better opportunities for a growing population.
Speaker 1: That progress, granted, has not been evenly distributed, and yet
Speaker 1: it is a story shared by billions around the world,
Speaker 1: including my own family in India. One of the things
Speaker 1: that concerns me most about climate change is that it
Speaker 1: may erode those markers of development, undoing decades of hard work,
Speaker 1: and by some measures, it's already happening. The Human Development
Speaker 1: Index has followed a steady upward trend since it was
Speaker 1: introduced in the nineteen nineties. Now it has been done
Speaker 1: to fall. But really what excites me about the coming
Speaker 1: decades is that many of the solutions to our climate problem,
Speaker 1: clean energy, a more just inclusive financial system, inevitable international collaboration,
Speaker 1: all have the potential to radically transform people's lives. Build
Speaker 1: this future, and humanity will continue to thrive. This view
Speaker 1: is one of the driving forces behind the work of
Speaker 1: my guest today, Achim Steiner. He's the head of the
Speaker 1: United Nations Development Program, which works in one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy countries to promote sustainable development, democracy, peace and resilience.
Speaker 1: We are a development institution that believes in the future,
Speaker 1: the notion of living in the age of the anthroposcene.
Speaker 1: It is very much about understanding that we are failing
Speaker 1: to respond as a human family to the magnitude of
Speaker 1: the challenges of our time. But behind that is a
Speaker 1: second story. We live in an age of extraordinary possibility.
Speaker 1: The UNDP is one of the oldest institutions in the
Speaker 1: United Nations and uses it's roughly four billion dollars annual
Speaker 1: budget to work with twenty two thousand people around the globe,
Speaker 1: combating issues as wide ranging as access to HIV and AIDS, medication, poverty, eradication,
Speaker 1: and digital inclusion. I sat down with Akim at the
Speaker 1: World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year to talk
Speaker 1: about the opportunities and threats climate change poses to global development,
Speaker 1: how countries can plan for more climate refugees, and what
Speaker 1: a rising inequality means for a world facing multiple crises. Akim,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here, Thank you now.
Speaker 1: Climate change threatens to reverse progress on many of the
Speaker 1: development indicators like poverty, prosperity, education. Is climate change the
Speaker 1: biggest threat to human development over the next century? You know,
Speaker 1: it has already emerged as one of the biggest threats,
Speaker 1: and I would say there's not even over the next century.
Speaker 1: I think it is probably over the next few decades.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think we're all beginning
Speaker 1: to realize right now is that we have arrived in
Speaker 1: the age of climate change, not just as a scientific proposition,
Speaker 1: not as some would still perhaps want to portray the
Speaker 1: science fiction. You know, just a few days ago we
Speaker 1: hosted in Geneva a meeting to bring the world together
Speaker 1: to support Pakistan and trying to recover from these catastrophic
Speaker 1: floods last year, where one third of the country was inundated.
Speaker 1: Climate change is beginning to impact literally hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of people. So yes, I think it is genuinely the
Speaker 1: greatest threat to the future of development. But and here
Speaker 1: in lines also in a sense, the other half of
Speaker 1: the coin, it is also the greatest opportunity to transform
Speaker 1: development in the twenty first century from being essentially an extractive, polluting,
Speaker 1: and often depreciating pathway to how we have grown our
Speaker 1: economy as our GDP at great expense to people, health
Speaker 1: impacts from pollution, loss, biodiversity, ecosystems, and now climate change,
Speaker 1: which is literally taking us to a tipping point in
Speaker 1: terms of many of the fundamental life support systems on
Speaker 1: the planet. So a very dark scenario if we don't act,
Speaker 1: and actually a potentially transformative scenario if we do act. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which puts out
Speaker 1: these massive, thousands of pages reports every six to seven years,
Speaker 1: those reports aren't read widely, but if you do get
Speaker 1: a chance to read one of those reports, what you
Speaker 1: see is it paints a picture first off, devastation that's coming,
Speaker 1: that has come, what we need to do to address it.
Speaker 1: And then it goes into this direction which has become
Speaker 1: a new direction for it, which is, if you do
Speaker 1: implement those solutions, the world becomes a better place, not
Speaker 1: just better in terms of where we are headed now
Speaker 1: if we could use the technologies we do have now,
Speaker 1: but just better in all the metrics that humans would
Speaker 1: consider as progress metrics. Indeed, and I think this has
Speaker 1: been in a sense the extraordinary story of the late
Speaker 1: twenties century the early twenty first century, that here is
Speaker 1: humanity with seven eight billion people seeing red lines flashing
Speaker 1: on all major radar screens. In terms of the future,
Speaker 1: where it is on pollution, where it is on the
Speaker 1: prospit of far greater frequency of natural disasters, extreme weather events,
Speaker 1: many of the things that actually threaten hundreds of years
Speaker 1: of progressive development, in terms of our infrastructure, in terms
Speaker 1: of our ability to survive in for example, small island
Speaker 1: developing states that may simply disappear with C level rise.
Speaker 1: And you are right in some ways these are very
Speaker 1: scientific and complex documents. They also are a reflection of
Speaker 1: a journey of discovery that humanity has gone through. And
Speaker 1: thankfully because the UN was able to establish an inter
Speaker 1: governmental panel on climate change independent of national interests of
Speaker 1: industry lobbing. It is really a documentation of the state
Speaker 1: of knowledge about climate change. Now none of us have
Speaker 1: to read it, because we also go to a doctor
Speaker 1: and you allow them to operate on us without having
Speaker 1: studied the manual for a surgery. And I think this
Speaker 1: is the same. The scientists of the world are giving
Speaker 1: us both an understanding of the threat of inaction, what
Speaker 1: climate change means if it simply continues, and what we
Speaker 1: have seen increasingly is across the world, a twenty first
Speaker 1: century economy being invented, reinvented, the green economy, the clean economy,
Speaker 1: the decarbonization pathway. And I think from where I sit
Speaker 1: today as head of our United Nations Development program, my
Speaker 1: focus is exclusively on how to actually think about the
Speaker 1: future of development as an opportunity decarbonization today, the prospect
Speaker 1: of having renewable energy, infrastructure and electricity supplies available in
Speaker 1: ways that perhaps would have been unimaginable ten years ago
Speaker 1: addresses so many of the risks to our society's energy security, pollution,
Speaker 1: their affordability. For example, of connecting hundreds of millions or
Speaker 1: citizens on the African continent while still developing national grid infrastructure,
Speaker 1: mini grade off greate, solar renewable these are all shortcuts
Speaker 1: to access to electricity. And you know, one thing that
Speaker 1: we have learned in the last few hundred years is
Speaker 1: that energy and particular electricity, our fundamental drivers of development.
Speaker 1: So even for addressing poverty, eradication, addressing the inequality that
Speaker 1: exists across the planet today, these kinds of technologies are
Speaker 1: in fact the accelerators for development, including addressing energy poverty.
Speaker 1: Right now, we shall come to how the UNDP is
Speaker 1: addressing some of those concerns that feed both the development
Speaker 1: agenda and the climate agenda. But let's just take a
Speaker 1: step back in history. We talked about the inter Governmental
Speaker 1: Panel on Climate Change. It's only about thirty years old.
Speaker 1: The unf tripl C, which is the unbody behind the
Speaker 1: climate activities that are held every year, the copy events
Speaker 1: that are held, is also only a little bit more
Speaker 1: than thirty years old. The UNDB was created at nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, much before we thought of climate as a threat.
Speaker 1: So just walk us through the brief history of why
Speaker 1: the UNDB was created and what briefly you think it
Speaker 1: has achieved over the past fifty years. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I think one always has to look at an organization
Speaker 1: such as the United Nations Development Prize being embedded in
Speaker 1: the United Nations system. The United Nations since its establishment,
Speaker 1: has had multiple mandates. Keeping the peace or avoiding conflict
Speaker 1: certainly is at the center of it, but so is
Speaker 1: the humanitarian work that we do, you know, when disaster strikes,
Speaker 1: when conflicts occur. But increasingly throughout the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: the development mandate began to become much more central because
Speaker 1: as developing countries were becoming independent nations as also, the
Speaker 1: acceleration of industrialization led to essentially a divergent pathway where wealthy,
Speaker 1: industrialized nations were growing very fast, and yet developing countries
Speaker 1: were lacking the technologies, the skills, the institutional capacities, and
Speaker 1: also the capital to invest in the accelerated development that
Speaker 1: we will seeing across the planet. There was an increasing
Speaker 1: realization that a few nations developing fast and billions of
Speaker 1: people being left behind is not a very viable proposition.
Speaker 1: So UNDP initially was set up as a funding mechanism
Speaker 1: to bring more resources to accelerating development support to countries. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously development is not something that is static. We sometimes
Speaker 1: look at development as if it's a matter of helping
Speaker 1: a country to get to a certain level of capital
Speaker 1: or GDP per capital, and that puts countries into least
Speaker 1: developed countries, middle income countries, other middle income countries, let's say,
Speaker 1: in a sense, anachronism, because really development is the continuous
Speaker 1: pursuit of choices and options that societies have to make
Speaker 1: about their future. Initially, early on, it was about access
Speaker 1: to education, healthcare, basic infrastructure, electricity. Then decided addressing also
Speaker 1: new threats such as the advent of AIDS, non communicable diseases.
Speaker 1: Today they live in an age where, for example, digitalization
Speaker 1: is fundamentally changing the trajectory of development. How do we
Speaker 1: achieve digital inclusion? How do we also address phenomena that
Speaker 1: have to do, for example, with discrimination. Today we have
Speaker 1: the twenty thirty Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, a smarter,
Speaker 1: a also more contemporary view. The development is not solved
Speaker 1: by silver bullets, not by solving one problem alone. We
Speaker 1: are talking about economic transitions, ecological transitions, addressing issues of
Speaker 1: social justice and inequality that you are really beginning to
Speaker 1: tear societies apart. Inequality, the obvious inaction on climate change
Speaker 1: and environmental destruction, getting more and more people to the
Speaker 1: point where they lose faith in the institutions of government,
Speaker 1: maybe in the economy, in businesses. And that's the point
Speaker 1: at which we today work with governments addressing this complex,
Speaker 1: this sense of uncertainty about the future now that can
Speaker 1: suddenly start to film very overwhelming. So one way in
Speaker 1: which when I was thinking about speaking to you was
Speaker 1: just the story of my life. I come from India,
Speaker 1: I grew up there. My grandfather completed high school and
Speaker 1: then got onto a factory floor and was able to
Speaker 1: raise three sons who each went on to eventually start
Speaker 1: a business. And that's why they could make some wealth
Speaker 1: and allow the next generation children like me to be
Speaker 1: able to study abroad and get to sit here in
Speaker 1: Davos and talk to the world's elite. But it was
Speaker 1: a process of prosperity that was backed by fundamentally development
Speaker 1: happening in India. My grandfather lived through a period where
Speaker 1: India would have had the chance of having severe famine
Speaker 1: in the seventies and that didn't happen, partly because of
Speaker 1: development programs like the Green Revolution that brought higher productivity
Speaker 1: to Indian farms. There were other development programs that involved
Speaker 1: money being transferred to India for progress on things like
Speaker 1: rollout of more efficient lighting which saves energy, allowed for
Speaker 1: more people to get access to light at night, which
Speaker 1: improves productivity, which improves outcomes, for women's safety, for education
Speaker 1: among children. These are things that I have seen in
Speaker 1: my lifetime play out. But if we get to the specific,
Speaker 1: can you point to programs that UNDP did in specific
Speaker 1: places that you hold as proud achievements. I think in
Speaker 1: many countries and as I travel today as the head
Speaker 1: of UNDP, the feedback that I receive most often is
Speaker 1: that UNDP has been a partner and companion to developing
Speaker 1: countries for decades. We are not an institution that in
Speaker 1: a sense comes in, lends you some money, or maybe
Speaker 1: implements one project. We are an expression first of all
Speaker 1: of the United Nations commitment to developing countries to be
Speaker 1: a partner to them for the long run, but also
Speaker 1: through sometimes tough times. Increasingly we have also been an
Speaker 1: institution that is associated with good governance. Good governance means transparency,
Speaker 1: it means having no corruption, but it also means how
Speaker 1: citizens can participate, how people don't decide for others what
Speaker 1: is good for them, and also to sure that no
Speaker 1: one is left behind very often, whether we're talking about
Speaker 1: issues of gender, the exclusion of youth, or by ethnicity
Speaker 1: or by age, and perhaps even understanding how indigenous peoples,
Speaker 1: both through their autonomy but also belonging to nation states,
Speaker 1: need to be understood and engage in the development process
Speaker 1: in different ways. So governance also has to with fundamental
Speaker 1: human rights, but above all, it also has to do
Speaker 1: with the role of government and the state in regulating
Speaker 1: and providing in a society for the kinds of judiciary
Speaker 1: and legislative processes that make citizens believe that they're actually
Speaker 1: represented in their country and their views shape the national
Speaker 1: development choices. More recently, we have the way that we
Speaker 1: think about the role of UANDP focused more and more
Speaker 1: on the future of development. We have often focused in
Speaker 1: the past on solving problems that are legacy problems, lack
Speaker 1: of access to education, lack of access to electricity, and
Speaker 1: in the least developed countries that still very often is
Speaker 1: our folks, but for many countries middle income countries also
Speaker 1: who often turned to UNDP for our advice, for our input,
Speaker 1: for our support. It's more the issues of the future.
Speaker 1: How do we deal with inequality growing in most countries,
Speaker 1: how do we deal with industrialization in a decarbonization age,
Speaker 1: how do we deal with essentially transforming our energy systems
Speaker 1: from a fossil fuel hydrocarbon based system to clean energy,
Speaker 1: and how do we deal with digitalization? And also how
Speaker 1: do we deal with the private sector that is not
Speaker 1: only large corporations. Every small scale farmer is a private
Speaker 1: sector actor, every social entrepreneur, every startup is a private
Speaker 1: sector operator. But if we think about it from the
Speaker 1: historical lens. One thing that we didn't touch upon in
Speaker 1: my story is India was a colony of Britain, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the lack of progress and development is
Speaker 1: tied to colonialism, to a period of extraction that happened,
Speaker 1: that took wealth away, that took resources away, that took
Speaker 1: the very fabric of soci the instructure and governance away
Speaker 1: during a period of hundreds of years. Is the UNDP
Speaker 1: in some way an apology from the rich countries. Reparations
Speaker 1: might be allotted term to help those countries that they colonize,
Speaker 1: which are now run by people who are aware of
Speaker 1: the abuses that happened, as a way to ensure that
Speaker 1: those colonies can get back to speed to where they
Speaker 1: were before colonialism. Look, it's an interesting question, and if
Speaker 1: I were to comment on is it an apology? I
Speaker 1: would say, well, given the volume of extraction that happened
Speaker 1: through the colonial period, and if you take the discourse
Speaker 1: about the economic center and the periphery, then UNDPS work
Speaker 1: over the last few decades is a pretty small apologies.
Speaker 1: So I would not necessarily see that as the principal
Speaker 1: rationale for UNDPS existence. I think on the country. It's
Speaker 1: more the growing realization, just like in many societies, that
Speaker 1: if inequality, if the sense of injustice and of exclusion
Speaker 1: grows continuously, it ultimately undermines the fabric and the viability
Speaker 1: of societies. We live today in the twenty first century
Speaker 1: in a globalized economy, but it's not only about trade.
Speaker 1: People try to reduce globalization to trade and essentially you
Speaker 1: know how countries can export and input from one another.
Speaker 1: We also live in an age where we are connected
Speaker 1: to each other by news, by for example, the pollution
Speaker 1: of one country determining the very fate of another country
Speaker 1: five thousand miles away in the Pacific. We need to
Speaker 1: have a mature reflection on what is it that has
Speaker 1: gone wrong with globalization, which essentially was a sort of
Speaker 1: unleashing of economic forces in a very unequal world. So
Speaker 1: it also created extraordinary progress. Let's not deny that China
Speaker 1: would not have been able to reduce the number of
Speaker 1: people living in poverty and extreme poverty by seven hundred
Speaker 1: million over the last twenty five thirty years. India, just
Speaker 1: in the last few years, again through economic growth and
Speaker 1: job creation, has helped one hundred million people escape poverty.
Speaker 1: But you know, at the same time, people are not
Speaker 1: only per capita income creatures. We're not robots. We also
Speaker 1: look at injustice. We know so much more about what
Speaker 1: is possible, and when we, for example, discuss an issue
Speaker 1: such as migration today, migration is very often also an
Speaker 1: expression of hopelessness. It's sometimes the product of conflict, of
Speaker 1: extreme disasters, but more often than all that it is
Speaker 1: young people looking at what their life would look like
Speaker 1: if they stayed at home, or seeing every day what
Speaker 1: life could be like if you were somewhere else. This
Speaker 1: translates into terrible debates about migration that I find very
Speaker 1: often offensive, because, particularly in societies that actually have benefited
Speaker 1: from migration themselves have been the product of migration, sometimes
Speaker 1: take the harshest view of migrants today. The very fact
Speaker 1: is we have always been a world that has moved around,
Speaker 1: but inequality has created such amplification of these pressure points
Speaker 1: that we are no longer managing it in a way
Speaker 1: that is actually a positive. It is dividing as it
Speaker 1: is polarizing us. And so going back to your example
Speaker 1: of India, you know, India just in the last few
Speaker 1: years has again demonstrated that there is always a historical
Speaker 1: narrative and also a reason for where things in a
Speaker 1: sense emanated from. But we've also seen in the story
Speaker 1: of India is that it is reinventing itself in the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. Who would have thought ten years ago
Speaker 1: that India would today be the largest investor in a
Speaker 1: short period of just ten years of building four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand megawats of clean energy infrastructure in India. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the kinds of revolutions that also have increasingly
Speaker 1: to do with how governments and how economies make choices.
Speaker 1: Let's try and put some numbers to how much money
Speaker 1: is spent from the UNDP relative to other organizations. So
Speaker 1: the unf Triple c has a budget of tens of
Speaker 1: millions of euros. It's based in bond in Germany. That's
Speaker 1: why the budget is in euros. The UNDP, the last
Speaker 1: numbers we checked was that you raise about six and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars and you give out about four
Speaker 1: and a half billion dollars. There's some surplus that's orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude more than what a climate change committee is
Speaker 1: able to pull off. What specifically happens with that money,
Speaker 1: and that may be large money relative to what we're
Speaker 1: talking in climate world, but it's very small money relative
Speaker 1: to any large economies government budget. So what do you
Speaker 1: do with it? And how do you ensure that with
Speaker 1: that much money you're able to achieve these really important goals.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, just put a little bit
Speaker 1: of perspective on the We receive six now billion, but
Speaker 1: we only spend four now a billion might make some
Speaker 1: people say, well, we have two billion gns. So in
Speaker 1: part this has to do that during COVID in the crisis,
Speaker 1: we receive multi year financing agreements. Therefore, in one year
Speaker 1: our income may be six now billion, but is actually
Speaker 1: to them be spent over two or three years. So
Speaker 1: on average, UNDP at the moment has roughly four and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars at Many different countries, including many
Speaker 1: developing countries, invest in order to have UNDP as a
Speaker 1: partner at their side, and these four and a half
Speaker 1: billion dollars enable us first of all, to be the
Speaker 1: backbone to the United Nations development system. Because UNDP has
Speaker 1: this remarkable presence across the globe. We operate in one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy countries, virtually unmatched by any other development organization.
Speaker 1: We are part if you want, in many respects of
Speaker 1: the national development ecosystem, and in that sense a partner
Speaker 1: that countries turned to sometimes to think about very taxing issues,
Speaker 1: short term crisis, but also to think about yes, energy transition,
Speaker 1: addressing social injustice, eradication of poverty. So do you have
Speaker 1: a number that says for every dollar that UNDB spends,
Speaker 1: there is x amount of dollars that come from other places,
Speaker 1: that other governments, from private sector to support the goals
Speaker 1: that you're pursuing. It's very difficult to do that because
Speaker 1: I mean we receive four and a half billion dollars
Speaker 1: in new made a contrast, for example, the UNF Triple C,
Speaker 1: the Framework Convention Secretary of the Climate Change Convention. Now
Speaker 1: the mandate of the Convention and the Secretary is essentially
Speaker 1: to convene the conference of the parties to support and
Speaker 1: monitor the implementation of that agreement. We are actually the
Speaker 1: largest implementer of climate change support projects across the world,
Speaker 1: so we actually work very much in tandem in complementarity
Speaker 1: with UNF Triple C. A Paris Agreement triggers financing through
Speaker 1: the Green Climate Funds, through the Global Environment Facility countries
Speaker 1: then turned to UNDP and say will you work with
Speaker 1: us in order to access this funding, help us invested.
Speaker 1: So we are today the implementer of the largest portfolio
Speaker 1: of climate projects on mitigation, on adaptation in the whole
Speaker 1: UN system. And can we talk about some of those
Speaker 1: specific projects. Yes, let me give you one of the
Speaker 1: latest ones that's starting just now. Renewable energy, particularly in
Speaker 1: the African continent, is still in a sense finding its
Speaker 1: feed both between national regular three frameworks and the opportunity
Speaker 1: in terms of actually a shortcut to access to electricity.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, we help many countries review
Speaker 1: their energy sector regulatory framework because very often it prevents
Speaker 1: independent power producers. If I have a solar panel, I
Speaker 1: cannot sell my electricity to the national grid. How do
Speaker 1: you change that environment? It's called de risking. At the
Speaker 1: other end is we have with GF funding, launched a
Speaker 1: program in twenty one countries on the African continent now
Speaker 1: on mini grids, essentially helping countries would in place the legislation,
Speaker 1: secure the financing, look at the targeting of where these
Speaker 1: are most effectively deployed, and potentially helping one hundred million
Speaker 1: people to gain access to electricity affordable and clean electricity
Speaker 1: in a few years time. We are also helping, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the beginning, countries such as Pakistan to
Speaker 1: raise in the international community and understanding that what happened
Speaker 1: last year with those extreme floods has a great deal
Speaker 1: to the climate change. In EVA, the Secret Journal of
Speaker 1: the UN and the Prime Minister of Pakistan managed to
Speaker 1: bring together an international community to pledge nine billion dollars
Speaker 1: towards a climate resilient reconstruction rehabilitation effort. This is what
Speaker 1: we do every day across the world and across many
Speaker 1: different sectors, depending on where a country sees the greatest priority.
Speaker 1: After the break, why has the human Development index gone
Speaker 1: into decline? And how can we avoid increasing inequality as
Speaker 1: we take climate action? In terms of migration, which is
Speaker 1: something you've touched upon, what we do know is that
Speaker 1: climate migration has begun and it's expected to accelerate because
Speaker 1: emissions haven't fallen to zero, and until they don't, temperatures
Speaker 1: will rise and climate impacts will And so what is
Speaker 1: it that the UNDB is doing now to start dealing
Speaker 1: with what's likely to be an even larger migration event
Speaker 1: happening it's first of all to understand migration is not
Speaker 1: an isolated phenomenon in its own You want to address migration,
Speaker 1: you have to address development. You address development in a
Speaker 1: sense of creating opportunities. You actually first will remove one factor,
Speaker 1: which is the pull factor. I know something on the
Speaker 1: other side of the Atlantic, of the Mediterranean, of the
Speaker 1: border to my neighboring country is so much more promising.
Speaker 1: In fact, the promise needs to be my own country.
Speaker 1: So that is one of the greatest weapons we have
Speaker 1: in terms of avoiding people feeling forced to leave the
Speaker 1: country they call home in order to look for economic
Speaker 1: opportunity elsewhere. That's what when people also say, look development,
Speaker 1: a development corporation, and these things that we did in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, and here I always look the
Speaker 1: era of development at has long passed. What we do
Speaker 1: today is is to have development corporation. We need to
Speaker 1: invest in one another in order to be able to
Speaker 1: tackle the challenges that might have to with climate change
Speaker 1: on the one then, but may also have to do
Speaker 1: with technology, infrastructure and energy on the other. And so
Speaker 1: from my perspective, we need to understand migration first of
Speaker 1: all as something that should be a choice that is
Speaker 1: not forced on you, but that you make because you
Speaker 1: actually believe this is where you want to be. The
Speaker 1: un is doing a lot of work to first of all,
Speaker 1: deal with the pressures around migration. But UNDP in particular
Speaker 1: is an institution that is in the front lines of
Speaker 1: addressing the very factors that push people out of their homes,
Speaker 1: and that has to do, for examples, with climate change
Speaker 1: responses adaptation. How do you help people not lose everything
Speaker 1: when an extreme weather event occurs. How do we invest,
Speaker 1: for example, in rural economies in order to not have
Speaker 1: this phenomenon where more and more people feel they can
Speaker 1: only migrate to the city if they want to survive here. Again,
Speaker 1: digital becomes very interesting. Fiber optic cables that reach provincial
Speaker 1: capitals begin to connect people in the rural areas, means
Speaker 1: that suddenly not only do you have access to a
Speaker 1: new universe or services of markets, you also have young
Speaker 1: people not having to live in a slum in the
Speaker 1: capital city in order to try and make it in
Speaker 1: this new economy. But you can actually go back, live
Speaker 1: with your family and work in that digital economy of
Speaker 1: today where you are physically far less bound to be
Speaker 1: in places where traditionally they were the only point of access.
Speaker 1: It's a way of thinking about development as opportunities abounding,
Speaker 1: but we need good public policy. A key area of
Speaker 1: our work is to help governments quickly learn from each
Speaker 1: other and then help governments to experiment. Because every country
Speaker 1: has its own reality, you have to then adapt to
Speaker 1: national circumstances. Something that the UNDP tracks is the Human
Speaker 1: Development Index. Indeed, and since nineteen ninety the Human Development
Speaker 1: Index was steadily increasing, which meant more people were able
Speaker 1: to live a fuller potential of life. And then in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen that trend reversed. This is a global average,
Speaker 1: but it has reversed on average, and that was pre COVID.
Speaker 1: In part, pre COVID, we already saw some of the
Speaker 1: economic challenges being phased, but particularly the number that we
Speaker 1: published in the twenty twenty one Human Development Report took
Speaker 1: COVID into account. And the remarkable thing is that for
Speaker 1: the first time in over thirty years of the Human
Speaker 1: Development Report being produced and the Human Development Index being calculated,
Speaker 1: we have seen two consecutive years in which the Human
Speaker 1: Development Index has gone backwards. But you know, not just
Speaker 1: as an average. In fact, almost ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: countries have seen reversals, including places like the US. Exactly,
Speaker 1: I was just going to mention life expectances in the US.
Speaker 1: It's not just incomes, it's the quality of life, the
Speaker 1: number of people living in extreme poverty again, food and
Speaker 1: hunger crisis that are re emerging. So we are living
Speaker 1: through a period of a major setback in development, which
Speaker 1: is explainable by a pandemic. Now the ripple effects of
Speaker 1: Russia's invasion of the Ukraine on world food markets, world
Speaker 1: energy markets, world financial markets. One of the greatest burdens
Speaker 1: that developing countries are bearing right now as a result
Speaker 1: of what is happening across the world is that we
Speaker 1: are seeing a response to inflation going hand in hand
Speaker 1: with the rise in interest rates, and so the debt
Speaker 1: burden has now reached a point where UNDP's latest estimates
Speaker 1: are that there are fifty one developing economies that are
Speaker 1: literally under dead distress and one step away from that default.
Speaker 1: And you know, to the world's financial system. It may
Speaker 1: not be a significant part of the global GDP, but
Speaker 1: it's actually twelve percent of the world's population, and it's
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the poorest people on the planet that
Speaker 1: live in those fifty one countries. Just imagine what this means.
Speaker 1: Because we often talk about statistics per capita GDP interest rates.
Speaker 1: This is men and women, girls and boys whose lives
Speaker 1: are being fundamentally disrupted. Maybe cannot attend school, my father
Speaker 1: cannot take his daughter to a local health clinic. Families
Speaker 1: cannot feed their children with you know, sufficient food every day.
Speaker 1: This is how our global discussions, including here and DA
Speaker 1: has often become far too abstract. Talk about global recession,
Speaker 1: we talked about markets. This is millions of people's lives
Speaker 1: being fundamentally disrupted, absolutely and without them having to be
Speaker 1: blamed for it. You know, this is the flip situation.
Speaker 1: My life got better because of some work that my
Speaker 1: parents did, but largely because being in a country at
Speaker 1: the time of development that helped them live to their
Speaker 1: full potential. And that's being taken away from millions of people.
Speaker 1: But actually, this is also why I'm such a passionate
Speaker 1: believer in development cooperation, in the idea that development is
Speaker 1: about choices, and these choices that are first of all
Speaker 1: well informed and certainly are made with social justice and
Speaker 1: sustainability in mind, actually are the key to progress. And
Speaker 1: you know, the story of development over the last two
Speaker 1: hundred years is in many respects a phenomenal success story.
Speaker 1: You and I are products of it. You coming out
Speaker 1: of India. I was born the son of farmers. They
Speaker 1: lived in Brazil. I got a good education, I found
Speaker 1: opportunities in which to follow my own passion. As a
Speaker 1: development economists, we can all tell stories. And the tragedy
Speaker 1: of development is when the possibility is not available to people.
Speaker 1: This is why we talk about access to education, about
Speaker 1: access to energy and electricity, access to finance. That's the
Speaker 1: great divider in our societies, and that's why inequality has
Speaker 1: become such a poisoned chalice, so to speak, in our
Speaker 1: modern world, because in our fixation to grow economies, to
Speaker 1: create wealth, we simply lost sight of the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, wealth in aggregate and average terms means nothing
Speaker 1: to somebody who has now access to the internet today.
Speaker 1: A report came out by Oxfam in January that's a
Speaker 1: two thirds of the new wealth generated since twenty twenty
Speaker 1: has been captured by the richest one percent, while only
Speaker 1: a third has gone to the remainder. Can human development
Speaker 1: and climate goals be achieved in such a system. The
Speaker 1: simple answer is no for two reasons. One because societies
Speaker 1: will ultimately not tolerate this kind of inequality, and frankly speaking,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's not essential. I often wonder whether
Speaker 1: you know the Jeff Basis or the Elon Musco this
Speaker 1: world would have somehow stayed in bed if they had
Speaker 1: only earned one one hundredth of what they have earned.
Speaker 1: And we all know the answer. No, their entrepreneurs, they're innovators.
Speaker 1: It's just in the way that our economy or financial
Speaker 1: system operates today. And the un Sacred Journal has repeatedly
Speaker 1: now called out the global financial system also as essentially
Speaker 1: reflecting a moral bankruptcy that is making it impossible to
Speaker 1: address some of the issues that we could tackle in
Speaker 1: The second answer to the wonderful work that Oxen does
Speaker 1: in showing all policy options taxation of some fiscal policy options,
Speaker 1: is that was just taxing five percent of that global wealth,
Speaker 1: the billionaires wealth, as it is referred to, will generate
Speaker 1: one point seven trillion dollars. That's one thillion and another
Speaker 1: seven hundred billion dollars. Yeah. Can I just remind the
Speaker 1: world that we can't even get it together right now
Speaker 1: in the rich world to coinvest one hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: on climate change with developing countries. This is what's wrong
Speaker 1: in our world, And I think Oxfan's lends on the
Speaker 1: wealthy and opportunities to leverage that wealth in a way
Speaker 1: that could solve so many problems, on education, on access
Speaker 1: to energy. I think it's just a reminder that we
Speaker 1: need to rethink the way we run our lives, our economies,
Speaker 1: but also in the way we want to live together.
Speaker 1: With eight billion people on this planet. We saw a
Speaker 1: massive inequality in the distribution of COVID vaccines and resources
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. How do we reduce this inequality with
Speaker 1: a more persistent but slower burning problem like climate change?
Speaker 1: And just to put here, as of July, seventy two
Speaker 1: percent of people in high income countries were vaccinated, in
Speaker 1: low income countries only twenty one percent. Well, you may
Speaker 1: raise an eyeber action, and so well some of your listeners,
Speaker 1: but I would argue very strongly multilateralism is fundamental to this.
Speaker 1: If we live in a kind of geopolitical Darwinist world
Speaker 1: where the strongest, the wealthiest will simply set the rules
Speaker 1: for the twenty first century and beyond, I think we
Speaker 1: will produce problems that will be insurmountable and unmanageable. So
Speaker 1: multilateralism as an expression of nations coming around the table
Speaker 1: essentially with very unequal realities, very unequal means. But in
Speaker 1: the symbolism of the UN General Assembly, every nation, however
Speaker 1: small or large, has one vote there. They have a
Speaker 1: seat in that hall. We need to evolve that model
Speaker 1: that was built after the Second World War into a
Speaker 1: twenty first century platform for cooperation on the fundamental challenges
Speaker 1: that no country individually consolves. So therein lies one answer,
Speaker 1: I think to what you have outlined, And the second
Speaker 1: part is just the ability to think of solutions as
Speaker 1: not being beyond our reach. And I think there we
Speaker 1: need to learn to work more with the scientific community,
Speaker 1: with the private sector and not always think of the
Speaker 1: private sector also as multinationals. The greatest percentage of renovations
Speaker 1: around the world generally emanate from around kitchen tables and garages.
Speaker 1: You know, it's individual so solve problems, but then sometimes
Speaker 1: don't find the attention to support to make them available
Speaker 1: to the world at large. So these are the transformations
Speaker 1: I think that we will hopefully see happen much faster
Speaker 1: and as a climate change reporter, I've thought about what
Speaker 1: climate is going to do to the world for years now.
Speaker 1: The threat that many see, especially in Western countries, is
Speaker 1: that their lives are going to be disrupted and their
Speaker 1: quality of life is going to be poorer. That certainly
Speaker 1: is a possibility. But the fear that I have, which
Speaker 1: is the greatest fear, is of development metrics reversing and
Speaker 1: then never we're getting to the golden age that many
Speaker 1: many countries lived through in the last thirty years of
Speaker 1: allowing for human potential to flourish, and that on the
Speaker 1: aggregate feels a much larger loss. And so coming back
Speaker 1: to climate, then we started with the understanding that climate
Speaker 1: change presents the greatest threat to development, but then we
Speaker 1: ended up talking about most of the issues that are
Speaker 1: very current. So how do you make the case for
Speaker 1: acting on climate change while these other crises, which are
Speaker 1: very urgent, very important, continue to play. Look, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, climate change is not a parallel
Speaker 1: universe to everything else that happens in development. In fact,
Speaker 1: climate change is a consequence of millions of decisions being
Speaker 1: made in the kinds of energy infrastructure we rely on,
Speaker 1: in the kinds of transport systems, we have the sort
Speaker 1: of buildings we build. And I think that is why
Speaker 1: I so much appreciate the opportuned to now lead the
Speaker 1: United Nations development problem, because in many ways it is
Speaker 1: the institution that tries to bring together the threads that
Speaker 1: allow us to imagine the future. That Mary Robinson, in fact,
Speaker 1: when we launched this year or the twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: UNDP Human Development Report said said there's a great deal
Speaker 1: of various sobering statistics coming out of it, but built
Speaker 1: within that report is also a narrative that says that
Speaker 1: the greatest of times may still lie ahead of us.
Speaker 1: And I think this is crucial because we often look
Speaker 1: at climate change as if it's sort of a dragon
Speaker 1: that we have to slay that is over here. The
Speaker 1: reason why, for example, you INDP and its current strategic
Speaker 1: plan set itself an almost unimaginable goal and then me
Speaker 1: to help five hundred million people gain access to cleaning
Speaker 1: affordable energy was a way of saying, look, we will
Speaker 1: make climate change as a threat converted into an opportunity
Speaker 1: part of everything we do. We don't yet quite know
Speaker 1: how to do this, but we think it is perfectly feasible.
Speaker 1: And that is why you see UNDP today being a
Speaker 1: major player in many countries in helping to rethink energy systems,
Speaker 1: looking at the way in which access to electricity is
Speaker 1: not just a fundamental enabler of development. It's the access
Speaker 1: to affordable and clean electricity that will allow a continent
Speaker 1: such as Africa to pivot forward. We are a development
Speaker 1: institution that believes in the future and the notion of
Speaker 1: living in the age of the Anthropocene, which has become
Speaker 1: a theme that we have also explored in our human
Speaker 1: development ports. It is very much about understanding that we
Speaker 1: are failing to respond as a human family to the
Speaker 1: magnitude of the challenges of our time. But behind that
Speaker 1: is a second story. We live in an age of
Speaker 1: extraordinary possibility of being able to leverage technology and finance
Speaker 1: and human ingenuity to actually make very different choices. And
Speaker 1: you know what, last year, eighty one percent of all
Speaker 1: new electricity, generally infrastructure that came on to the greater
Speaker 1: or into people's houses, will actually renewable. This is proof
Speaker 1: that revolutions even in the energy sector, so locked down
Speaker 1: in hydrocarmons, so in a sense locked into political economy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy seven exomobile scientists essentially wrote the true
Speaker 1: first chapter of the IPCC reports that were to follow.
Speaker 1: It's the age of your responsibility that we live in.
Speaker 1: It's not a fatalist moment in which we simply sit
Speaker 1: back and give up. And that's the promise of development.
Speaker 1: That's the future of development that U INDP very much
Speaker 1: sees itself part of. Well. I enjoyed this a lot.
Speaker 1: We talked on very wide ranging subjects, and I could
Speaker 1: keep going in many directions for a very long time.
Speaker 1: But thank you for making the time. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the opposite in the action. One of the things Arkim
Speaker 1: and I touched upon was Oxfam's recently published report on inequality,
Speaker 1: which shows two thirds of new wealth generated since the
Speaker 1: pandemic has been captured by the top one percent. While
Speaker 1: I was endeavors, I also spoke with Gabriella Buscher, the
Speaker 1: executive director of OXFAM, to ask her about how inequality
Speaker 1: contributes to climate change and why it is so hard
Speaker 1: to untangle the two. Well, these are very complex and
Speaker 1: intertwined issues, and they really question the way society as
Speaker 1: a whole has been organized. So what we're saying is
Speaker 1: what can we do, What policies can we put in
Speaker 1: place to address it. And we link very much this
Speaker 1: growing inequality with the effects on climate. So we talk
Speaker 1: about the carbon billionaires, how billionaires are in fact consuming
Speaker 1: so many times more than is compatible with a one
Speaker 1: point five degree warming, but also that they have doubled
Speaker 1: the amount of investment and fosil fuel industries than the
Speaker 1: average investor. So these things are very connected at that level.
Speaker 1: And of course the worst effects of the climate crisis
Speaker 1: are experienced in the most vulnerable places in the world.
Speaker 1: So when I since Somalia last year, I could see
Speaker 1: the effects of these protracted droughts, which has continued and
Speaker 1: so it's the worst drought in living memory. And pastoralists
Speaker 1: who are very, very resilient people and have put up
Speaker 1: with all sorts of harsh conditions over centuries, are really
Speaker 1: no longer able to cope with these much more extreme
Speaker 1: weather events. We've linked the OXFAM report on inequality in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to Zero.
Speaker 1: If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate, review,
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Speaker 1: Get in touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot Net.
Speaker 1: Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine
Speaker 1: driscoll Our. Theme music is composed by Wonderlely Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Kira Bindrim Summersadi and Robin Pomeroy at the World
Speaker 1: Economic Forum for letting us use the podcast studio by
Speaker 1: Today's conversation was order I'm Akshatrati back next week.