This paper presents updated results for the cost of ambient air pollution in 41 countries: the 6 major emerging economies known as the BRIICS – Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa – and the 35 OECD member countries.

Fossil fuels continue to dominate the energy mix, with both OECD economies and the BRIICS still relying on fossil fuels for more than 80% of their energy supply.

Countries need to look beyond narrow national policy agendas to curb global emissions and reduce climate risks, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said today. Governments should seize the flexibility built into the 2015 Paris Agreement to increase and accelerate their emissions-cutting ambitions.

“National governments must take the lead and do so with a recognition that they are part of a global effort.” Speaking last week at the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría urged countries not to retreat behind their national borders in dealing with climate change. Read the full blog.

This paper details a methodology for calculating the extent of terrestrial and marine protected areas recorded in the World Database on Protected Areas by country, type and IUCN management categories. The method allows the data on protected areas to be summarised in a harmonised and more detailed way than is currently available, without requiring any additional reporting by countries.

The OECD’s third Environmental Performance Review of Switzerland finds that despite being one of the greenest OECD countries in terms of energy supply, greenhouse gas emissions and domestic material consumption per unit of GDP, Switzerland urgently needs to address pressures on its biodiversity.

One focus of tomorrow’s One Planet Summit, organised by President Macron, is “to determine how those working in public and private finance can innovate to support and accelerate our common efforts to fight climate change.”

Our response to the climate challenge will define our collective future for generations to come. We must act. We must act swiftly, collectively, and decisively.

18-23 March 2018 - The OECD participated in the World Water Forum under the theme “Sharing Water” through a series of events, the launch of a new report "Implementing the OECD Principles on Water Governance - Indicator Framework and Evolving Practices" and by taking part in a number of workshops and seminars throughout the forum. View the programme of OECD events.

This Policy Paper summarises key messages about the economic case for water investment, the barriers to investment and the financing gap. It charts a course for action to better value water and to facilitate water investment at scale. The Roundtable on Water Financing, a joint initiative of the OECD, the World Water Council and the Netherlands, will continue to deepen the evidence base and broaden engagement on these issues.

The OECD has been awarded the Hassan II World Water Prize by the government of Morocco and the World Water Council in recognition of its work under Secretary-General Angel Gurría to elevate water security as a crucial global issue and the policy guidance it has provided countries around the world on the issue.

This report examines what would be needed to achieve zero CO2 emissions from international maritime transport by 2035. It assesses measures that can reduce shipping emissions effectively and describes possible decarbonisation pathways that use different combinations of these measures; and reviews under which conditions these measures could be implemented and presents concrete policy recommendations.

This report focuses on the extent to which governments have complied with the environmental commitments made in the trade agreements to which they are a Party. The report takes a two track approach. First, a review of implementation and evaluation reports associated with environmental provisions in such agreements is performed. Second, a survey of government officials, trade negotiators and other experts is carried out.

This paper reviews the existing literature on modelling the macroeconomic consequences of the transition to a circular economy. It provides insights into the current state of the art on modelling policies to improve resource efficiency and the transition to a circular economy by examining 24 modelling-based assessments of a circular economy transition.

The OECD proposes to conduct a first-of-its-kind review of Indonesia’s green growth policies, with the co-operation of four Ministries.

Hungary has made progress in greening its economy and cutting emissions, but it needs to speed up efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, improve energy efficiency in buildings and promote sustainable transport, according to a new OECD Review.

The Czech economy is thriving, with robust employment, expanding exports and falling government debt. Efforts should now focus on boosting workforce skills and innovation to improve labour supply and productivity, further reduce poverty and inequality, and green the economy, according to two new OECD reports.

Cities with highest average population densities in the world are facing the challenge of urban sprawl. Finding sustainable solutions to reduce sprawl demands rethinking urban space and weighing the private benefits of low density living–my house and garden–against social, environmental and infrastructure costs.

26-31 August 2018 - The OECD will be participating at Stockholm World Water Week, the theme of which is "Water, ecosystems and human development”. The OECD is convening and speaking at a series of events throughout the week related to financing investment in water, water quality management and nature-based solutions.

12 September 2018, San Francisco - Cities and regions are critical financial actors in the global response to climate change, and particularly in the infrastructure. This expert panel will discuss how national and sub-national governments, as well as private actors, can scale up subnational financial flows to transition to low-carbon, resilient and inclusive cities, presenting the findings from OECD and World Bank studies.

This paper aims to test whether the inclusion of environmental provisions in Regional Trade Agreements has contributed to the improvement of environmental quality among the Parties to these agreements through empirical modelling and analysis. Three indicators are considered as a proxy for environmental quality: concentrations of suspended particulate matter less than 2.5 microns, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

Governments need to raise carbon prices much faster if they are to meet their commitments on cutting emissions and slowing the pace of climate change under the Paris Agreement, according to a new OECD report.

Three years on from the commitments made at COP21 in Paris, the overwhelming majority of governments have not taken the necessary action to contain growing risks to the climate. With emissions on the rise again, OECD governments need to get serious about shifting their economies to a low-carbon model and stop investing in carbon-intensive infrastructure.

4-5 October 2018, Germany - Jointly organised by the OECD and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the conference aimed to discuss innovative applications of blended finance as the strategic use of development finance for the mobilisation of finance towards sustainable development in developing countries in the water sector.

Public support for metal extraction and processing has received little attention relative to that for the agriculture, energy, or fisheries sectors. This report addresses this knowledge gap by mapping out the most common forms of support provided for primary metals (produced from mineral ores) and secondary metals (produced from scrap).

The transition towards a resource efficient and circular economy has linkages with international trade through the emergence of global value chains as well as trade in second-hand goods, end-of-life products, secondary materials and waste. This paper highlights the interaction of international trade and the circular economy in order to map out potential issues to address and to guide further research areas to explore on this topic.

The world’s consumption of raw materials is set to nearly double by 2060 as the global economy expands and living standards rise, placing twice the pressure on the environment that we are seeing today, according to a new OECD report.

OECD Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Masamichi Kono, and Shardul Agrawala, Head, Environment and Economy Integration Division, OECD Environment Directorate, presents the key findings of the forthcoming OECD report "Global Material Resources Outlook to 2060: Economic Drivers and Environmental Consequences".

This summer, we witnessed record-breaking heat and extreme weather events across the globe. To address the urgent climate challenge, and meet our broader development goals, trillions of dollars need to be invested in low-emissions and resilient infrastructure.

12 November, OECD Paris - The Roundtable focused on the three main pillars of analytical work: Mapping financing flows (characterising investment needs and financing capacities at country level); Blended finance for water investments (developing good practice in the use of development finance ) and Strategic investment pathways (designing investments in terms of water security and sustainable growth).

This paper explores the consequences on the labour markets of structural changes induced by decarbonisation policies. These policies are likely going to have consequences on labour-income distribution given i) existing rigidities in the labour markets, and ii) their different impacts on sectors and on job categories.

This report investigates the effects of select climate policies, non-climate policies, as well as political economy factors on the decarbonisation of electricity in OECD countries from 2000 to 2015. Effects are analysed on the three phases of decarbonisation: (1) increasing the share of renewables installed, (2) increasing the use of renewables in generation, and (3) reducing the emissions from electricity.

The OECD, UN Environment and World Bank Group today called on leaders of G20 countries to do more to enable a radical shift of investment into low-carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure as a way to limit the impact of climate change.

The large need for investments in sustainable infrastructure will require investments from the private sector, including institutional investors. This paper contributes to scaling up investments by analysing public project-level interventions for projects involving institutional investors; and presents findings from an updated database on institutional investments in environmentally sustainable infrastructure.

Meeting the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement requires a transformational change in our infrastructure systems. This working paper aims to shed light on the extent to which current electricity generation projects under construction at the global level - the "pipeline" - are consistent with what a low-carbon transition requires.

On 10 December in Katowice, the 9th annual High-Level Breakfast on Institutional Investors and the Low-carbon Transition, co-hosted by the OECD and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), highlighted significant progress in mobilising green institutional investment, as well as important remaining challenges.

This report provides an overview of methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of policy instruments for biodiversity, covering impact evaluation, cost-effectiveness analysis and other more commonly used approaches. It also provides an inventory of biodiversity-relevant impact evaluation studies, across both terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

At a time when nationalism is rising and individual countries are facing a growing array of threats, it is critical that we recognize a shared and unprecedented global challenge: We need to double our infrastructure in the next decade to meet global development needs, while achieving a systematic shift away from business-as-usual, carbon-intensive options to low-emissions, resilient infrastructure, to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Extended producer responsibility is a policy approach that aims to increase waste recovery and recycling. Extended producer responsibility systems aim to make producers responsible for the environmental impacts of their products throughout the product chain, from design to the end-of-life phase. This report focuses on free-riding of producers or retailers, which the fast expansion of online sales in recent years has been exacerbating.

An update of the OECD database on transboundary movements of wastes is now available for download. Since 1992, transboundary movements of recyclable wastes between OECD countries are regulated by the Council Decision C(2001)107, which was established by the OECD Council, and designed as an agreement under Article 11 of the Basel Convention.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of congestion pricing on the demand for clean transport modes. It draws on an empirical analysis of the effect of Milan’s congestion charge on the use of bike sharing. The analysis indicates that congestion pricing increases daily bike-sharing use by at least 5% in the short term.

Turkey will see its greenhouse gas emissions continue their steady rise of recent years without concrete actions to improve energy efficiency and increase the use of renewable energy sources, according to a new OECD report.

This paper assesses the effect of environmental regulations on plant survival and emissions using data on the extent of vintage differentiation of regulations (VDR5) regarding air pollution emission limit values for existing and new coal-fired power plants. Focussing on NOx and SOx emissions, the paper applies survival analysis techniques on a sample of generating units across 31 OECD and non-member countries between 1962 and 2012.

Parking policies have significant environmental and economic implications, which have often been left unconsidered. This paper reviews the relevant literature to provide a deeper understanding of the main environmental and economic consequences of common parking policies, and suggest policy options to protect the environment and increase social welfare.

This report offers a guide on potential reform pathways towards sustainable agriculture water use, based on a thorough review of selected past water and agriculture reforms and extensive consultation with policy experts.

Agriculture production is highly dependent on water and increasingly subject to water risks; and is the largest using sector and a major polluter of water. Improving agriculture’s water management is essential to a sustainable and productive agro-food sector.

The OECD welcomes the release of voluntary G20 peer reviews of Indonesia and Italy’s efforts to phase out and rationalise their inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies at the 2nd meeting of G20 Energy Transitions Working Group under the Japanese Presidency in Toyama, Japan.

On 19 April, 2019, the OECD held a workshop on mining and green growth in the Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (EECCA) region. The workshop is part of a larger project on mining and environmental sustainability in the EECCA region, following the production of a background paper on the same topic.

Rapid economic development and climate change are increasing our vulnerability to natural disasters, and a new joint OECD-World Bank report calls for pro-active management of the financial costs of those disasters before they strike.

The Latvian economy is thriving, with strong job growth driving convergence with more advanced economies. Efforts should now focus on reducing inequality, responding to the challenges posed by population ageing and making growth stronger, inclusive and greener, according to two new OECD reports.