Although the number of wars and violent conflicts in the world has grown, record numbers of people are on the run and climate change is leading to droughts, heat waves and floods, life has also improved for many people around the world. Never before have there been so few extremely poor people in the world, as there are today. Never before have so many children gone to school and at the same time we are living longer than ever before. One of the many major health advances that have taken place worldwide is that fewer cook food over health-damaging open fires. It may not be something you think about very much in your everyday life if you have an electric cooker and a fan. But in several parts of the world women in particular die from the consequences of cooking in a room filled with smoke. In 2021 alone, indoor air pollution was the cause of 3.11 million deaths worldwide. But it is moving forward. The number of people who have access to safe stoves, which do not pollute the air inside – called clean cooking – has risen from approximately half of the world’s population in 2000 to two-thirds in 2022. Judith Oburo, who lives in the province of Eldorat in Kenya, is a of the women who have switched to a more health-friendly stove. – I have spent a lot of money at the doctor because of my health. But now I use a clean cooking stove and my health has improved, she says. For 30 years, she has been cooking in a smoky kitchen with no other ventilation than a window, a door and a chimney – and it was not only harmful to her health, but also time-consuming. She was supposed to look after the fire and get fuel. Today, she can spend time on all kinds of other things, including tending her kitchen garden. – I have planted cabbage, tomatoes and onions so I don’t have to go to the market to buy them. So I have saved money, she says. Vaccines, safe births and more children at school There have also been many other major advances around the world: More people are being vaccinated, so we avoid life-threatening diseases such as Ebola, tuberculosis and measles. In fact, the jabs have saved one life every second for 50 years. Many more people have access to clean water and safe toilet conditions, more people stop smoking and more mothers have safe births with the help of health professionals. Child mortality has also fallen, so there are fewer children who die before reaching the age of five, at the same time that more children – especially girls – are starting school. The world’s many advances can be concretely measured when every year the UN Development Program places the world’s countries on the so-called Human Development Index. It generally measures how things are going with schooling, life expectancy and income. The latest report shows that world development has never been higher. – This means that many people are benefiting from the record high levels of education, health and income, says Pedro Conceição, who is director of the UN office that prepares the annual reports on world development. – It is something to be celebrated, and it is a fantastic collective achievement. But he emphasizes that there are two major caveats to the good development: First of all, the development is skewed. The distance between the countries that are at the forefront and at the top of the development scale, and those that are at the bottom has widened. At the same time, world development – despite being at a record high – is lower than if the corona pandemic had not hit the globe. Corona stuck in the wheels When the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, there was a big step back around the world. Children lost schooling and adults lost work. Poverty rose for the first time in many years and life expectancy fell. According to the UN, the pandemic cost 15 million people their lives. The development of the world went backwards. And even if things are now moving in the right direction again, we are still behind compared to if the corona pandemic had not put a stick in the wheels. – It is a loss of human potential, and if we do not turn the curve, it will become a permanent loss, says Pedro Conceição Although the world is in many areas recovering from the hard corona years, the development is skewed. It is especially the richest countries that have recovered, but only half of the least developed countries in the world have returned to the level of prosperity they were at before the pandemic broke out. When the world’s countries shut down in connection with the corona, it hit the world’s poorest the hardest because trade and production stopped. The boundary between living in extreme poverty or not, often depends on whether you have the opportunity to get paid work. In Bangladesh, approximately four million people work as seamstresses for large international clothing brands. And although it is an industry that has received a lot of criticism for poor and dangerous working conditions and far too low wages, the work is to give people money. Amirul Haque Amin is the co-founder and head of the trade union The National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh, and he has been fighting for workers’ rights for more than three decades. Among other things, this has led to a minimum wage for the seamstresses and that far more clothing factories are now organized in trade unions. Amirul Haque Amin says that it is often women from the countryside who work in the clothing industry. – Before they started working in the clothing factories, they were dependent on their families. But when they get a job in the garment factories, move to the city and start earning money, they are no longer a burden on their families – on the contrary, in some cases they can send small amounts home to them, he says. There is hope for the pressure on the planet Just clothing production, where the clothes that are sewn and sold to the global north have consequences for both the climate and the environment. The fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of global CO2 emissions – that’s more than both international air travel and shipping combined. At the same time that the countries of the world have developed, it has happened at the expense of the climate and environment. The world released a record amount of greenhouse gas emissions last year, and we are on the way to global warming of around 3 degrees – which is a good deal higher than the 1.5 degrees that the Paris Agreement aims for. It will be disastrous for both humans and animals. But the solutions already exist. For example, solar and wind energy are the fastest growing sources of electricity in history and have already helped to cut the expected global warming from four degrees. It is in the most developed and richest countries that we live as if we have more globes at our disposal than the one we have. It is in countries like Norway that we have the highest consumption and we emit the most CO2 per inhabitant. In other words, we do not live sustainably. The UN’s development program also measures this in their annual reports, and even here, cautious progress has been made. Because during the last 10 years, the most developed countries have moved even higher up the development ladder without it having gone any harder around the globe. We are still pushing the globe far too hard. But as Pedro Conceição says: – There is reason for hope. It shows data and statistics.
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We live longer and better all over the world
