Rethinking Human Development and/as Human Security for the Anthropocene: An analysis of the UNDP trilogy of reports 2020-2022

Three recent reports from the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report Office (HDRO) together constitute a reconsideration of human development thinking and a revival of UN human security thinking: 1) the 2020 Human Development Report (“The Next Frontier – Human Development and the Anthropocene”; HDR 2020), 2) the February 2022 Special Report “New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene” (SR 2022), and 3) the 2021/22 Human Development Report (“Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping Our Future in a Transforming World”; HDR 2022), published in September 2022. All are oriented to challenges summed up by the notion of ‘the Anthropocene’, but also to the parallel contemporary challenges of transformative new technologies and of growing polarization and felt insecurity. The reports are produced in substantial part by the same team, led by HDRO director Pedro Conceição. This paper analyses and assesses the trilogy. Seen as a set they form an overdue but welcome return to human security concerns and formulations, reviving what has been a neglected stepsister in HDRO work after the pioneer 1994 HDR. [...]