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The latest Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Prog

游客2024-08-14  24
问题     The latest Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) contains some good news, but also a very serious warning about the threat posed by climate change.
    The report, published annually since 1990, seeks to assess "human development”around the world, and calculates a "Human Development Index”(HDI) for 169 countries. The HDI is based on average income, life expectancy and level of education in a country. Not surprisingly, rich countries tend to have higher HDIs than poor countries, but there are interesting variations in human development among countries with similar levels of economic development, because some have better health and education systems than others.
    According to the 2010 report, the country with the highest level of human development is Norway , followed by Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Ireland. Most of the lowest HDIs belong to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
    Almost all countries around the world have higher HDIs now than in 1990, despite the fact that since the 2008 financial crisis, the total number of people living in extreme poverty has increased. The report concludes that most people are healthier, live longer, are better educated and have access to more goods and services. Even in countries with severe economic problems, people’s level of health and education has generally improved. Although sub-Saharan African countries are at the bottom of the pile in terms of human development, some of them have made significant progress since 1990. The report is critical, however, of the fact that economic inequality has increased significantly in the last twenty years, both within and between countries.
    The greatest threat to improving HDIs in the future, according to the report, is climate change. Economic growth increases average incomes in a country through increasing production and consumption. However, if this leads to greater emissions of greenhouse gases, as has always been the case in the past, global warming will probably accelerate, and cause severe environmental problems in some parts of the world that will threaten the livelihoods of huge numbers of people. The progress of the last twenty years, therefore, might not be sustainable.
    The only solution, according to the report, is to break the link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions—which, needless to say, is easier said than done. [br] ______has caused the number of people living in extreme poverty to increase since 2008.
选项
答案 The financial crisis
解析 (参见第四段首句“2008年的金融危机使极端贫困的人口总数上升。”)
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