A United Nations report released on Thursday argues that an unprecedented series of crises, most notably Covid-19, has set back human progress by five years and fueled a global wave of insecurity.

The UN Development Program (UNDP) announced that the Human Development Index – a measure of countries’ life expectancy, education levels and living standards – has fallen for the first time since its inception over 30 years ago, in 2020 and 2020 2021

“We die earlier, are less educated, our incomes are falling,” UNDP chief Achim Steiner told the AFP news agency.

“With just under three parameters, you can get a sense of why so many people are starting to feel desperate, frustrated and worried about the future,” he said.

The Human Development Index has risen steadily for decades but began falling in 2020 and continued its decline in 2021, erasing gains from the previous five years, the paper said.

The report, titled “Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives,” points to the Covid-19 pandemic as a key driver of the global reversal, but also says an increasing number of crises — political, financial and climate-related — have not allowed time for the recovery of the population.

“We’ve had disasters before. We’ve had conflicts before. But the coincidence of what we are witnessing is a major setback for human development,” Steiner said.

The backlash is truly global, affecting more than 90 percent of countries around the world, according to the study.

Switzerland, Norway and Iceland all retain their places at the top of the list, while South Sudan, Chad and Niger are at the bottom.

And while some countries had begun to recover from the pandemic, many others in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean had yet to turn the corner before a new crisis hit: the war in Ukraine.

While the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on food and energy security has not yet been factored into this year’s index, “there is no doubt that the outlook for 2022 is bleak,” Steiner said.

A major contributor to the recent decline in the Human Development Index is the global drop in life expectancy from 73 years in 2019 to 71.4 years in 2021.

The report’s lead author, Pedro Conceicao, described the decline as an “unprecedented shock,” noting that some countries — including the United States — have had a decline of two years or more.

The report also describes how transformational forces such as climate change, globalization and political polarization are burdening humanity with a complex level of uncertainty “unprecedented in human history”, leading to a growing sense of insecurity.

“People have lost trust in each other,” said Steiner.

“No matter in institutions, our neighbor now sometimes becomes the greatest threat, whether literally in community or globally through nations, crippling us.”

“We cannot continue with the playbook of the last century,” argued Steiner, preferring to focus on economic transformation rather than relying on growth as a panacea.

“Honestly, the transformations we need now require adopting the metrics of the future: low-carbon, less inequality, more sustainability.”

The report also strikes a positive note, saying improvements could be made by focusing on three main areas: investing in renewable energy and preparing for future pandemics, insurance to cushion shocks, and innovation to strengthen the ability to face future ones crises.

Steiner also called for a reversal of the recent downward trend in development aid to the most vulnerable countries.

Continuing down this path is a grave mistake, Steiner said, and “underestimates the impact on our ability to work together as nations.”