The meeting took place on 17-18 September 2013 in Tbilisi, Georgia and marked the 20th anniversary of the OECD environment-related co-operation with countries of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.

The OECD is to review its chemical hazard assessment programme with the aim of providing a more specialised service for member countries from 2015.

In the two decades since apartheid ended, South Africa has made impressive strides to catch up with – and in some cases surpass -- the developed world’s environmental standards.

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.

Colombia has made progress towards eliminating fuel and diesel subsidies and reducing discretionary spaces allowing for artificially low fuel prices, but challenges remain. This paper discusses the political economy of fuel subsidies in the country to understand why reform has been so slow.

In light of the UK floods, this 3-minute Q&A with OECD Environmental Economist Kathleen Dominique discusses how governments should be preparing for climate change-related weather events.

Colombia’s rich natural heritage as one of the world’s most bio-diverse countries is coming under increasing pressure from extractive industries, livestock grazing, urbanisation and car use, according to a new OECD report.

A new OECD report describes what Ethiopia and Columbia are doing to sustain development in a changing climate.

Sweden has shown a longstanding commitment to the environment, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and nitrogen leaching. Renewables supply more than a third of its energy needs. Sweden has set itself tough targets for the future, however, and must continue to innovate if it is to meet them, according to a new OECD report.

In its 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) produced an Efficient World Scenario to assess how implementing only economically viable energy efficiency measures would affect energy markets, investment and greenhouse emissions (GHG). Using the OECD ENV-Linkages macro-economic model, this report simulates the economic and environmental impacts which the IEA Efficient World Scenario implies.

This document provides a detailed technical description of the ENV-Linkages model. The OECD ENV-Linkages Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is an economic model that describes how economic activities are inter-linked across several macroeconomic sectors and regions. It links economic activity to environmental pressure, specifically to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

This paper presents a framework to include feedbacks from climate impacts on the economy in integrated assessment models. The proposed framework uses a production function approach, which links climate impacts to key variables and parameters used in the specification of economic activity. The paper pays particular attention to the challenges of distinguishing between damages and the costs of adapting to climate change.

Have you ever wondered who was paying to recycle that plastic bottle you just threw away?

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is increasingly recognised worldwide as an efficient waste management policy to help improve recycling and reduce landfilling of products and materials. This Forum took place on 17-19 June 2014, in Tokyo, Japan, to identify key challenges and opportunities for further developing EPR policies.

This workshop focused on putting priorities into practice in OECD countries. Country-specific prioritisation, sectoral approaches, mainstreaming tools including questions on public sector finance and research needs were all topics covered during the two days of the workshop.

The paper reviews a number of commercial and public data sources to examine their potential for increasing coverage and understanding of the volume and characteristics of private climate finance beyond renewable energy projects. Such information is needed to assess progress towards the global transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient economies.

Education plays a crucial role in raising awareness of environmental challenges and shaping the attitudes and behaviours that can make a difference. A recently released Trends Shaping Education Spotlight looks at the role of education in both preparing and providing our citizens with the skills needed for a sustainable and productive future.

Reversing the damage is within our grasp, but it will hinge on a strong international climate agreement and policies that make polluters pay. Op Ed by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General and Nick Stern, Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, The Guardian.

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approach their expiry date, we must focus our efforts on ensuring a brighter, more inclusive and sustainable future for all. We face a plethora of common issues: growing inequalities; changing consumption patterns and population dynamics; increasing natural resource scarcity; and ongoing illicit financial flows.

Advanced economies are pushing up carbon emissions, traffic congestion and air pollution by under-taxing company cars and diesel fuel, according to new OECD research.

The meeting was held on 8 October 2014 in Minsk, Belarus. The key objective was to discuss the progress made on the programme's implementation and to agree on priorities for 2015.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you’ve just visited the room with no windows and enjoyed the effortless push of the “deposit disposal button” followed by a stream of fresh, clean tap water to wash your hands, you could well be in an OECD city

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.

This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected studies on environmental issues prepared for use within the OECD. Two recent working papers: sustainable Consumption Dilemmas and Tender Instruments: Programme Participation and Impact in Australian Conservation Tenders, Grants and Volunteer Organisations.

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.

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.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on OECD governments to ensure that a series of major summits this year result in a new era of sustainable development.

Developing countries are increasingly moving towards more strategic national policies and plans, the effectiveness of which will depend upon proper assessment of a given country’s vulnerability to climate change. This report draws upon emerging monitoring and evaluation practices across developed and developing countries to identify four tools that countries can draw upon in their own assessment frameworks.

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.

For many years one of the predominant conventional wisdoms in both business and policymaking circles was that cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions necessitates a sacrifice in 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.

This paper refines indicators to measure innovation in environment-related technologies, drawing on recent methodological advances that allow a more accurate assessment of environment-related innovation in a broader range of countries. Three indicators are discussed: an indicator of technology development; an indicator of international collaboration in technology development and an indicator of technology diffusion.

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.

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.

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.

Advanced and emerging economies have made progress in addressing climate change, yet most are on a trajectory that would see them fall short of their mitigation goals. Governments need to significantly accelerate their efforts and strengthen their climate change policies.