Transcript of President Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s Video Message for United Nations Human Development Report

The Human Development Report, since its inception 34 years ago, has been a valuable exercise in collective thought leadership – on development, on how we can cooperate internationally in ways that can meet national needs as well as our collective needs.

It's been an eventful 34 years, with tailwinds and headwinds. But three fundamental realities will not change.

First, technological and economic progress will always have winners and losers. But if we simply leave the losers be, we will all end up losing. That's the first reality.

The second reality is that crises will recur. And they will grow in intensity and in the human cost they exact if we do not address them at their sources. If you do not address the underlying causes, COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic we face or even the most serious. The floods, the droughts, the wildfires, the extreme weather events that we've seen in the last few years are not freak events. And the wars and conflicts will unfortunately continue and reappear unless we address them at their source.

The third fundamental reality is that we do live in an interdependent world. It's an interdependence with a complexity and genius that will defy populistic protectionist efforts to dismantle it. Populism can dent interdependence, but it cannot alter it, because it is an interdependence that brings too many benefits to all nations. We are a world in which we are linked economically, ecologically, and by a shared interest in peace that makes us part of common humanity. That reality remains.

This year’s Human Development Report accepts these basic realities, and reimagines how we can cooperate and find common ground within our own societies and across the international community so as to ensure that we do not have zero-sum games. So that technological progress and global interdependence does not become perceived as a zero-sum game. And the report does so not just by confronting a zero-sum narrative with an alternative narrative. It does so by providing a framework for actions, actions that can ensure that every country can contribute to global public goods that are in all our interests.

And that means an increased stream of funding for the low-income and lower-middle income countries, so as to support their investments for national needs and for global public goods at the same time.

It does mean giving national institutions a new lease of life. Because confidence and trust in national institutions has been declining across a wide range of societies. And national institutions and the trust in them are critical for confidence in international cooperation and international institutions, and the actions we can take to bolster trust in national institutions.

It also means actions to give people themselves a greater sense of agency, involvement in collective actions for the greater good within our own societies, as well as internationally. And it means actions which involve people in deliberative processes, so that we can build common ground and build a sense of mutuality within our societies that resists the forces of polarisation. Debating issues and arriving at shared goals, including the shared goals of reducing inequality, and emancipation of women, which are in all our interests. The actions that we can take and must take will help us prevent a multipolar world from becoming a polarised world. And they will help us build resilient and optimistic societies that are the heart of a world in which we can have shared prosperity.

We cannot do so immediately. You can't reinvent multilateralism or reinvent our own societies within a year or two or three years. But we have to create momentum. And we have to build optimism by taking actions now. Actions which give people that sense of agency and involvement and actions which allow people to see that there are benefits that are spread all around and that we are not living in a zero-sum world where someone gains only because someone loses and one nation gains because another nation loses.

We've got to build that sense of shared prosperity by taking actions now, moving with some urgency and building optimism as we go along, and the Human Development Report charts the course for how we can achieve this.