What is Human Development?

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report, published in 1990, argued for accelerating economic growth to reduce absolute poverty, yet preventing growth's negative impacts. This new approach was centered around expanding people's ability to make choices as the hallmark of development. In addition, the UNDP adopted the Human Development Index (HDI), which incorporates life expectancy, education, and income as the three major components of a decent standard of living.

The Human Development Index incorporates Gross National Income (GNI) per capita as an indicator of a decent standard of living, average and expected years of schooling as an indicator of knowledge, and life expectancy at birth as an indicator of health. These three components are seen by the UNDP as providing a holistic measure of development.

The Human Development paradigm also brought issues such as human rights, good governance, democracy, civil society, poverty reduction strategies, debt cancellation, and human security, to the forefront of development discourse. Inspired by the human development paradigm, development agencies and NGO's have worked to strengthen civil society and social capital throughout the developing world.

In addition, the neo-liberal agenda of the Washington Consensus, particularly the call for shrinking governments, was questioned by economists who came to recognize that in a capitalist economy, government has an important role to play that goes beyond enforcing property rights. For example, the government has a key role to play in developing and enforcing rules and regulations to protect the environment, ensure proper nutrition, and establish educational standards. These 'neo-institutionalist' economists recognized that, left alone, the market would not provide socially optimal levels of environmental protection, child nutrition, or education.

The HDI has become a widely used measure for development. The following map shows how different countries stacked up in terms of average HDI in the year 2011:

Human Development Index visualized as a world map with data from 2011.

There is also an interesting chart showing where the world's people stand in terms of HDI. It shows that while there are almost 1.5 billion people living comfortably in a state of very high human development, there are a worrisome 1 billion people living in conditions of low human development. One of the great challenges of our time is lifting this bottom billion out of poverty.

Human Development Split of total population in 2018. There are about 1 billion people living in conditions characterized by very low human development index.

Human Development and Tourism

The focus on human development has inspired tourism initiatives such as pro-poor tourism, responsible tourism, appropriate tourism, ethical tourism, and volunteer tourism. There has also been a proliferation of tourism-oriented NGO's that use tourism as a tool for poverty reduction, and have become an alternative and legitimate source of aid for developing countries. Governments have also started taking responsibility for development of tourism, both in the form of creating tourism development plans and by providing investment incentives for tourism.

These two short videos show examples of tourism development projects with a human development focus. This one is from Rwanda, where SNV Netherlands Development Organization partnered with the Rwandan government to diversify tourism products.

This one is from Cambodia, where Acting for Life, a French NGO, partnered with the Cambodian ministry of tourism to develop eco-tourism and a clean cities initiative.