2009 Report
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"The 2007/2008 Report comes at a time when climate change—long on the international agenda—is starting to receive the very highest attention that it merits. The recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have sounded a clarion call; they have unequivocally affirmed the warming of our climate system, and linked it directly to human activity."
Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General of the United Nations
"This report should give all leaders in Washington the moral imperative to back global warming action in Congress and in the White House."
Rep. Ed Markey
United States Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
"We don’t have to wait for Armageddon to see the impact of climate change — this report shows it’s happening right now if you are a poor farmer in Africa. It’s a double injustice that those least responsible are suffering the most. We in the West, fed on a diet of carbon consumption, have a duty to right this wrong before the fragile development gains that Africa has made are reversed."
Bono
Singer/Songwriter
"Development cannot be divorced from ecological and environmental concerns. Indeed, important components of human freedoms—and crucial ingredients of our quality of life—are thoroughly dependent on the integrity of the environment."
Amartya Sen
Economics Nobel Laureate
"No community with a sense of justice, compassion or respect for basic human rights should accept the current pattern of adaptation. Leaving the world’s poor to sink or swim with their own meagre resources in the face of the threat posed by climate change is morally wrong. We are drifting into a world of ’adaptation apartheid’."
Desmond Tutu
Archbishop of South Africa
"This Report sets out what it describes as a ’carbon budget’ for the 21st Century. Drawing upon the best climate science, that budget establishes the volume of greenhouse gases that can be emitted without causing dangerous climate change. If we continue on our current emissions trajectory, the carbon budget for the 21st Century will expire in the 2030s."
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Former Prime Minister of Norway
"The Human Development Report 2007/2008 should be mandatory reading for all governments, especially those in the world’s richest nations. It reminds us that historic responsibility for the rapid build—up of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere rests not with the world’s poor, but with the developed world."
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President of the Federative Republic of Brazil
"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and it is the world’s most vulnerable populations who are most immediately at risk. The actions of the wealthiest nations—those generating the vast majority of greenhouse gases—have tangible consequences for people in the rest of the world, especially in the poorest nations."
Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor of the City of New York
"We must heed the warnings from the 2007 UN's Human Development Report, which showed categorically that climate change is, and I quote directly: the defining human development issue of our generation."
Douglas Alexander
United Kingdom International Development Secretary
"And I mean – and most likely I am not mistaken – that UNDP reports have been bedside reading for the presidents of the Government and, by the way, they will also be so in my case. I always said as a minister: when people are leading at different levels of decision-making many times what is urgent is confused with what is important. And, hey, it is good to have a reference that is always wondering, questioning itself, answering and giving us clarity and ideas on how to continue moving forward with the challenges that each of us has."
Michelle Bachelet
President of Chile
"This year’s Human Development Report 2007/2008 is a rousing call to arms, which firmly positions climate challenge as the most pressing moral issue of our time."
The New Statesman
"The [Human Development Report] is the first to chart what the effects of global warming will be for developing countries. The findings show they will be dramatic. While the wealthy countries produce most of the pollution and are therefore for the most part responsible for climate change, the poorest countries will suffer the worst consequences."
Radio Netherlands
"The report comes at a key moment in negotiations to forge a multilateral agreement for the period after 2012-the expiry date for the current commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol."
Yhiah News Agency
"The U.N. Human Development Report issues one of the strongest warnings yet of the lasting impact of climate change on living standards and a strong call for urgent collective action."
Moscow News Weekly
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