This latest regional human development report for the Asia Pacific focuses on the need for the region to find ways to continue to grow economically while reducing poverty and tackling climate change and environmental concerns.

The UNDP has released a report titled “Taking Stock of Durban: Review of Key Outcomes and the Road Ahead,” which reviews: the UNFCCC history; the outcomes of the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UNFCCC, held in Durban, South Africa, at the end of 2011; and the opportunities and challenges that the climate change negotiations will face in the coming years.

The Regional Climate Risk Reduction Project (2009-2010), a pilot initiative from UNDP and the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office, spanned across four countries of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region: India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Pakistan. In a limited time span of 15 months, the project worked towards generating awareness on climatic variability, and increasing community preparedness against hydro-meteorological disasters.

The Africa–Asia Drought Risk Management Peer Assistance Project seeks to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and technical cooperation among drought-prone countries in Africa and Asia and thus to promote best practices in drought risk management (DRM) for development in the two regions. In order to establish a baseline to guide this activity, the UNDP Drylands Development Centre undertook a stocktaking exercise between March and June 2011 on drought impacts, causes, trends and solutions in Africa and Asia.

The financial resources involved in a shift to a low-emission climate-resilient economy are daunting but not impossible to achieve. The key challenge however of financing the transition towards a low-emission society is to redirect existing and planned capital flows from traditional high-carbon to low-emission and climate-resilient investments.

This report documents good practices and lessons learned in addressing energy poverty and expanding energy services for the poor. It draws from the experiences of 17 energy access programmes and projects in the Asia-Pacific region.

This study highlights the development benefits resulting from access to electricity for rural and remote communities in Nepal. It is based on the successful expansion of the Rural Energy Development Programme executed by the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre. Aimed at increasing access to decentralized energy systems in rural Nepal,the programme has adopted community mobilization as the pillar of its activities.

The UNDP has launched a guide titled "Paving the Way for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure: Guidance for Practitioners and Planners," which aims to help decision makers in developing countries adapt their national public infrastructure to climate change. The guide is part of a series of publications for decision makers in developing countries on how to design, finance and implement effective actions to address climate change.

This year's Human Development Report focuses on the challenge of sustainable and equitable progress and calls for addressing them together. It identifies policies that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals.

The recent global economic crisis has reinforced significant concerns about the impact of financial and economic shocks on human development. The increasing frequency of such shocks raises important questions about their systemic character and the ability of developing countries to withstand the most damaging and lasting impacts of economic uncertainty. Indeed, vulnerability to macro-level shocks has the potential of significantly slowing progress towards MDGs and other development goals that have taken developing countries many years to achieve.