London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

U.N. Report: In The Age Of Humans, 'The Dominant Risk To Our Survival Is Ourselves'

U.N. Report: In The Age Of Humans, 'The Dominant Risk To Our Survival Is Ourselves'

On the United Nations' new Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index, the United States drops 45 places from its overall ranking, a reflection of the country's outsize environmental impact.

"Warning lights — for our societies and the planet — are flashing red." That's according to a new report from the United Nations Development Programme.

The report notes that COVID-19 has thrived "in the cracks in societies, exploiting and exacerbating myriad inequalities in human development."

While the pandemic has dominated much of the world's attention in 2020, the report notes that existing crises continue: a historically intense Atlantic hurricane season, raging wildfires on different continents, animal species dying off in what some experts believe is a mass species extinction event.

The report argues that as humans and the planet together enter a new geological epoch — the Anthropocene, or the Age of Humans — all countries must fully account for the pressure that people are putting on the Earth while also confronting dramatic imbalances of power and opportunity.

This new era "means that we are the first people to live in an age defined by human choice, in which the dominant risk to our survival is ourselves," writes Achim Steiner, the UNDP administrator.

And returning to "normal" after COVID-19 isn't necessarily possible or even desirable, the report posits.

"Lurching from crisis to crisis is one of the defining features of the present day, which has something to do with the 'normalcy' of the past, a return to which would seemingly consign the future to endless crisis management, not to human development. Whether we wish it or not, a new normal is coming. [COVID-19] is just the tip of the spear," says the report, for which Pedro Conceição, director of UNDP's Human Development Report Office, was the lead author.

The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene is the UNDP's 30th annual Human Development Report and once again features its Human Development Index, which measures each country's health, education and standard of living. The index was created as an alternative to gross domestic product, assessing opportunity rather than simply economic output.

The United States now ranks 17th on the Human Development Index, slipping three spaces from its ranking five years ago. When the index is adjusted for inequality, the U.S. drops another 11 places. Norway ranks first in both measures.

This year, the UNDP introduced a new adjusted index that takes into account each country's carbon dioxide emissions and its material footprint (a consumption-based measure of the amount of raw materials extracted to meet domestic final demand for goods and services, regardless of where extraction occurs) per capita as well — called the Planetary Pressures-Adjusted HDI.

The new metric is meant to show "how the global development landscape would change if both the wellbeing of people and also the planet were central to defining humanity's progress," according to a UNDP press release.

Some wealthy countries – including the United States – fare poorly on the adjusted index, while others, including Costa Rica, Moldova and Panama, move higher.

On the Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index, the U.S. ranking drops 45 places, a reflection of the country's outsize environmental impact amid an otherwise comparatively high quality of life.

Other highly developed countries are affected in the same manner. Norway drops 15 places, Canada drops 40 spots and Australia falls 72 places. Tiny, rich Luxembourg falls a whopping 131 places when the index is adjusted for planetary pressures.

Other countries with high human development move up when planetary pressures are taken into account: the U.K. rises 10 spots; New Zealand moves up six.

While the report focuses on urgently needed actions rather than actors, it notes that national governments play a unique and vital role: "Only governments have the formal authority and power to marshal collective action towards shared challenges, whether that is enacting and enforcing a carbon price, removing laws that marginalize and disenfranchise or setting up the policy and institutional frame-works, backed by public investment, to spur ongoing broadly shared innovation."

Steiner, the UNDP administrator, says that to "survive and thrive in this new age, we must redesign a path to progress that respects the intertwined fate of people and planet and recognizes that the carbon and material footprint of the people who have more is choking the opportunities of the people who have less."

"We are not the last generation of the Anthropocene; we are the first to recognize it," he writes. "We are the explorers, the innovators who get to decide what this — the first generation of the Anthropocene — will be remembered for."

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
×