{"id":22222,"date":"2025-05-06T12:17:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T06:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=22222"},"modified":"2025-05-06T12:17:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T06:32:14","slug":"un-warns-of-unsettling-development-slowdown-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/un-warns-of-unsettling-development-slowdown-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"UN warns of ‘unsettling’ development slowdown in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Humanity recorded an unexpected and “unsettling” slowdown in development in 2024 as the global post-pandemic recovery began losing steam, well before President Donald Trump dramatically cut US international aid, the UN warned Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But that rebound appears to be losing momentum, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s annual report, released Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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,” warned UNDP head Achim Steiner.<\/p>\n

Recent drastic cuts to international aid announced by several countries — most notably the United States, where Trump has slashed programs and dismantled USAID, the country’s main foreign development arm — will exacerbate the issue, Steiner told AFP in an interview.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

UNDP experts are not yet certain of the underlying causes of the slowdown observed in 2024.<\/p>\n

But they have identified one of the driving forces as a slackening of progress in life expectancy, perhaps linked to the side-effects of Covid, or to the wars that are multiplying around the world.<\/p>\n

There is a potential glimmer of hope: artificial intelligence could create the conditions for kickstarting development, the UNDP suggested.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The report stressed that it would come down to how people use the technology, however.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But “we can design for reducing that risk,” said Steiner, adding that it should not be an impediment to using AI for medical research, for example.<\/p>\n

“The future is in our hands,” the UNDP report said.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humanity recorded an unexpected and “unsettling” slowdown in development in 2024 as the global post-pandemic recovery began losing steam, well before President Donald Trump dramatically cut US international aid, the UN warned Tuesday. The world had rebounded from the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic by 2023, as measured by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22223,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22222\/revisions\/22223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}