Ethiopia ranked 169 in HDI
Sub-Saharan nations to lose out on $26 bln due to climate change
 

Ethiopia has been ranked 169th among 177 countries surveyed by the Human Development Index (HDI), according to the 2007/2008 Human Development Report (HDR) released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Iceland and Norway get first and second positions respectively as the most decent places to live in. Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland follow with the United States securing 12th place.
In the bottom 10 are sub-Saharan African countries. Sierra Leone is last, trailing Burkina Faso and Guinea-Bissau.
The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), education (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels) and the standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, (PPP, income).
According to the UNDP, the HDR continued to frame debates on some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. It is an independent report commissioned by the UNDP itself. The HDI is a regular feature of HDR.
The countries occupying the top 20 spots are: Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Netherlands, France, Finland, United States, Spain, Denmark, Austria, United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Italy.
Rounding out the bottom 10 are in descending order Congo, Ethiopia, Chad, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Mali, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone.
The report is translated into more than a dozen languages and launched in over 100 countries annually.
Since the HDR was first published in 1990, the HDI rankings provided a way at looking beyond GDP towards a broader definition of well-being.
The report also warned of the damaging impacts of climate change, saying that the world has less than a decade to change course. It also called for urgency, human solidarity and collective interest in the fight against climate change.
The HDR entitled Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world, set out a pathway for climate change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia and stresses that a narrow 10-year window of opportunity remains to be put it into practice.
If that window is missed, temperature rises of above two degrees Celsius could see an extra 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa go hungry, new and more frequent epidemics of mosquito-born diseases like Rift Valley Fever and malaria and agricultural losses of up to 26 billion dollars by 2060 in the region, a figure higher than total bilateral aid received by sub-Saharan Africa in 2005.
The heavy carbon footprint of developed countries threatens to stamp out and then reverse advances in health, education and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa unless critical steps are taken to cut emissions and invest in “climate-proofing” the livelihoods of the poor, according to the 2007/2008 Human Development Report (HDR) on climate change.
Fighting climate change notes that if each poor person on the planet had the same energy-rich lifestyle as an American or Canadian, nine planets would be needed to safely cope with the pollution. In fact, the US state of Texas, with 23 million residents, emits more CO2 than all of the 720 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa put together, says the report.
Faced with these stark differences, the authors note that critical global emission cuts should not undermine efforts to get basic energy services to the poor. The world’s richest countries have a historic responsibility to take the lead in balancing the carbon budget by cutting emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, says the Report, in addition to supporting a new $86 billion annual global investment in substantial international adaptation efforts to protect the world’s poor.
Fighting climate change also stresses that unless dramatic changes happen both at the national and international levels, climate change will stall and then reverse efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Existing aid investments will be put at risk because of climate-related events and an increasing portion of development money will be diverted to tackling climate disasters rather than long-term development.
The report further notes that in Ethiopia and Kenya, two of the world’s most drought-prone countries, children aged five or less born during a drought are respectively 36 and 50 percent more likely to be malnourished than children not born during a drought. For Ethiopia, that meant two million additional malnourished children in 2005. In Niger, children aged two or less born in a drought year were 72 percent more likely to be stunted, according to the report.