Two thousand four hundred billion dollars: that’s the expected cost of heat stress to the global economy every year from 2030, and it’s a conservative estimate, UN work experts said on Monday. In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Catherine Saget, from the International Labour Organization, warns that developing West African States are likely to be worst-hit, as they’re facing a five per cent drop in working hours by the end of the next decade, caused by rising temperatures.
Calling on governments to take human rights obligations into account when designing economic reforms, an independent United Nations rights expert said on Monday that “human rights impact assessments are key to the process”.
With growth of 14 per cent per year in China alone, so-called creative industries could be a “gamechanger” for emerging economies, a new report by UNCTAD suggests. In an interview with UN News, the agency’s Pamela Coke-Hamilton, explains that these countries need to put sufficient digital safeguards in place to reap the full benefits.
According to a new report by UNCTAD, Foreign direct investment (FDI) has fallen more than 40 per cent in the first half of 2018, compared with the same period last year, with developing economies escaping the worst of the downturn. Overall, the global financial picture is “gloomy”, James Zhan, UNCTAD Director of Investment and Enterprise, told Daniel Johnson in Geneva.
Amid external uncertainty and volatility, the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean will grow by an average of 1.5 per cent this year, thanks to a rebound in private consumption and a slight increase in investment, according to a United Nations flagship report issued on Thursday.
