In 2016, emerging markets and developing economies are forecast to grow by 3.5% - slightly lower than the recent average. Within this group, trends vary between commodity exporters and importers. In 2016, importers are expected to see steady 5.8% growth, but exporters are struggling to adjust to persistently low commodity prices and are forecast to grow only 0.4%. Read more in the The June 2016 Global Economic Prospects report.
This is part of a series of blogs focused on the Sustainable Development Goals and data from the 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators.
Despite halving the number of people worldwide without access to an improved water source over the past 25 years, the poorest countries are struggling to provide safe water and adequate sanitation to all their citizens in a sustainable manner. Just over a quarter of people in low-income countries had access to an improved sanitation facility, compared with just over half in lower middle-income countries in 2015. Delivery of water supply and sanitation is no longer just a challenge of service provision, but it is intrinsically linked with climate change, water resources management, water scarcity and water quality.
This is part of a series of blogs focused on the Sustainable Development Goals and data from the 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators. Chris Sall and Esther Naikal co-authored this blog.
A third of all energy is used to produce food but a third of food is lost or wasted
. Saving a quarter of this lost food would be enough to feed 870 million people. “Doing more and better with less” means meeting the basic needs of people and promoting a better quality of life while also cutting harmful waste and pollution. Using natural resources more efficiently is also a way to improve. Sustainable Development Goal 12 seeks to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Adjusted net savings (ANS) is an indicator of efficient use of natural assets (target 12.2). It measures the difference between national production and consumption—the change in a country’s wealth. Adjusted net savings takes into account investment in human capital, depreciation of fixed capital, depletion of natural resources, and pollution damage. Positive savings form the basis for building wealth and future growth. Negative savings rates suggest declining wealth and unsustainable development. ANS is especially useful for gauging whether countries that depend heavily on natural resources are balancing the depletion of their natural resources by investing rents in other forms of productive capital, such as through education. Low- and lower middle-income countries with the highest level of resource dependence also tend to have the lowest savings rates.
Tobacco use kills 6 million people a year - that’s one person every six seconds.
If left unchecked, this number could rise to 8 million a year by 2030. It’s why efforts such as plain packaging laws highlighted in my colleague Patricio's blog and this year’s World No Tobacco Day are so important.
I’ve taken a look at tobacco use estimates from the WHO’s Global Health Observatory below to get a better idea of where smokers are, how smoking rates have changed over time, and how they vary between men and women. You can find all the data and calculations behind the charts below here.
As you’d expect, there are large numbers of smokers in the world’s most populous countries, but it’s in the smaller and relatively richer countries of Europe where you find some of the highest smoking rates.
The size and share of all aid going to humanitarian assistance is rising. Responding to long-term crises requires greater partnership between humanitarian and development actors that goes beyond financing to include development-oriented planning around prevention, preparation, and response.
By 2030 around 60 percent of people will live in urban areas, according to the UN. Much of the 1 billion increase in urban population between now and 2030 will be in Asia and Africa, both of which are in the midst of transformations that will permanently change their economic, environmental, social, and political trajectories.
Sustainable Development Goal 11 aims to ensure that cities and other human settlements are safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable by targeting housing and slums, transportation, participatory planning processes, cultural heritage, waste management, air quality, disaster risk management, and other issues.
Biodiversity is essential for well-functioning ecosystems. In each of these 20 countries, over 200 species of plants are threatened, according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature available in World Development Indicators.
What's also interesting is that: There are almost as many threatened species of plants as fish, birds and mammals combined
Finally, you can have a look at the numbers of threatened species of plants, birds, fish and mammals in the table below. Equador (with the Galapagos Islands) is a huge outlier so makes the bar scale a little awkward below - if you right click on Equador and "exclude" it you'll be able to see the bars on more useful scale.
This is part of a series of blogs focused on the Sustainable Development Goals and data from the 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators.
We have seen significant progress in closing gender gaps over the last two decades, especially in education and health. Most countries have reduced disparities between girls and boys in enrollment and completion of primary school, and in transition to secondary school. And both women and men are living longer and healthier lives. But critical gaps persist: Women have limited access to economic opportunities, and their ability to make decisions about their lives and act on them—their agency —is restricted in many ways.
These gaps are related to entrenched social norms and biases that constrain women and girls and prevent them from fulfilling their potential. In many economies, women face legal provisions that restrict their capacity to access opportunities—these include requirements that they obtain a husband’s permission or produce additional documentation to open a bank account in their own name. Persistent gender-based violence is pervasive and reflects the imbalance of power relations in the household and society more generally. Women’s responsibility for family care and household chores, which is necessary for social reproduction, restricts the time they can spend on paid work and disadvantages men.
Sustainable Development Goal 5 seeks to “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls,” and represents an opportunity to tackle structural constraints and shift social norms, which would potentially enable permanent pathways out of poverty and achieve the gender equality targets of the 2030 agenda.
Shifting entrenched norms isn’t easy. A key step in this process is to create an enabling environment by changing legal frameworks. Countries have taken important steps in enacting laws to protect women from harmful practices: In 2016, 137 countries have laws on domestic violence and 149 countries prohibit or void child marriage. On the other hand, many economies still have legal differences affecting women’s economic opportunities. Almost 60 percent of the 188 countries for which data are available lack legal frameworks that mandate equal opportunities in hiring practices, equal pay for equal work, or allow women to perform the same jobs as men.
This is part of a series of blogs focused on the Sustainable Development Goals and data from the 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators.
Forests cover 30 percent of the Earth's land but around 13 million hectares vanish each year, despite efforts to protect them. Between 1990 and 2015 the world lost more than 129 million hectares—over 3 percent of its forest area. Despite efforts to protect forests, natural habitats and biodiversity, the impact of of human activity on the environment continues to affect the world’s poorest communities and deforestation, desertification and the loss of biodiversity all pose major challenges. Sustainable Development Goal 15 looks to “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss".
