2021/22 HDR Acknowledgments

We live in a world of worry: the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, continuing regional and local conflicts, record-breaking temperatures, fires and storms. Many reports document these challenges and initiatives and offer recommendations on how to address them, but this year’s Human Development Report is an invitation to take a step back. Many challenges, rather than being separate, may be troubling manifestation of an emerging, new uncertainty complex that is unsettling lives around the world. The 2019 Human Development Report explored inequalities in human development, the 2020 Human Development Report focused on how those inequalities drive and are exacerbated by the dangerous planetary change of the Anthropocene, and the 2022 Special Report on Human Security examined the emergence of new forms of insecurity. The 2021/2022 Human Development Report unites and extends these discussions under the theme of uncertainty—how it is changing, what it means for human development and how we can thrive in the face of it. The lingering effects of the pandemic made preparing the Report challenging, including through delays in key data availability. The Report was made possible because of the encouragement, generosity and contributions of so many, recognized only imperfectly and partially in these acknowledgments.

The members of our Advisory Board, led by Michèle Lamont and Tharman Shanmugaratnam as co-chairs, supported us in multiple and long virtual meetings, providing extensive advice on four versions of lengthy drafts. The other members of the Advisory Board were Olu Ajakaiye, Kaushik Basu, Diane Coyle, Oeindrila Dube, Cai Fang, Marc Fleurbaey, Amadou Hott, Ravi Kanbur, Harini Nagendra, Thomas Piketty, Belinda Reyers, Dan Smith, Qixiang Sun, Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, Krushil Watene and Helga Weisz.

Complementing the advice from our Advisory Board, the Report’s Statistical Advisory Panel provided guidance on several methodological and data aspects of the Report—in particular those related to calculating the Report’s human development indices. We are grateful to all the panel members: Mario Biggeri, Camilo Ceita, Ludgarde Coppens, Koen Decancq, Marie Haldorson, Jason Hickel, Steve Macfeely, Mohd Uzir Mahidin, Silvia Montoya, Shantanu Mukherjee, Michaela Saisana, Hany Torky and Dany Wazen.

We are thankful for especially close collaborations with our partners: the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, including Anthony D. Cak, Pamela Green and Charles Vörösmarty; the partnership between the German Institute of Development and Sustainability & V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, including Francesco Burchi, Charlotte Fiedler, Jean Lachapelle, Julia Leininger, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skanning and Armin Von Schiller; the Global Policy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, including Solomon Hsiang, Jonathan Proctor, Luke Sherman and Jeanette Tseng; the Institute for Economics and Peace, including Andrew Etchell, David Hammond, Steven Killelea and Paulo Pinto; the Peace Research Institute Oslo, including Siri Aas Rustad, Andrew Arasmith and Gudrun Østby; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, including Richard Black, Claire McAllister and Jürg Staudenmann; the Stockholm Resilience Centre, including David Collste, Beatrice Crona, Victor Galaz and Louise Hård af Segerstad; and the World Inequality Lab, including Lucas Chancel, Amory Gethin and Clara Martinez-Toledano.

Appreciation is also extended for all the data, written inputs and peer reviews of draft chapters to the Report, including those by Saleem H. Ali, Elisabeth Anderson, Joseph Bak-Coleman, Sajitha Bashir, Marc Bellis, Reinette Biggs, Carl Bruch, Sarah Burch, Andrew Crabtree, Dagomar Degroot, Michael Drinkwater, Kendra Dupuy, Erle C. Ellis, Abeer Elshennawy, Benjamin Enke, Ann Florini, Ricardo Fuentes Nieva, Rachel Gisselquist, Nicole Hassoun, Tatiana Karabchuk, Patrick Keys, Erika Kraemer-Mbula, Gordon LaForge, Yong Sook Lee, Laura Lopes, Crick Lund, Juliana Martinez Franzoni, Jennifer McCoy, John-Andrew McNeish, Frances Mewsigye, Dinsha Mistree, Toby Ord, László Pintér, Tauhidur Rahman, Reagan Redd, Ingrid Robeyns, Michael Roll, Håkon Sælen, Diego Sanchez- Ancochea, Rebecca Sarku, Sunil Sharma, Landry Signé, Raimundo Soto, Casper Sylvest, Julia Thomas, Rens Van Munster and Stacy VanDeveer.

Several consultations with thematic and regional experts and numerous informal consultations with many individuals without a formal advisory role were held in the process of preparing this year’s Report. We are grateful for inputs during these consultations from Khalid Abu-Ismail, Adeniran Adedeji, Ravi Agarwal, Faten Aggad, Annette Alstadsaeter, Maria Laura Alzua, Reza Anglingkusumo, Ragnheiour Elin Árnadóttir, Jai Asundi, Joseph Atta-Mensah, Vivienne Badaan, Heidi Bade, Faisal Bari, Amie Bishop, Robert Bissio, Bambang P.S. Brodjonegoro, Vural Çakır, Alvaro Calix, Diego Chaves, Hiker Chiu, Afra Chowdhury, Shomy Chowdhury, Zhang Chuanhong, Tanya Cox, Ann- Sophie Crépin, Alexus D’Marco, Cedric de Coning, Andre de Mello, Rafael del Villar Alrich, Ron Dembo, Patrick Develtere, B Diwan, Ibrahim Elbadawi, Nisreen Elsaim, Harris Eyre, Ryan Figueiredo, Alexandra Fong, Carlos Garcia, Pablo Garron, Sherine Ghoneim, Juan Carlos Gomez, Vasu Gounden, Carol Graham, Thomas Greminger, Renzo R. Guinto, Jannis Gustke, Oli Henman, Bjørn Høyland, William Hynes, Ipek Ilkaracan, Zubair Iqbal Ghori, Andrey Ivanov, Lysa John, Melanie Judge, Nader Kabbani, Sherif Kamel, John Kay, Nadine Khaouli, Alan Kirman, Atif Kubursi, Geert Laporte, Olivia Lazard, Santiago Levy, Yuefen Li, Kwai-Cheung Lo, Hafsa Mahboub Maalim, Keletso Makofane, Heghine Manasyan, Halvor Mehlum, Claire Melamed, Emel Memis, Juna Miluka, Roman Mogilevskii, Hårvard Mokleiv Nygård, Wevyn Muganda, Felipe Muñoz, Keisuke Nansai, Njuguna Ndung’u, Kathleen Newland, Helga Nowotny, José Antonio Ocampo, Marina Ponti, Tazeen Qureshi, Krishna Ravi Srinivas, Jose Felix Rodriguez, Michael Roll, Heidy Rombouts, Marcela Romero, Sofiane Sahraoui, Djavad Salehi-Esfahani, Sweta Saxena, Ouedraogo Sayouba, Andrew Seele, Joel Simpson, Prathit Singh, Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane, Eduardo Stein, Stephanie Steinmetz, Riad Sultan, Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Daniele Taurino, Julia Thomas, Laura Thompson, Jo Thori Lind, Anna Tsing, Ingunn Tysse Nakkim, Khalid Umar, Bård Vegard Solhjell, Bianca Vidal Bustos, Tanja Winther, Justin Yifu Lin, Jorge Zequeira, Michel Zhou and Andrew Zolli.

We would also like to thank all those who presented in our seminar series: Ingvlid Almås, Simon Anholt, Chris Blatt-man, Carolina Delgado, Alexander Dill, Pamina Firchow, Aleksandr Gevorkyan, Sharath Guntuku, James Jasper, Shreya Jha, Priyadarshani Joshi, Roudabeh Kishi, Anirudh Krishna, Pushpam Kumar, Jane Muthumbi, Brian O’Callaghan and Sarah White.

Further support was also extended by others too numerous to mention here. Consultations are listed at https://hdr.undp.org/towards-hdr-2022. Contributions, support and assistance from many colleagues across the UN family is gratefully acknowledged. They include Shams Banihani, Naveeda Nazir and Xiaojun Grace Wang of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation and Maren Jimenez, Jonathan Perry and Marta Roig of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. All UNDP regional and central bureaus and country offices are also acknowledged with much gratitude.

Colleagues in UNDP provided advice and inputs. We are grateful to Aparna Basnyat, Ludo Bok, Camilla Bruckner, Farah Choucair, Mandeep Dhaliwal, Almudena Fernandez, Arvinn Gadgil, Irene Garcia, Boyan Konstantinov, Aarathi Krishnan, Anjali Kwatra, Jeroen Laporte, Sarah Lister, Luis Felipe Lopez Calva, Dylan Lowthian, Guillermina Martin, Ulrika Modeer, Shivani Nayyar, Mansour Ndiaye, Camila Olate, Anna Ortubia, Alejandro Pacheco, Paola Pagliani, Mihail Peleah, Noella Richard, Isabel Saint Malo, Ben Slay, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, Maria Stage, Anca Stoica, Ludmila Tiganu, Bishwa Tiwari, Alexandra Wide, Kanni Wignajara and Lesley Wright.

We were fortunate to have the support of talented interns and fact checkers—Dayana Benny, Allison Bostrom, Parth Chawla, Maximillian Feichtner, Benjamin Fields, Jeremy Marand, Patricia Nogueira, Themba Nyasulu, Nazifa Rafa, Stephen Sepaniak, Zahraa Shabana, Chin Shian Lee, Anupama Shroff, Yuqing Wang and I Younan An.

The Human Development Report Office also extends its sincere gratitude to the Republic of Korea as well as the Governments of Japan, Portugal and Sweden for their financial contributions. Their ongoing support is much appreciated and remains essential.

We are grateful for the highly professional work of our editors and layout artists at Communications Development Incorporated—led by Bruce Ross-Larson with Joe Caponio, Meta de Coquereaumont, Mike Crumplar, Christopher Trott and Elaine Wilson. Bruce, in particular, has been a constant source of sound advice, inspiration and, not infrequently, motivation.

As always, we are extremely grateful to UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. Facing the demands of leading an orga-nization during unprecedented times, he always found time to give probing advice and to provide encouragement. He has consistently given the team the freedom to explore and to venture beyond well-trodden paths. At a time when expanding freedoms is essential to navigate uncertainties, we hope to have made good use of that incredible trust and commitment to the editorial independence of every Human Development Report.