The UN has just published the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2013 mid-year survey.

The reports notes than since late 2012, new policy initiatives in major developed economies have reduced systemic risks and helped stabilize consumer, business and investor confidence, but with very limited improvement on economic growth.

Global growth has been revised slightly downward from the forecasts presented in the WESP in December 2012. Growth of world gross product (WGP) is now projected at 2.3 per cent in 2013, the same pace as in 2012, before gradually strengthening to 3.1 per cent in 2014, supported by an expected pickup in activity in the United States.

The reports warns that risks are still titled to the downside and have the potential to derail, once again, the still feeble recovery of the world economy.

Read the full report here.

The UN has just published the Human Development Report 2013, “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World.”

The report examines the profound shift in global dynamics driven by the fast-rising new powers of the developing world and its long-term implications for human development.

The study identifies more than 40 countries in the developing world that have done better than had been expected in human development terms in recent decades, with their progress accelerating markedly over the past ten years.

The Report analyzes the causes and consequences of these countries’ achievements and the challenges that they face today and in the coming decades.

China has already overtaken Japan as the world’s second biggest economy while lifting hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty. India is reshaping its future with new entrepreneurial creativity and social policy innovation. Brazil is lifting its living standards through expanding international relationships and antipoverty programs that are emulated worldwide.

But the “Rise of the South” analyzed in the Report is a much larger phenomenon: Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia and many other developing nations are also becoming leading actors on the world stage.

The full text of the report is available online.

The UNCTAD has just published “The Least Developed Countries Report 2012”. The study focuses on how the world’s poorest countries can benefit further from the billions of dollars their ex-patriots send home from jobs overseas – and on how to counteract “brain drain.” According to the report, nationals of the globe’s 48 LDCs sent home some US$27 billion in 2011.

The study recommends that LDC governments should strive to employ this vast resource – which largely goes in private transfers directly to families – to improve the breadth and abilities of their economies.

It suggests that these nations take steps such as improving domestic banking and financial services, so that a greater proportion of such money is available for investment, small business development, and job creation for increasingly urbanized populations who cannot depend for their survival on farming.

The Least Developed Countries Report further offers ideas on how LDCs can compensate for the loss of so many of their highly educated citizens who leave for jobs abroad.

Access the full text here.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has launched “The Millennium Development Goals Report.” Three important targets on poverty, slums and water have been met three years ahead of 2015, says the report.

The MDG Report says that, for the first time since poverty trends began to be monitored, both the number of people living in extreme poverty and poverty rates have fallen in every developing region – including sub‐Saharan Africa, where rates are highest.

The MDG Report also notes another success: reaching the target of halving the proportion of people without access to improved sources of drinking water by 2010.

And the share of urban residents in the developing world living in slums has declined from 39 per cent in 2000 to 33 per cent in 2012. More than 200 million have gained access to either improved water sources, improved sanitation facilities, or durable or less crowded housing.

The MDG Report 2012 also points out that the world has achieved another milestone: parity in primary education between girls and boys.

While bullish on the success recorded, the MDG Report warns that the 2015 deadline is fast approaching and in order to achieve outstanding goals, governments, the international community, civil society and the private sector need to intensify their contributions.

Access the report here.

The report finds that a sustainable economy can increase competitiveness, and lower the incidence of cardiovascular and respiratory disease. It also demonstrates that removing harmful subsidies can create savings that can be used to increase equity.

The report calls for:

-Removing fossil fuel subsidies

-Establishing nationally defined social protection floors

-Investing in green jobs creation

-Accelerating active labour market policies

-Governments to consider sustainability in all major decisions at national and local levels and demonstrate leadership during the sustainable transformation

-Raising awareness among producers, consumers, political parties, and scientific and cultural communities.

The report is a contribution of governments, experts, researchers and development practitioners ahead of the ‘Rio+20’ U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held inBrazilin June.

To download the report, please visit: http://on.undp.org/GPTYH2

The survey ranks countries in accordance with the E-Government Development Index (EGDI), a composite indicator measuring the willingness and capacity of national administrations to use information and communication technologies to deliver public services.

The EGDI is a weighted average of three normalized scores on the most important dimensions of e-government, namely: scope and quality of online services, development status of telecommunication infrastructure, and inherent human capital. Each of these sets of indexes is itself a composite measure that can be extracted and analyzed independently.

The government of the Republic of Korea maintained its first rank position in e-government, which it earned in 2010. The Netherlands is now ranked second, three positions higher than in 2010. The United Kingdom advanced by one position to become the third most advanced e-government in the world.

Denmark, the United States, France and Sweden follow closely behind, while Spain has dropped fourteen positions to twenty-third place.

To download the survey and view the country ranks click here.

The current employment scenario for young people, exacerbated by the global economic crisis, poses an urgent challenge with long-term implications for both young people and society as a whole. In the aftermath of the economic crisis, the global youth unemployment rate saw its largest annual increase on record in 2009, resulting in around 75.8 million unemployed youth.

The report is available on the web.

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The UN has just published the Human Development Report 2011, “Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All.” The report argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together, and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals.

The report predicts a disturbing reversal of those trends if environmental deterioration and social inequalities continue to intensify, with the least developed countries diverging downwards from global patterns of progress by 2050.

The report also looks at how the world’s most disadvantaged people would suffer the most from environmental degradation and disproportionately lack political power, making it all the harder for the world community to reach agreement on needed global policy changes.

The publication concludes with a call for bold new approaches to global development financing and environmental controls, arguing that these measures are both essential and feasible.

Also featured in the report are:

•        The 2011 Human Development Index (HDI) and

•        The Inequality-Adjusted HDI,

•        The Gender Inequality Index,

•        The Multidimensional Poverty Index.

The full text of the report is available online.

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has just published the report, “Making Integrated Food-Energy Systems (IFES) Work for People and Climate: An Overview”.

The study shows that producing food and energy side-by-side may offer one of the best formulas for boosting countries’ food and energy security while simultaneously reducing poverty. The report draws on specific examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as from some developed countries to show how constraints to successfully integrating production of food and energy crops can be overcome.

IFES can also be an effective approach to mitigating climate change, especially emissions stemming from land use change. Additionally, it often leads to increased land and water productivity, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing food security.

The report is available on the web.

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The department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the five United Nations regional commissions have just launched the report, “World Economic Situation and Prospects 2011”. The study highlights the continued challenge posed by high unemployment rates in many economies and outlines a number of risks and uncertainties for the economic outlook such as premature withdrawal of policy stimulus, increased exchange rate volatility and a renewed widening of global imbalances.

The UNITED Nations baseline forecast for the growth of world gross product (WGP) is 3.1 per cent for 2011 and 3.5 per cent for 2012, which is below the 3.6 per cent estimated for 2010 and the pre-crisis pace of global growth.

The full text is available online.