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This publication outlines the 12 most important humanitarian lessons from the DAC peer reviews, profiles examples of good donor behaviour highlighted in the peer reviews, and sketches out the challenges donors still face as they move towards better humanitarian donorship. Lessons are grouped under the following headings: the strategic framework; delivering effective funding; an organisation fit for purpose; and learning and accountability.
Southeast Asia’s booming economy offers tremendous growth potential, but also large and interlinked economic, social and environmental challenges. The region’s current growth model is based in large part on natural resource exploitation, exacerbating these challenges. This report provides evidence that, with the right policies and institutions, Southeast Asia can pursue green growth and thus sustain the natural capital and environmental services, including a stable climate, on which prosperity depends.
Carried out in consultation with officials and researchers from across the region, Towards Green Growth in Southeast Asia provides a framework for regional leaders to design their own solutions to move their countries towards green growth. While recognising the pressures that Southeast Asian economies face to increase growth, fight poverty and enhance well-being, the report acknowledges the links between all these dimensions and underscores the window of opportunity that the region has now to sustain its wealth of natural resources, lock-in resource-efficient and resilient infrastructure, attract investment, and create employment in the increasingly dynamic and competitive sectors of green technology and renewable energy.
Some key policy recommendations are that these challenges can be met by scaling up existing attempts to strengthen governance and reform countries’ economic structure; mainstreaming green growth into national development plans and government processes; accounting for the essential ecosystem services provided by natural capital, ending open-access natural resource exploitation; and guiding the sustainable growth of cities to ensure well-being and prosperity.
Over 100 million workers in Southeast Asia have jobs that are directly or closely linked to the environment, making them vulnerable to climate change impacts. These same workers likely earn at least 20% lower than the national average and are largely in informal employment. The region’s necessary transition towards greener growth could affect them in several ways: some sectors will create jobs and others will lose jobs or disappear altogether. Understanding the effects of both climate change and green growth policies on jobs and people is thus essential for making the transition in Southeast Asia an inclusive one. The study explores these issues, with emphasis on the potential effects on labour of an energy transition in Indonesia, and of a transition in the region’s agricultural sector, illustrated by a simulated conversion from conventional to organic rice farming.
This book presents the conclusions of a meeting of the Sahel and West Africa Club in Accra, Ghana, in May 2002 on the following topic : “Towards a Better Regional Approach to Development in West Africa”. Regional cooperation is still only approached from an institutional perspective whilst field dynamics, economic actions and their transactions and demographic changes are forces that define spaces that regional policies seldom take into account. Important questions emerged from the Accra debates: How to harmonise “real” spaces with institutional integration spaces? Do certain groups of actors have a constructive vision and can they contribute to the formulation of a credible regional project? Do these “real” spaces, especially those defined by “informal” exchanges, along with those targeted by multinational companies have positive or negative effects on the regional economy? Could they prefigure future official areas for integration? The book is for development economists, African researchers, NGOs and regional integration organisations.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected Fiji, hitting at backbone economic sectors, such as international tourism and export fisheries. It has also brought to the fore the need to embark on a more sustainable model of development. This report examines Fiji’s economic and sustainability trends, as well as the governance and financing of its ocean economy before and during the COVID-19 crisis. It provides an initial mapping of promising initiatives and funding instruments that can be developed and scaled up to foster a sustainable blue recovery, focusing on four main areas: sustainable fisheries, sustainable tourism, green shipping and marine conservation.
The re-opening of Samoa’s borders in late-2022 kickstarted the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This offers an opportunity to rebuild sustainably its tourism, maritime transport, and fisheries sectors. Samoa’s ocean resources can also augment its resilience to future shocks such as climate change. Through an analysis of Samoa’s economic trends and environmental pressures, institutional set-up and policy tools, as well as financing landscape, this report identifies opportunities and challenges for Samoa’s ocean economy to drive sustainable and resilient development. The Samoa Ocean Strategy offers a blueprint for such a pursuit, but there remain gaps and impediments. To address them, the report provides several cross-cutting and sector-specific policy recommendations to accelerate Samoa’s transition to a sustainable ocean economy.
The growing demand for raw materials in the Hungarian economy projected up to 2050 is expected to exert significant additional pressure on the environment, putting the country at risk of missing important environmental goals and opportunities to strengthen the competitiveness and resilience of its economy. Despite the notable progress in decoupling environmental pressures from economic activities over the past 20 years, several challenges remain. The transition to a circular economy has significant potential to address these challenges. To fully realise the circular potential of its economy, Hungary will need to adopt a comprehensive circular economy policy framework. This report outlines a set of key elements for the development of the Hungarian national circular economy strategy and action plan. It identifies priority areas that are deemed critical to the Hungarian circular economy transition, including: biomass and food, construction and plastics, as well as cross-cutting horizontal tools to facilitate an economy-wide circular transition. It also provides 45 policy recommendations and suggests specific implementation actions across the priority areas for the short, medium and long term.
Under President Enrique Peña Nieto’s leadership, Mexico has put together the most ambitious reform package of any OECD country in recent times, forged the political consensus necessary to approve it through the unprecedented Pacto por México, promoted these and other reforms in Congress and has started implementing them. The battery of reforms has addressed challenges in policy areas that had been waiting for deep changes for decades, including education, labour, tax, health, telecommunication, and energy and justice, among many others. Mexico still faces important challenges which is why it is crucial for Mexico to continue its reform agenda. It is imperative to strengthen some of the recent reforms, and to keep updating and promoting them to ensure their effective implementation. The OECD stands ready to further accompany Mexico on this path.
In a globalised world, where goods cross borders many times as intermediate and as final products, trade facilitation is essential to lowering overall trade costs and increasing economic welfare, in particular for developing and emerging economies. Facilitation efforts undertaken by various countries around the world also show that the benefits of such measures clearly compensate the costs and challenges posed by their implementation.
Trade and Structural Adjustment: Embracing Globalisation identifies the requirements for successful reallocation of labour and capital to more efficient uses in response to the emergence of new sources of competition, technological change and shifting consumer preferences. At the same time, it focuses on limiting adjustment costs for individuals, communities and society as a whole. Based on specific sectoral case studies, this volume includes analysis of the adjustment challenge and policy framework in both developed and developing countries, together with practical recommendations for good practice.
Trade promotes economic growth, alleviates poverty and helps countries reach their development goals. However, developing countries – in particular the least developed – face difficulties in making trade happen and turning trade into economic growth. The Aid for Trade Initiative – launched at the 2005 World Trade Organisation conference in Hong Kong – aims at helping these countries to take advantage of trade opportunities and to reap the benefits of their integration into the world economy. The Initiative has been a success: it has not only raised awareness among both donors and developing countries about the role of trade in development, but also helped secure increased resources.
Trade for Growth and Poverty Reduction: How Aid for Trade Can Help explains how Aid for Trade can foster economic growth and reduce poverty, and why it is an important instrument for a development strategy that actively supports poverty alleviation. Unlocking this potential requires carefully designed and sequenced trade reforms. While developing countries have many trade-related needs, but financial resources and political capital for reforms are limited, it is an important priority to tackle the most binding constraints to trade expansion. This report describes the diagnostic tools available, evaluates their strengths and weaknesses, and suggests a dynamic framework to guide the sequencing of reform and donor support.
The development process can advance more rapidly than ever before in the new global economy. While opening their economies to trade and investment is a necessary condition for developing countries to achieve sustained high growth and reduce poverty, it is by no means a sufficient condition. Initiating a sustainable dynamic growth requires sound, market-oriented economic policies; appropriate social policy frameworks, including strong investment in human capital and adequate social safety-nets; and good governance. But, as shown by the Asian financial crisis, weaknesses in any of these basic foundations make even successful developing economies vulnerable to crisis.
OECD countries have a pivotal role to play in facilitating developing countries' efforts to fully exploit the benefits of open trade and investment. The key objective of this report is to identify how OECD countries can promote policy coherence by improving the framework for international investment and capital flows; addressing environmental concerns; facilitating participation of developing countries in the global information society; and enhancing the coherence of development co-operation policies. To be successful, policy coherence implies the broader agenda of consciously taking account of the needs and interests of developing countries in order for them to be effective rather than vulnerable and marginal players in the global economy.
Developing and transition economies are seeking to accelerate their development by liberalising trade and investment, and taking advantage of the opportunities of the global market place. However, in the wake of recent financial crises, concerns have been expressed that some countries might turn away from open trade and investment. In fact, most crisis-affected countries are continuing to liberalise trade and investment, which they see as part of the solution to the crisis, not the cause.
This report reviews evidence of the benefits and challenges of trade and investment for development, drawing on experiences from economies in various parts of the world. Experience shows that open trade and investment have been beneficial for development, when accompanied by a coherent set of growth-oriented macroeconomic and structural policies, capacity-building, social policy and good governance. Further, countries like Korea and Mexico that have responded to economic crisis with liberalisation and structural reform have experienced positive results. All countries -- developed, developing and transition -- have a vital stake in a new Round of multilateral trade negotiations to prepare for the global economy of 21st century.
This report draws on key findings and recommendations emerging from available donor evaluation reports, assesses factors that have contributed to the success (or failure) of past programmes, and provides guidance for enhancing the effectiveness and impact of future trade-related assistance. It provides a timely input to the ongoing discussions amongst the aid and trade communities on effectively designing and delivering “aid for trade” as a complement to the Doha Development Agenda.
The trade analysis and firm surveys conducted in several African countries in this study highlight an apparent mismatch between government policies and exporters’ needs in the provision and use of trade support services. While acknowledging the weaknesses of firms in these countries, the study does present evidence confirming the existence of a wide array of policy options for increasing business competitiveness and reducing dependence on primary commodities. Successful upgrading and diversification, however, require not only a right set of macroeconomic and structural policies, but also a substantial change in the policy-making process. A major governance problem undermines the implementation of a successful "business plan" for export diversification in these countries: the lack of involvement of private sector and civil society in policy formulation.
While many determining forces in fragile and conflict-affected countries are outside donor control, decisions about which activities to finance and how to finance them influence these countries’ path out of conflict. This is because financing is about much more than the flow of resources: it affects behaviour, aid architecture, power and influence, priorities, and capacity development. And because it signals approval or disapproval, there is no neutral choice: a financing decision has consequences that go far beyond the timescale and scope of the funded activity.
This report will help OECD DAC members and partners to map out more effective, rapid and flexible transition financing. This includes improving current policies and practices in financial flows, implementing procedural and cultural changes in donor administrations, and maximising use of the instruments available for in-country transition financing. The report also addresses improving the operational effectiveness of pooled funding instruments, clarifying the link between funding instruments and national ownership, and adopting a new approach to identify and prioritise specific transition needs.
This report updates the data published in the 2015 OECD Compendium of Agri-environmental Indicators to present a summary of the environmental performance of agriculture in OECD countries as of end-2015. It also includes new and innovative material to further strengthen its relevance as a reference document. In particular, the four thematic chapters each cover a targeted set of indicators for which data coverage is generally more consistent across time in OECD countries and that capture the main pressures agriculture exerts on the environment. The thematic chapters cover the following areas: the interlinked issues of land use, pesticides and farmland birds; ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions, the main air pollutants from agricultural activities; nitrogen and phosphorus balances, two indicators that signal air and water pollution; and water use and irrigation in agriculture.
This analysis of the recent trends of migration movements and policies covers all OECD countries and certain non-member countries. It provides a comprehensive description of these flows, the different channels of immigration and the nationalities of the migrants concerned. This report also examines recent policy developments aimed at better controlling the flows, improving the integration of immigrants and extending international co-operation. Particular attention is given to the links between migration, free trade and regional economic integration.
This overall analysis is completed by thirty detailed country notes presenting the main migration characteristics of each country; a special comparative study on the temporary employment of foreigners describing the different categories of workers involved as well as the manner of their recruitment and the conditions of their stay in OECD countries; and a comprehensive statistical annex providing the most up-to-date data on foreign and immigrant populations, foreign workers, migration flows and naturalisations.
This report presents an analysis of recent trends in migration movements and policies in OECD countries as well as in certain non-member countries. It includes a detailed description of the flows, the different channels of immigration and the nationalities of the migrants concerned. This report also provides details of the significant changes that many host countries (such as Australia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the United-Kingdom and Poland) have made to their legislation in order to obtain greater control over migration flows. Finally, this report also presents an inventory of policies implemented to improve the integration of immigrants and to extend international co-operation.
Beside this overall analysis, the reader will also find etailed notes presenting the main migration characteristics of each country; an analysis of the economic and political implications of irregular immigration illustrating the different situations of irregularity, the methods employed to measure its extent, its impact on the labour market and the sanctions imposed on employers; and a statistical annex containing the most recent available data on foreign and immigrant populations, foreign workers, migration flows and naturalisations.