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Why we don’t feel safe

Insecurity is global, regardless of income

February 8^th, 2022

Safety and security are at the base of the ‘hierarchy of needs’ pyramid, second in importance only to life’s absolute necessities—air, water, food and shelter.

In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, people were on average living healthier, more prosperous and better lives than ever.

Yet still a growing sense of unease had taken root and is flourishing.

New world, new threats

A new UNDP report, New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene, says six out of seven people all over the world—including in the wealthiest countries— were experiencing high levels of insecurity even before the pandemic.

COVID-19 may have supercharged this feeling. Unlike any other recent crisis, it has laid waste to many dimensions of our wellbeing and set human development back.

The pandemic has spurred feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. Photo: UNDP PAPP

As well as the appalling health consequences, the pandemic has upended the global economy, interrupted education and life plans, disrupted livelihoods and stirred political division over masks and vaccines.

Even with the distribution of vaccines and the partial economic recovery that began in 2021, the crisis has been marked by a drop in life expectancy of about one and a half years.

In tandem with this comes a growing distrust in each other and in the institutions which are, in theory, designed to protect us.

Change is the only certainty

The world has always been in flux, but the challenges we face today as technology advances, and we experience inequality and conflict, are playing out on a different stage. Because we are now in the Anthropocene, the era in which humans are changing the planet in dangerous ways that our species has never seen.

It’s a deadly dance and no-one is immune from its consequences.

“Despite global wealth being higher than ever before, a majority of people are feeling apprehensive about the future and these feeling have likely been exacerbated by the pandemic. In our quest for unbridled economic growth, we continue to destroy our natural world while inequalities are widening both within and between countries.” – Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator

The world is far from prepared for the shocks that the Anthropocene has in store.

Climate change is likely to become a leading cause of death. With a moderate decline in carbon emissions, it could still cause 40 million deaths before the end of the century.

The Anthropocene era is adding fuel to conflict, as human lives become more precarious. Conflicts involving the state—raging in 37 countries—are the highest since the end of World War II.

Violence is becoming normalized in many places, and the number of people forcibly displaced due to conflict or disaster has risen over the past decade, reaching more than 80 million in 2020.

About 1.2 billion people live in areas afflicted by conflict—almost half of them in countries not considered to be fragile.

The new realities

Old inequalities are still with us despite advances in wealth and living standards. And a new generation of inequalities is opening up. These includes the ability to flourish in a modern economy, and access to now-necessary technology such as broadband internet.

Technology is a two-edged sword—bringing vast opportunities and potentially catastrophic risks.

At the same time as digitalization can connect communities, encourage new skills and education, and promote human security, social media is spreading misinformation and fueling polarization.

In 2017, an estimated 95 percent of companies in Africa were rated on or below the cybersecurity ‘poverty line’, unable to protect themselves from malicious attacks.

The damage of cybercrime was estimated to cost about US$6 trillion in 2021, a 600 percent increase since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The concept of human security, first introduced in UNDP’s milestone 1994 Human Development Report, signaled a radical departure from the prevailing idea that humans were secure if they lived in a ‘safe’ geographical area.

Instead, it suggested that security was about everyone living free from want, free from fear and free from indignity.

Nearly 30 years on, it is even clearer that our security depends on much more than national borders, as technology shrinks the world and the climate emergency worsens.

The truth is, and living history is reminding us, that we can only be secure if we can believe the machinery of states and markets, and when our neighbours are also secure.

“A key element for practical action highlighted in the report is building a greater sense of global solidarity based on the idea of common security. Common security recognizes that a community can only be secure if adjacent communities are too. This is something we see all too clearly with the current pandemic: nations are largely powerless to prevent new mutations of this coronavirus from crossing borders.” – Asako Okai, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director, UNDP Crisis Bureau

“The security of humanity is a collective mission.”

Modern life is a Rubik’s cube; every move has a knock-on effect. Cutting down forests might mean more land for agriculture now, but it will hurt biodiversity and the climate in dangerous ways.

This moment is unique. It’s an opportunity to ‘zoom out’ and to abandon fragmented and ineffective security measures. To repair trust in the face of inequality, conflict and technology, we must now encompass the needs of present and future generations and embrace what works locally and globally, in developing and developed countries.

“It is time to recognize the signs of societies that are under immense stress and redefine what progress actually means. We need a fit-for-purpose development model that is built around the protection and restoration of our planet with new sustainable opportunities for all." – Achim Steiner, UNDP Adminstrator