BizKnowledge Watch

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has just published the report, “Youth Employment: Youth Perspectives on the Pursuit of Decent Work in Changing Times.” The study outlines the situation of young people in the labor market and youth employment trends.

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.

(CC) UNDP

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.

(CC) United Nations

UNCTAD has just launched the report “Non-Tariff Measures: Evidence from Selected Developing Countries and Future Research Agenda”. The study highlights the key issues of the UNCTAD initiative in collaboration with international partners in United Nations organizations and agencies, regional organizations and national governments and other partners, and provides policy and technical guidance and recommendations on the implementation of a possible multi-year program to raise the profile of NTMs.

The report is available on the web.