Human Development Reports - United Nations Development Programme

PRIME Minister Themba Dlamini is expected to witness the release of the Swaziland human development report at the Botanical Gardens in Nokwane.

The United Nations report gives wide-ranging account of the global situation regarding mainly human welfare. In terms of the 2007/08 world human development report the main thrust has been fighting climate change.

Climate change is the defining human development challenge of the 21st Century, says the same report. It adds that failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty.

"The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem. Looking to the future, no country, however wealthy or powerful, will be immune to the impact of global warming," says the report.

Increased exposure to droughts, floods and storms is already destroying opportunity and reinforcing inequality, it further notes It also reveals that there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that the world is moving towards the point at which irreversible ecological catastrophe becomes unavoidable. Business-as-usual climate change points in a clear direction: unprecedented reversal in human development in our lifetime, and acute risks for our children and their grandchildren.

"There is a window of opportunity for avoiding the most damaging climate change impacts, but that window is closing: the world has less than a decade to change course.