The 2011 report, entitled “Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All,” says environmental sustainability can be “most fairly and effectively achieved” by addressing health, education, income, and gender disparities together with the need for global action on energy production and ecosystem protection.

“Sustainability is not exclusively or even primarily an environmental issue, as this report so persuasively argues,” said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. “It is fundamentally about how we choose to live our lives, with an awareness that everything we do has consequences for the seven billions of us here today, as well as for the billions more who will follow, for centuries to come.”

Between 1970 and 2010, the countries in the lowest 25 percent of the Human Development Index (HDI) rankings improved their overall achievement by a remarkable 82 percent, twice the global average. Yet because of escalating environmental hazards, these positive development trends may instead be abruptly halted by mid-century, the report contends, noting that people in the poorest countries are disproportionately at risk from climate-driven disasters, such as drought and floods and exposure to air and water pollution.

The Philippines ranks 112 out of 187 countries, which falls under the medium human-development category, just a rank up, compared to last year. The Philippines HDI value increased from 0.550 to 0.644, an increase of 17 percent or annual increase of about 0.5 percent. It is below the average of 0.770 for East Asia and the Pacific but above the average of 0.686 for medium human development countries.

Trailing behind the Philippines are fellow Southeast Asian countries Indonesia, which is ranked 124, Vietnam at 128, Laos at 138, Cambodia at 139, Timor Leste at 147 and Myanmar at 149.

Between 1980 and 2011, the Philippines’s life expentancy at birth increased by 5.6 years, the mean years of schooling increased by 2.8 years and the expected years of schooling increased by 1.6 years.

The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is $3,478 or an increase of 34 percent between 1980 and 2011.

To assess acute poverty levels, the HDR’s multidimensional poverty index examines factors such as health services, access to clean water and cooking fuels, plus basic household goods and home construction standards, which together offer a fuller portrait of poverty than income measurements alone.

For instance, in the Philippines, 13.4 percent suffer multiple deprivations, while an additional 9.1 percent are vulnerable to multiple deprivations. The breath of deprivation in the country is the average percentage of deprivation experience by people in multidimensional poverty, which is 47.4 percent.

Sustainability and social justice

Despite the human-development progress of recent years, income distribution has worsened, grave gender imbalances still persist, and accelerating environmental destruction puts a “double burden of deprivation” on the poorest households and communities, the report said.

Half of all malnutrition worldwide is attributable to environmental factors, such as water pollution and drought-driven scarcity, perpetuating a vicious cycle of impoverishment and ecological damage.

High living standards need not be carbon-fueled and follow the examples of the richest countries, says the report, presenting evidence that while CO2 emissions have been closely linked with national income growth in recent decades, fossil-fuel consumption does not correspond with other key measures of human development, such as life expectancy and education. In fact, many advanced industrial nations are reducing their carbon footprints while maintaining growth.

“Growth driven by fossil-fuel consumption is not a prerequisite for a better life in broader human- development terms,” Clark said.

“Investments that improve equity—in access, for example, to renewable energy, water and sanitation, and reproductive health care—could advance both sustainability and human development.”

The report calls for electricity service to be provided to the 1.5 billion people who are now off the power grid—and says that this can be done both affordably and sustainably, without a significant rise in carbon emissions.

This new UN-backed “Universal Energy Access Initiative” could be achieved with investments of about one-eighth of the amount currently spent on fossils fuel subsidies, estimated at $312 billion worldwide in 2009, according to the report.

The report added its voice to those urging consideration of an international currency trading tax or broader financial transaction levies to fund the fight against climate change and extreme poverty. A tax of just 0.005 percent on foreign-exchange trading could raise $40 billion yearly or more, the report estimates, significantly boosting aid flows to poor countries—amounting to $130 billion in 2010—at a time when development funding is lagging behind previously pledged levels due to the global financial crisis.

“The tax would allow those who benefit most from globalization to help those who benefit least,” the report argues, estimating that about $105 billion is needed annually just to finance adaptation to climate change, especially in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The report examines social factors not always associated with environmental sustainability, such as expanding reproductive rights, transparency and the role of media in policy-making, local initiatives for environmental development.

The authors of the HDR forecast that unchecked environmental deterioration—from drought in sub-Saharan Africa to rising sea levels that could swamp low-lying countries like Bangladesh—could cause food prices to soar by up to 50 percent and reverse efforts to expand water, sanitation and energy access to billions of people, notably in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

By 2050, in an “environmental challenge” scenario factoring in the effects of global warming on food production and pollution, the average HDI would be 12 percent lower in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa than would otherwise be the case, the report estimates.

Under an even more adverse “environmental disaster” situation—with vast deforestation, dramatic biodiversity declines and increasingly extreme weather—the global HDI would fall 15 percent below the baseline projection for 2050, with the deepest losses in the poorest regions.