What’s water security worth, and how much are we willing to pay for it given competing demands and constrained public budgets? asks Simon Upton, Environment Director at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD congratulated the newly elected President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, for taking a bold first step in his economic reform agenda by substantially cutting fuel subsidies.

The world is facing unprecedented stresses, and we are going to need an unprecedented response. We’re doing our best to help create that response at the OECD.

This meeting addressed green growth policies for small and medium-sized enterprises, water governance in line with green economy requirements, and reporting on the Task Force programme implementation and plans for 2015.

Water security is one of the greatest challenges we face today, yet the situation has never looked more perilous. By 2050 the OECD Environmental Outlook projects that nearly 4 billion people will live in river basins under severe water stress, and global nitrogen effluents from wastewater are projected to grow by 180%. Whilst, over the same period, global demand for water is expected to grow by 55%.

Held on 27-28 November 2014, the forum focused on four areas that can contribute to more integrated policy making. Topics for discussion included the need to understand long-term impacts of the nexus on growth; ways to improve coherence between national, regional and local planning and priorities; the importance of promoting private sector investment in the nexus; and....

This report is the third OECD review of Sweden’s environmental performance. It evaluates progress towards sustainable development and green growth, with a focus on Sweden's longstanding commitment to mitigating emissions of greenhouse gases and its management of marine ecosystem services and water.

Find out how the OECD participated in the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 20) which took place from 1-12 December in Lima, Peru.

As environmental pressures continue to rise, governments throughout the OECD area have not been sitting back. If anything, the stringency of their policy measures has been increasing on the whole, not least to combat pollution and climate change. And as the evidence shows, stringent environmental policies can be introduced without hurting overall productivity.

The world will need more and better targeted financing to meet the challenges of global development post-2015. This means taking important decisions not only on what qualifies as official development assistance (ODA), but also on how those flows can be most strategically used.

In today’s hard times, policy-makers can find it difficult to sell their environmental policies. To many, these policies represent a burden on the economy.

Climate policy and competitiveness issues have created a new need for international co-ordination, beyond the scope of our current frameworks. There is no need to trade economic growth for environmental stringency. Environmentally stringent policies are an incentive for greater efficiencies which leading edge companies can easily achieve.

Please join me in an ode to the giant tortoise, recently confirmed to be back from near extinction on the Galapagos Espanola Island after conservation work that began forty years ago. Whoever thought this waddly wild wonk would be a model for humans to improve environment through adept household behaviour?

This study uses a unique dataset of investment flows to analyse the role of two categories of public interventions (finance and policies) in mobilising flows of private climate finance worldwide and in the more specific context of flows to and in developing countries. The objectives are threefold. Find out more.

The OECD’s latest Environmental Performance Review of Spain finds the country has decreased the energy and carbon intensity of its economy, reduced industrial pollution and cut per-capita waste generation since 2000.

It’s time for governments to ramp up the development of alternative energies and to nail a price onto every tonne of CO2 emitted. With COP21 taking place in Paris in November, sending the right message on climate change means gradually increasing the cost of CO2 emissions, and creating a strong economic incentive to reduce the carbon entanglement and to move towards a zero-carbon world.

The fates of humanity and of the environment are two sides of the same coin. That is why we must focus increasingly on not just development but sustainable development. To do that, we need to form global coalitions to work for progress on a range of challenges.

Rapid population growth, ageing infrastructure and new weather risks are straining the ability of cities in OECD countries to provide clean water and to protect against floods and droughts, according to a new OECD report. Cities will need large-scale investment and more effective tariffs and taxes to pay for upgrades to water systems.

Water resources allocation determines who is able to use water resources, how, when and where. Capturing information from 27 OECD countries and key partner economies, the report presents key findings from the OECD Survey of Water Resources Allocation and case studies of successful allocation reform.

Concerns around potential losses of competitiveness as a result of unilateral action on carbon pricing are often central for policy makers contemplating the introduction of such instruments. This paper is a review of literature on ex post empirical evaluations of the impacts of carbon prices on indicators of competitiveness as employed in the literature, including employment, output or exports, at different levels of aggregation.

Climate change and, more generally, environmental damage have quantifiable economic and health costs, which weigh on long-term growth and well-being. If left unchecked, climate change is projected to decrease global GDP by 0.7 to 2.5 % by 2060. At the same time, the costs to society of air pollution already appear substantial–equivalent to some 4% of GDP across OECD countries and even higher in some rapidly developing economies.

The OECD Secretary-General, Mr. Angel Gurría, chaired several high-level panels; the OECD actively participated through a series of events, the launch of four new reports and by taking part in a number of workshops and seminars throughout the forum. ‌

2015 is a critical year for humanity. Our civilisation has never faced such existential risks as those associated with global warming, biodiversity erosion and resource depletion. Our societies have never had such an opportunity to advance prosperity and eradicate poverty. We have the choice to either finally embark on the journey towards sustainability or to stick to our current destructive “business-as-usual” pathway.

Poland has combined robust economic growth with reducing some of the pressures on its environment since it joined the EU in 2004. It has also brought environmental laws closer to European norms. Poland now needs to lessen its economy’s reliance on fossil fuels and make growth greener, according to a new OECD report.

A transition to a low carbon economy is achievable, but will require a concerted, more consistent effort across a range of policy areas, from tradeable permits to stringent norms.

According to shocking new research by Oxfam, the world’s richest 1% would, on current trends, own more than half the world’s wealth by 2016.

Is it possible for 9 billion people to live on this planet and enjoy a good standard of living? And on such a planet, is it possible for economies to grow, businesses to profit, and communities to prosper without undermining the natural systems that support all life? And without destroying some of the planet’s last great wildernesses?

The international discussions under way in the course of this vital year–including July’s Finance for Development Meeting in Addis Ababa, the agreement of a new set of universal Sustainable Development Goals at the UN in September and the climate change summit in Paris at the end of 2015–represent a remarkable and unprecedented opportunity to establish what might be called a “Magna Carta for the earth” for our times.

In his remarks to the Business & Climate Summit, the Secretary-General said that business lies at the heart of what we need to achieve on climate action. If Governments produce clear, credible and coherent national policies and clear messages and signals, the full transformative power of business, markets and human ingenuity will be unleashed.

In January of this year I visited the Mexican state of Tabasco– a state crossed by rivers and facing the Gulf of Mexico. The state’s population has doubled over the past 30 years and its economy relies heavily on oil and natural gas resources. It has its challenges as well: unemployment, poverty and a lack of resources.

Over the coming months, the world will be preparing for what is heralded as an historic meeting for climate change negotiations. If the right decisions are taken–with the aim of making a sustainable energy future a reality–we will be able to reap enormous, multiple benefits deriving not only from decarbonisation, but also from reduced air pollution, better energy access, energy security and economic prosperity.

Challenging free trade orthodoxy is a heavy lift in our political culture; anything that has been in place for that long takes on an air of inevitability. But, critical as these shifts are, they are not enough to lower emissions in time. To do that, we will need to confront a logic even more entrenched than free trade–the logic of indiscriminate economic growth.

The OECD’s Annual Meeting at Ministerial Level reinforced member governments’ support across a broad range of key OECD work.

We could spend World Environment Day warning of the doom and gloom of future Earth, but considering how much we have done that already, that’s not going to get us very far as we approach this year’s COP21 in Paris. Instead, we are going to give you a taste on what we do here at the OECD headquarters to help save the environment, taking our own medicine on what we prescribe to governments.

The meeting was held on 18 June 2015 in Chisinau, Moldova. The key objective was to discuss the progress made on the programme implementation and to agree the work plan for 2015-16.

Governments are under-utilising taxation as a tool to curb the environmental consequences of energy use, foregoing revenue and weakening their attack on the principal source of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change and air pollution, according to new OECD analysis.

Governments should rethink the role of coal in energy supply as the scale of new investments being made in unabated coal-fired electricity generation poses the most urgent threat to our climate, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said today.

Taxes are potentially among the most effective ways of cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, but they are currently – with very few exceptions – underused; and even where used, they are frequently designed in a sub-optimal way.

The recent droughts in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo states have exposed the need to shift from crisis management to effective risk governance of the country’s water resources, according to a new OECD report.

This joint OECD/France conference to be held in Paris on 16 September 2015 will aim to lay the foundation for the international effort which is needed on public policy options and economic incentives to support food security, the fight against climate change and adaptation to climate change while integrating soil issues in that effort.

Raw materials are essential for the global economy and future development depends on their continued supply. Like fossil fuels, minerals are non-renewable. In general, their deposits in the Earth’s crust are also geographically clustered, making security of supply a potential risk. The purpose of this report is to perform for the first time an analysis of critical minerals for the OECD countries as a whole.

Government support to fossil fuel consumption and production in OECD countries and key emerging economies remains high, at USD 160-200 billion annually, according to a new OECD report. This support is hampering global efforts to curb emissions and combat climate change.

Cost-benefit analyses and other quantitative appraisals are used in many countries to support decision-making in public policy, including investment projects in sectors such as transport and energy. This paper discusses the range of approaches which can be employed to value changes in carbon emissions in policy appraisalsand presents some case studies and a survey of current practice in OECD countries.

The current Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal highlights the difficult reality of making the transition to a low-carbon economy. It also highlights the growing need for governments to make smart policies, based on actual costs.

Public and private finance mobilised by developed countries for climate action in developing countries reached USD 62 billion in 2014, up from USD 52 billion in 2013 and making an average of USD 57 billion annually over the 2013-14 period, according to a new OECD study in collaboration with Climate Policy Initiative (CPI).

More than 150 countries have submitted their post-2020 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Such contributions are vital to the #COP21 climate change conference in Paris this December.

"Back to the Future" festivities marking 21 October 2015 as the date Marty and Doc travel to the future in the famous film with Michael J. Fox. If only we had a similar time machine allowing us to travel to 2045 to see what the climate has in store to better decide what policies to adopt today. Alas, no time machine has been invented yet but, in the absence of such a cool device, we can rely on climate and economic models...

Brazil has made remarkable social and economic progress in the past two decades, but must now overcome important challenges if it is to put its economy on a stronger, fairer, greener growth trajectory, according to two new reports from the OECD.

Average global temperature could rise by 3-6 degrees Celsius by 2100 if we don’t act. To keep the rise to 2 degrees Celsius, we need to have net zero emissions by the end of the century. Emissions would need to peak by 2030 to give us a fighting chance of achieving this.

This report on climate change disclosure in G20 countries takes stock of mandatory climate change reporting schemes in G20 countries and identifies commonalities and divergences between the various schemes.