5 charts that show the impact 2022 had on global development

Few people will look back on 2022 with much affection. Just as the world struggled to recover from COVID-19 and the economic impact of lockdowns, war broke out in Europe, driving up global inflation and creating food and energy shortages.

The climate crisis also continued, with extreme weather causing catastrophic floods, droughts and wildfires that left millions homeless across the globe – 6.5 million people fled their homes in Pakistan alone at the height of floods in September.

The World Bank has just released a series of interactive charts that put the year into perspective and released data about its response. Here are five that sum up a very difficult year.

Although the global economy started to recover from the depths of the pandemic, the bounceback was uneven and unstable, the World Bank says. The slowing rate of economic growth reversed much of the progress towards ending poverty, and led to increased global debt.

The “confluence of crises” in 2022 means that the world’s economic slowdown is the steepest since 1970, the Bank says. Tumbling consumer confidence and slowdowns in the world’s biggest economies mean more bad news could cause a full-blown global recession in 2023.

Before the pandemic, the world had been making steady progress in reducing poverty. But COVID-19 saw the number of people surviving on less than $2.15 a day rise for the first time in three decades. The crises of 2022 dashed hopes of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

The slowing fight against poverty means a target of reducing the number in extreme poverty to just 3% of the global population by 2030 will be missed, the Bank adds. It estimates that 685 million people could now be living in extreme poverty.

Developing nations’ debt crisis intensified in 2022, with 6 in 10 now either in debt distress – where borrowing becomes unsustainable – or at risk of it, the World Bank says. Debt burdens are stopping investments in health, education, climate action and economic reform.

A bigger proportion of poorer nations’ debt – over 60% – is now owed to private lenders and countries like China, India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Although this trend spreads the risk, it also makes it harder for countries to restructure their debt, the Bank says.

The World Bank committed 36% of its total funding in 2022 to the fight against climate change, delivering a record $31.7 billion – almost $13 billion of which was to help countries increase their resilience to extreme weather events.

A report by the charity Christian Aid estimated that the 10 costliest climate-related disasters in 2022 each caused more than $3 billion of damage, with the impact falling disproportionately on the least wealthy nations.

Sharp increases in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have made it harder to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable modern energy by 2030.

Progress was reversed in 2022, with an increase in the number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa without electricity. Globally, 733 million people have no electricity, and on current trends 670 million will still be unconnected in 2030 – around 10 million more than forecast in 2021, the Bank says.