Building a future where humanity will thrive, with Achim Steiner

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since the Human Development Index was established in 1990, it has trended gradually upward, as people’s health, wealth and opportunities have improved. But in 2019, it went into a decline then made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine. The impacts of these events on reversing human progress could be dwarfed by climate change, says Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Programme. However, the solutions to the climate problem also offer the potential to build a more inclusive and fair future that allows humanity to thrive.

Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi asks Steiner about the opportunities and threats climate change poses to global development, how countries can plan for more climate refugees, and what rising inequality means for a world facing multiple crises.

Read Oxfam’s report on inequality and climate change, here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Sommer Saadi and Stacey Wong, as well as Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum for arranging studio space. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati.
0:03.0	This week, progress, regress, and a grand vision for the future.
0:20.0	Human development over the past 100 years can be easily measured in rapidly increasing wealth,
0:24.9	health and better opportunities for a growing population.
0:30.0	That progress, granted, has not been evenly distributed, and yet it is a story shared
0:35.8	by billions around the world, including my own family in India.
0:40.9	One of the things that concerns me most about climate change is that it may erode those markers
0:45.7	of development, undoing decades of hard work. And by some measures, it's already happening.
0:52.4	The human development index has followed a steady upward trend since it was introduced
0:57.1	in the 1990s.
0:59.1	Now it has begun to fall.
1:01.4	But really, what excites me about the coming decades is that many of the solutions to our
1:06.0	climate problem, clean energy, a more just inclusive financial system, inevitable international collaboration,
1:13.6	all have the potential to radically transform people's lives. Build this future and humanity
1:19.6	will continue to thrive. This view is one of the driving forces behind the work of my guest today,
1:26.6	Akem Steiner. He's the head of the United forces behind the work of my guest today, Akem Steiner.
1:28.2	He's the head of the United Nations Development Program,
1:31.1	which works in 170 countries to promote sustainable development, democracy, peace and resilience.
1:37.9	We are a development institution that believes in the future.
1:41.9	The notion of living in the age of the Anthropocene is very much about
1:45.4	understanding that we are failing to respond as a human family to the magnitude of the challenges
1:52.5	of our time. But behind that is a second story. We live in an age of extraordinary possibility.
	...

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