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Towards 2026 HDR

An Aspirational Approach to Planetary and Human Futures


What if the defining story of our time were not only one of crisis, but also one of reconnection, between people, and between people and the planet, and of the possibility to thrive together?


The 2026 Human Development Report explores how changes in our planetary systems are shaping the future of human development—and how advances in human development can, in turn, address the threats to those systems. It looks at how planetary pressures intersect with health, education, livelihoods, and well-being, and asks how societies can cultivate more constructive, mutually beneficial relationships between people and nature. The report proposes new metrics to better capture progress in this context and identifies actionable strategies to move beyond defensive and retreating approaches towards mobilizing people's aspirations for a better future to ensure that people and planet thrive together. As part of this approach, the report seeks to introduce a framework for measuring  human-nature relationships.

 

The 2026 Report is the final installment in a trilogy on development through uncertainty, building on the 2023–24 HDR on political polarization and the 2025 HDR on AI-driven transformations. This cycle also draws on and expands HDRO’s novel global digital public goods, including the Human Climate Horizons platform.

 

The high-level advisory board for the 2026 Human Development Report will be co-chaired by Laura Chinchilla, former President of Costa Rica, and A. Michael Spence, Nobel Laureate in Economics.

Timeline of global consultations

 

The 2026 HDR Advisory Board Members

The 2026 HDR Advisory Board is co-chaired by Laura Chinchilla, Former President of Costa Rica, and A. Michael Spence, Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. (See the complete list of members below.)

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    Laura Chinchilla

    Former President of Costa Rica (Co-Chair)
    Laura Chinchilla served as president of Costa Rica (2010-2014) after serving as minister of public security, congressperson, and vice president. During her years in public service, Mrs. Chinchilla prompted police and justice reform measures to tackle crime and violence, digital and open government, the promotion of women's rights, and early childhood protection. She also promoted environmental sustainability policies, especially preserving marine biodiversity, for which she was distinguished with international awards. She is Co-Chair of the Inter-American Dialogue, Co-Chair of the Leadership Council of the Concordia Summit, and a member of the World Leadership Alliance Club de Madrid, the Advisory Board of IDEA International, the International Olympic Committee, Water and Sanitation for All, the Euro-America Foundation, and the Adrianne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council, among other organizations. She was Chair of the Kofi Annan Global Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age and Head of the Organization of the American States Electoral Observation Missions in México (2015), United States of America (2016), Paraguay (2018), and Brazil (2018). She is a speaker and consults for several international organizations on institutional reform, democratic governance, and security, and has been a fellow and visiting professor at the Institute of Politics and Public Policy of Georgetown University (USA), the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey (México), and the Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil).
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    A. Michael Spence

    Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University (Co-Chair)
    He is the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an Adjunct Professor at Bocconi University in Milan, and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford University, and a Distinguished Academic Visitor at Queens’ College, Cambridge. In 2001, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in the field of information economics. He is the author of “The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 10, 2011). His new book, written with Gordon Brown, Mohamed El-Erian and Reid Lidow is “Permacrisis: How to Fix a Fractured World,” Simon and Schuster, Sept 2023. He is a Senior Advisor to Jasper Ridge Partners and a Senior Advisor to General Atlantic Partners. He chairs the Advisory Board of the Asia Global Institute and was the Chairman of The Independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006-2010). He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Luohan Academy in Hangzhou. He served as Dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999 and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University from 1984 to 1990. He was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching and the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to American economists under age 40 for a "significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."
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    Carlos Alvarado Quesada

    Former President of Costa Rica, Professor of Practice at The Fletcher School at Tufts University
    Carlos Alvarado Quesada served as the 48th President of the Republic of Costa Rica from May 2018 to May 2022. Under President Alvarado’s leadership, Costa Rica contributed to global efforts to combat climate change and defended human rights, democracy, and multilateralism. His innovative approach to sustainable energy, his ambitious climate policies, and his highly successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic have been widely recognised. President Alvarado is a recipient of the 2022 Planetary Leadership Award by the National Geographic Society for his outstanding commitment and action towards protecting the ocean. In September 2019, he also received on behalf of his country the Champion on the Earth Award, presented by the United Nations Environment Program. President Alvarado’s prior government leadership service includes a tenure as Minister of Labour and Social Security (2016-2018), as Minister of Human Development and Social Inclusion (2014 – 2016), and as Executive President of the Joint Social Welfare Institute, responsible for implementing social protection and promoting poverty alleviation programs. Before entering politics, he worked for Procter & Gamble, Latin America. Alvarado holds a Bachelor’s in journalism, an MSc in Political Science from the University of Costa Rica and a master’s degree in development studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex University, United Kingdom. He is a Professor of Practice at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and is also a Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy.
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    Kaushik Basu

    Professor of Economics and the Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University
    Kaushik Basu is Professor of Economics and the Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, and served a three-year term as President of the International Economic Association. He was Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2012 to 2016, and prior to that Professor Basu served as the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, 2009 to 2012. Earlier, he had been Director of the Center for Analytic Economics, 2006-09, and Chairman of the Department of Economics at Cornell, 2008-9. During his early career in Delhi, he founded the Centre for Development Economics, and served as its first Executive Director. Basu has published extensively in the areas of development economics, industrial organization, welfare economics and morals, and game theory. He is the author of several books, including, Policymaker’s Journal: From New Delhi to Washington D. C., Simon and Schuster, 2021, and The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics, Princeton University Press, 2018. In 2008 Kaushik Basu was conferred one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, by the President of India.
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    Diane Coyle

    Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge, Co-Director, Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge
    Professor Dame Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Prof Coyle co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity and has advised the government on economic policy. Professor Coyle is also a Director of the Productivity Institute, a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics, and an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission. She has served in several public service roles including as Vice Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, of the Migration Advisory Committee and of the Natural Capital Committee. Diane was Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester until March 2018 and was awarded a DBE for her contribution to economic policy in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours. Her research interests include economic statistics and the digital economy, competition policy and digital markets, the economics of new technologies, natural capital, and infrastructure. She is the author of numerous books including Cogs and Monsters, Markets, State and People: Economics for Public Policy, and GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History, all published by Princeton University Press, and she has published extensively in journals such as Nature, Economica, Regional Studies, Journal of Economic Methodology, and Review of Income and Wealth. Her new book, The Measure of Progress, is out in April 2025.
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    Marc Fleurbaey

    Research Director, CNRS and Professor, Paris School of Economics; Associate Professor, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris
    Marc Fleurbaey is a Professor at the Paris School of Economics, Associate Professor at Ecole normale supérieure, Paris, and Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris since July 2020. Prior to that, he was the Robert E Kuenne Professor in Economics and Humanistic Studies, and Professor of Public Affairs and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, an economist at INSEE (Paris), and a professor of economics at the Universities of Cergy-Pontoise and Pau (France). He has also been a Lachmann Fellow and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, a research associate at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics and the Institute for Public Economics (IDEP, Marseilles), and a visiting researcher at Oxford. He is a former editor of the journals Economics and Philosophy and Social Choice and Welfare. He is a co-editor of Rethinking Society for the 21st Century, Report of the International Panel on Social Progress (2018), and the Oxford Handbook of Well-being and Public policy (2016), the author of Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare (2008), a co-author of A Manifesto for Social Progress. Ideas for a Better Society (with O. Bouin, M.L Salles-Djelic, R. Kanbur, H Nowotny, and E. Reis, 2018) Beyond GDP (with Didier Blanchet, 2013), A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare (with François Maniquet, 2011), and the coeditor of several books, including Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism: Themes from Harsanyi and Rawls (with Maurice Salles and John Weymark, 2008).
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    Enrico Giovannini

    Professor of Economic statistics and Sustainable Development, University of Rome and the National School of Administration, former Minister of Sustainable Infrastructures and Mobility, and former Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Italy
    Enrico Giovannini is full professor of Economic statistics and of Sustainable development at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and professor at the National School of Administration (SNA). He was Minister of Sustainable Infrastructures and Mobility in the Draghi government (2021–2022) and Minister of Labour and Social Policies in the Letta government (April 2013-February 2014). He is co-founder and Scientific Director of the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS), a coalition of more than 300 organisations established to implement in Italy the UN 2030 Agenda. He was Director of Statistics and Chief Statistician of the OECD (2001-2009), President of the Italian Statistical Institute (2009-2013) and visiting fellow at the European Political Strategy Centre of the European Commission (2014-2015). During his career he was chair or member of important national, European and international committees and bodies, In October 2014, the President of the Italian Republic made him “Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito della Repubblica”, the highest ranking honour of the Italian Republic. In January 2023 he received a honorary PhD in “Sustainable development and climate change”. He is the author of more than 130 articles published on national and international journals and eight books on statistical and economic topics.
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    Ravi Kanbur

    T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University
    Ravi Kanbur is T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He has served on the senior staff of the World Bank including as Chief Economist for Africa. He has also published in the leading economics journals, including Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory and Economic Journal. He has served as Co-Chair of the Food System Economics Commission, Chair of the Board of United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research, member of the OECD High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance, President of the Human Development and Capability Association, President of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, member of the High Level Advisory Council of the Climate Justice Dialogue, Co-Chair of the Scientific Council of the International Panel on Social Progress, and member of the Core Group of the Commission on Global Poverty.
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    David Obura

    Founding Director, CORDIO East Africa, Chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
    David Obura chairs the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2023-2026), is a Founding Director of CORDIO East Africa, a knowledge organization supporting sustainability of coral reef and marine systems in the Western Indian Ocean, and is on the Earth Commission (2019-2026). David has published extensively across top journals. His primary research has been on coral reef resilience, biogeography and climate change impacts. He is turning now towards sustainability science pivoting around nature-climate interactions and their relevance in broader economic and societal domains, and exploring the scientific basis underpinning just transitions and transformations. His current research and policy engagement seeks to foster collective action to promote sustainability across all scales, to strengthen the broader sustainable development paradigm. David was awarded Kenya’s national honour, Moran of the Burning Spear in December 2021, and the Coral Reef Conservation Award of the International Coral Reef Society in 2022.
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    Belinda Reyers

    Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Research Affiliate of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    Prof. Reyers works to bridge social-ecological systems research and sustainable development practice to help build understanding and capacity needed to navigate the dynamic and interdependent development challenges facing Southern Africa. She worked as a Chief Scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Stellenbosch, South Africa until 2015 when she moved to Sweden to be the Director of the GRAID Resilience and Development program at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. She returned to South Africa in 2018 to take up the Research Chair in Sustainability Science at Future Africa in Pretoria. Her publications include over 100 articles in scientific journals and chapters in books. She has secured and led several large international project grants to build knowledge, methods, collaborations, policy context and capacity in the Southern African region. Prof Reyers plays a number of advisory and leadership roles to national and international bodies including: past Vice Chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth; Coordinating Lead Author and Review Editor of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), UN-DESA Expert Groups on the Sustainable Development Goals, Advisory Group of the Welcome Trust: Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems global consortium and of the Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions.
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    Maria Tengö

    Principal researcher, Sustainability Science, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Nature College Special Chair, Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen University and Research (WUR)
    Maria Tengö is a principal researcher in Sustainability Science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and holds the Nature College Special Chair in Human–Nature Relationships in the Anthropocene at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen University and Research (WUR) in the Netherlands. Tengö’s work focuses on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems using a social-ecological systems approach. She is engaging with and analyzing relationships between people and nature, especially how they relate to knowledge and governance systems – as well as their role in actions and movements towards sustainability. Tengö has long-term experience of science–policy–practice interfaces in particular concerning synergies between Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge systems, in local case studies and in connection to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Central in her work is the development of the Multiple Evidence Base approach, which has had significant impact on policy and practice. For more than 10 years she was a senior advisor at SwedBio, a programme working at the interface of science, policy and practice regarding biodiversity, ecosystem services, and poverty alleviation. She currently serving on the board of trustees for CIFOR-ICRAF. Tengö has an interdisciplinary PhD in Natural Resource Management from the Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University. During her PhD she was engaged in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Geography, McGill University, Canada.
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    Krushil Watene

    Peter Kraus Associate Professor in Philosophy, University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau, New Zealand
    Krushil Watene (Ngāti Manu, Te Hikutu, Ngāti Whātua o Orākei, Tonga) is Peter Kraus Association Professor in Philosophy at the University of Auckland. Her research addresses fundamental questions in ethics, politics, and Indigenous philosophy. In particular, it engages at the intersections of diverse philosophical traditions, transdisciplinarity, and the role of local communities for global change. Her primary areas of expertise include mainstream theories of well-being, development, and justice. Much of her work is written from the perspective of the 'capability approach' - improving people's lives by expanding their real opportunities to live the kinds of lives they value and have reason to value - and centers Māori and other Indigenous Philosophies. Prof. Watene's work is applied and engaged - encompassing a range of justice and ethical issues, in such areas as health policy, environmental sustainability, and a variety of development considerations, as they feature within communities. Prof Watene holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Andrews. She was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2018 for research on intergenerational justice. She serves on the research committee of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga – New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence, and is a member of the International Science Council's Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science.
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    Bing Zhu

    Professor and Director, Institute for Circular Economy, Tsinghua University, Guest Senior Research Scholar, Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Member, International Resource Panel (IRP)
    Dr. Bing Zhu is a Professor and the Director of the Institute for Circular Economy, and a Researcher of Institute for National Governance and Global Governance at Tsinghua University, China. He is also a Guest Senior Research Scholar of the Energy, Climate, and Environment Program (ECE) of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. Prof. Zhu graduated from Tsinghua University with Bachelor and Master Degrees in Engineering (Chemical Engineering) in 1990 and 1995, respectively, and received his Doctoral Degree in Engineering (Industrial Engineering and Management) in 2000 from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Professor Zhu is currently engaged in professional services including Member of International Resource Panel (IRP) of United Nations Environment Programme, Member of Inter-Ministerial Panel of China on Circular Economy, and Vice President of Chinese Ecological Economics Society. Prof. Zhu's research interests include natural resource management, circular economy assessment, industrial ecology, and chemical and energy techno-economics.
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