Senior UN official foresees radical changes to development landscape

Long-term trends such as climate change and human impact on the world's natural resources are “radically changing the development landscape,” the top United Nations development official warned today.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the board of directors of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said that “we meet at a time of great change, with the cumulative effects of longer term trends radically altering the development landscape.”

“These include the impacts of climate change and of human activity on our ecosystems and natural resources,” Miss Clark

said. “There are challenges associated with high food and fuel price volatility, poor governance, and the difficulties of

helping countries prevent and recover from natural disasters and conflicts.”

“We also see tensions boiling over from growing disparities, exclusion, and alienation, even where conventional indicators have suggested that progress was being made – bringing to mind the old adage that men and women do not live by bread alone,” she said.

In the face of these challenges, and with UNDP's development record and experience, “our work today not only is highly

relevant, but indeed may be even more critical now than before.”

Miss Clark outlined for the board some “over-arching priorities,” which she said, include “even greater determination on

promoting growth and development which are inclusive, sustainable and resilient,” and “tackling governance challenges and the danger of countries slipping into crises.”

Miss Clark singled out the Arab region, where she said that UNDP would be working to “ensure we can respond effectively to changing circumstances.”

The administrator told the board: “We will improve our organizational effectiveness and our contribution to co-ordination of the development system.”

“Our business processes should be faster, cheaper, and better,” she said.