Putting “Green” at the core of a country’s “Growth” strategy is intelligent public policy at its best! Korea understands that there is no trade-off between green and growth. Much to the contrary: there are strong synergies that can be exploited between pro-growth and pro-green policies.

A new OECD report presents around 550 measures that support fossil-fuel production or use in the OECD’s 34 member countries and also highlights the successes and challenges in bringing about reform, says this OECD Insights blog post.

The GGKP’s second annual conference will be held at the OECD Headquarters in Paris on 4-5 April 2013. The discussion will be framed around two headline themes: Greening global value chains and Measurement and reporting for green growth.

Strong international cooperation on testing, exploring and refining measurement tools on green growth is essential to support implementation and assessment of policies in both developed and developing countries, said OECD Secretary-General.

What is the role of the private sector in greening the agro-food chain? This OECD/BIAC workshop will examine such issues as the role of new technologies in increasing productivity and reducing waste, as well as developing private-public partnerships.

This working paper reflects on green growth policy in Ethiopia – it explores green growth already in action – a range of on-the-ground activities which point to scale-up options for the future.

This workshop expanded the G20 Development Working Group’s (DWG) dialogue with representatives from developing countries on the lessons learned from their own experiences in designing and implementing inclusive green growth strategies.

Key questions for development planning today in countries include: Can developing countries strike a balance between economic growth, societal well-being and environmental protection? Can inclusive, green growth be a way forward? This report presents a case study on Cambodia designed to answer these questions.

The OECD participated in this annual event held in Stockholm (1-5 September 2013) where two major reports "Water Security for Better Lives" and "Water and Climate Change Adaptation: Policies to Navigate Uncharted Waters" were launched by the OECD's Secretary-General, Angel Gurría.

Water shortages and floods illustrate the risks posed by too little, or too much, water. By 2050 more than 40% of the world’s population will live under severe water stress and nearly 20% could be exposed to floods.

Credible and consistent carbon pricing must be the cornerstone of government actions to tackle climate change, according to a new OECD report.

The 2013 Forum was held on 5-6 December and discussed how governments can improve their investment policy framework to reduce the risk and attract long-term private finance in support of green growth.

The last decade has seen considerable policy attention to the social economy and its contribution to employment, in particular as regards the inclusion and empowerment of vulnerable workers and the provision of appropriate working conditions.

LEED and Cedefop organise the second edition of the Green Skills Forum which will bring together experts in innovation, employability and skills development and lessons from work conducted by the OECD, Cedefop, and other organisations on the implications of the green economy for skills development and training policies.

Risk finance is essential for new ventures to commercialise new ideas and grow, especially in emerging sectors. Yet very little is known about the drivers and characteristics of risk finance in the green sector. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed description of risk finance in the green sector across 29 countries and identifying the role that policies might have in shaping high-growth investments.

The OECD’s 34 member countries today affirmed their common resolve to work towards a deal on combating climate change at the COP21 talks in Paris in 2015. OECD accession countries Colombia and Latvia joined the statement issued at the Organisation’s annual Ministerial Council Meeting, attended by finance, economy, trade and other ministers.

Air pollution is costing advanced economies plus China and India an estimated USD 3.5 trillion a year in premature deaths and ill health and the costs will rise without government action to limit vehicle emissions, a new OECD report says.

As part of its Green Growth Strategy, the OECD is developing a set of indicators for agriculture. A Preliminary Assessment has just been published, and a selection of indicators has been identified to capture key aspects of a low-carbon, resource-efficient agricultural sector.

Let’s be honest, waste reduction doesn’t have much of a ring to it. To many, it’s a complex policy issue without much hope if consumers keep throwing their cans away in the street.

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.

Third Annual Conference on the theme of "Fiscal Policies and the Green Economy Transition: Generating Knowledge – Creating Impact" held at the University of Venice from 29 through 30 January 2015. The press release is available.

"Green growth" and transport combines several different concepts that are central to sustainable mobility, including sustainable economic activity, reduced environmental impact and sustained growth in high quality jobs.

Knowledge sharing is critical in fostering urban green growth. Cities in dynamic Asia urgently need to adopt and strengthen green growth models that take into account rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, and motorisation.

This report develops an analytical framework that assesses the macroeconomic, environmental and distributional consequences of energy subsidy reforms. The framework is applied to the case of Indonesia to study the consequences in this country of a gradual phase out of all energy consumption subsidies between 2012 and 2020.

Consumers only occasionally choose to buy sustainable products. At the same time these consumers say in surveys that sustainability is important to them, and that the government should promote sustainable consumption. This study takes a closer look at public support for sustainable consumption and the associated dilemmas, with the help of a behavioural economics experiment of group decisions.

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.

This year’s OECD Ministerial Council Meeting, which we are honoured to chair, will address the issue of investment. The timing could not be better. Growth prospects have improved, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Investment has been hit especially hard since the crisis started and has yet to recover.

The OECD hosted a workshop on green investment banks on 20 May 2015. It built upon discussions of green banks at the OECD Green Investment Financing Fora (May 2015 and June 2014) and continued international dialogue on the experiences of green banks. The workshop welcomed 9 different green banks, public financial institutions, NGOs, the private sector and over 20 countries interested in the green bank model.

Ministers from OECD’s 34 member countries today welcomed the new OECD Principles on Water Governance, which set standards for more effective, efficient and inclusive design and implementation of water policies, and encouraged governments to put them into action.

The 2011 Green Growth Strategy provided initial guidance to governments on how to achieve economic growth and development, while preventing costly environmental damage and inefficient resource use. What progress have countries made in aligning economic and environmental priorities since 2011?

Mainstreaming greening in employment and skills strategies requires a strong partnerships between public, private and not-for-profit organisations in order to maximise innovation and to manage smoothly labour market transitions from brown to green energy and employment. In this timely report, CEDEFOP and the OECD provide evidence and policy analysis to foster an equitable shift to greener economies and more sustainable societies.

Views vary on how much of a difference the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) actually made to the world. But on one thing people seem more or less united: They were a great communications tool. Will the new set of goals adopted at the United Nations in October prove equally effective as a communications tool?

OECD urges efforts to better price carbon as new analysis finds that 90% of CO2-emissions are priced below EUR 30 per tonne, a low-end estimate of climate damage, and 60% are not priced at all. Effective Carbon Rates in the OECD and Selected Partner Economies calculates effective carbon rates (ECR) on CO2-emissions from energy use for 41 countries which together use 80% of global emissions.

The Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) is pleased to announce its Fourth Annual Conference on the theme of Transforming Development through Inclusive Green Growth from 6-7 September 2016 at the International Conventional Centre in Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea. The GGKP welcomes the submission of abstracts on policy- and practitioner-relevant research findings on pro-poor and inclusive green growth.

Join the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) for a webinar on 25 May 2016, 9:00-10:40am (CST, Costa Rica time) to explore issues affecting the LAC region, including: inclusive green growth, implementation of clean, efficient, resilient and socially inclusive innovations. Please note that the webinar will be held in Spanish.

Further structural reforms are needed to help the business sector boost productivity growth and overcome the key challenges of sluggish investment in advanced economies and excess capacity in emerging economies, according to a new OECD report.

Register for the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) Webinar on Sustainable Cities and Structural Transformation through a presentation of this year's African Economic Outlook (AEO). The webinar will take place on 20 July 2016, 2:00-3:30pm (Geneva time).

The OECD has welcomed the release by China and the US of peer reviews of their fossil fuel subsidies.

The Fourth Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) Annual Conference will take place on the theme of “Transforming Development through Inclusive Green Growth” during 6-7 September 2016 at the International Convention Center on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea.

Join the GGKP for a webinar on 1 November from 3:00pm - 4:30pm (Geneva time) to learn more about the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)'s Green Growth Potential Assessment (GGPA) tool which helps countries find ways to turn risks into green growth opportunities, and the ways in which it has been applied to unlock green growth potential in Colombia and Peru.

Despite a challenging global environment, the growth prospects of Emerging Asia (Southeast Asia, China and India) remain robust over the medium term, according to the latest edition of the OECD Development Centre’s Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India.

The Fifth GGKP Annual Conference will be hosted by the World Bank on the topic of sustainable infrastructure, to stimulate research on these issues and foster interdisciplinary dialogue where relevant.The scientific committee therefore calls for contributions on any aspect of the infrastructure agenda, particularly for developing countries, with a focus on sustainability. Deadline for preliminary versions by 15 June 2017.

To leverage the impact of relatively limited public resources, over a dozen national and sub-national governments have created public green investment banks (GIBs) and GIB-like entities.

Korea has improved access to environmental services and become a world leader in climate change mitigation technology.

Integrating measures to tackle climate change into regular economic policy will have a positive impact on economic growth over the medium and long term, according to a new OECD report prepared in the context of the German Presidency of the G20.

This country note explains how Israel taxes energy use. The note shows the distribution of effective energy tax rates across all domestic energy use. It also details the country-specific assumptions made when calculating effective energy tax rates and matching tax rates to the corresponding energy base.

The tax-to-GDP ratio in Israel decreased by 1.4 percentage points from 32.5% in 2017 to 31.1% in 2018. The corresponding figure for the OECD average was a slight increase of 0.1 percentage point from 34.2% to 34.3% over the same period.

The tax wedge for the average single worker in Israel increased by 0.2 percentage points from 22.5 in 2018 to 22.7 in 2019. The OECD average tax wedge in 2019 was 36.0 (2018, 36.1). In 2019 Israel had the 32nd lowest tax wedge among the 36 OECD member countries, occupying the same position in 2018.

Recent seizures of fake medical supplies being marketed as protection against coronavirus (Covid-19) have underscored the need to address a growing international trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The trafficking of fake or defective medicines is costly and puts lives at risk, according to the new OECD and EU reports.

This country note explains how Ireland taxes energy use. The note shows the distribution of effective energy tax rates across all domestic energy use. It also details the country-specific assumptions made when calculating effective energy tax rates and matching tax rates to the corresponding energy base.