Rethinking Human Development and/as Human Security for the Anthropocene

Abstract

Three recent reports from the United Nations Development Programme reconsider human development thinking and revive UN human security thinking: the 2020 Human Development Report (HDR 2020); the 2022 Special Report (SR 2022) on human security; and the 2021/2022 Human Development Report (HDR 2022). The trilogy marks an overdue return to human security thinking. HDR 2020 builds a sense of common human fate, employing the notion of the Anthropocene. SR 2022 adds a diagnostic stress on growing subjective insecurities and a prescriptive stress on solidarity. HDR 2022 explores the escalating felt insecurities, their drivers, and possible responses. It attempts to integrate and extend the other two reports; most of HDR 2020's components and themes recur, but in more mature forms and enriched by perspectives and tools from SR 2022. The present article lays a basis for reconsideration of similarities, differences, and possible complementarities between human development and human security approaches and the social quality approach.