Human Green Development Report 2014

Book excerpt: This exhaustive survey assesses the performance of the United Nations and its member states in all key areas, at the same time as laying down a road map for sustainable development in the future. Deploying the Human Green Development Index as a new metric for an era in which human survival is intimately dependent on the viability of the Earth as a clean and sustainable habitat, the report showcases a vast array of data, including HGDI indicators for more than 120 nations. It provides a detailed and comparative rationale for the selection of data for the 12 goals and 54 HGDI targets, which cover human and global needs into the future. The index measures 12 Sustainable Development Goals, based on but also extending the eight Millennium Development Goals defined in 2000. The SDGs, proposed by a high-level UN panel, will supersede MDGs in 2015. They focus on ending poverty, achieving gender equality, providing quality education for all, helping people live healthy lives, securing sustainable energy use, and creating jobs offering sustainable livelihoods. They also work towards equitable growth, stable and peaceful societies, greater efficiency in governance, and closer international cooperation. With indicators covering everything from air particulates to percentage of threatened animal species in a nation’s total, and informed by the latest research (with inequality-adjusted metrics for amenities such as education and healthcare), this comprehensive study offers readers not only a wealth of valuable core data, but also a well-argued rationale for using the HGDI. In today’s world, we cannot view our development as being distinct from, and unaffected by, that of the Earth we inhabit, or that of our planetary cohabitees.