President Stevo Pendarovski addressed today the regional presentation of the Human Development Report prepared by UNDP, which was held online.
In his address, President Pendarovski referred to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health, economic, educational and social aspects of human development and their slowdown as a result of this systemic crisis.
Regarding the shocks caused by the pandemic, President Pendarovski pointed to the estimates of the International Monetary Fund, according to which 100 million people in the world will be pushed into extreme poverty, and the occasional paralysis of the education system will have serious consequences.
President Pendarovski also stressed that the pandemic is an opportunity to restructure our economies, industries, technologies and in general, the way of life in accordance with the sustainable development principles.
“If we treat crises in isolation, we will only alleviate the symptoms without curing our humanity. We need to focus on developing and supporting innovative environmental approaches, sustainable development strategies and using new technologies for climate action”, President Pendarovski said and added that according to the Human Capital Index of the World Bankn it is expected in many countries the economic damage to be remedied at the expense of the environmental and climate agenda.
“I do not expect that to be the case with the Republic of North Macedonia. As a candidate country for membership in the European Union, we fully support the European Green Agreement and are ready to make our contribution to the transformation of Europe into the first continent with de-carbonized economies by 2050. As President, I will support the Government’s plans to submit revised and more ambitious national contributions to climate change”, President Pendarovski. said
The Human Development Report, President Pendarovski added, should help keep the focus and not deviate from the main goals: the 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
As a positive example, President Pendarovski pointed out that human development in North Macedonia increased by 14.3% from 2000 to 2019, and that the global multidimensional poverty index shows that the country has the fastest reduction of poverty in relative numbers.
