Browse by: "PRE-2008"

The report assesses the contribution made by OECD countries, both at home and internationally, and brings together the main lessons learned through the Organisation's extensive work on sustainable development.

On 23 July 2001, negotiators from 178 nations reached an unexpected political agreement on how to proceed with the international struggle against unwanted climate change.Specifically,they set out detailed rules for implementing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climat Change.Participants and observers in Bonn, Germany quickly dubbed the accord a turning-point in the fight against global warming. But the document enshrining the agreement was so technical and allusive as to be incomprehensible to all but experts.This pamphlet, prepared by analysts in the International Energy Agency ’s Energy and Environment Division, sets out the terms of the Bonn agreement in layman ’s language. As in several earlier publications of this kind, the IEA seeks to inform the public debate and place it in context in a thoroughly dispassionate and objective way.

Agriculture is a major user of water and is responsible for much of its pollution. But the agricultural sector faces increasing competition for scarce water supplies from urban and industrial users and, increasingly, to sustain ecosystems.  This conference proceedings explores how both governments and the private sector can expand the role of markets to allocate water used by all sectors and to get agricultural producers to account for the pollution that their sector generates.

This report examines the progress made in water management in OECD countries in the light of the objectives of Agenda 21. It presents the experience of the OECD programme of environmental performance reviews and focuses on issues of sustainable use of water resources, pollution control and water economics.

Environmental performance reviews of Australia, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States have already been published.

Water is a vital resource for human health, economic development and environmental quality. Over the past three decades, OECD Member countries have made major strides in the management of their water resources. Increasingly, however, water is coming back onto the policy agenda. Persistent water quality problems, the need for heavy investments in water delivery and treatment infrastructure, and growing competition for finite supplies are forcing greater attention on the mix of policies needed to achieve efficient and effective integrated water resources management.
The integrated management of water resources is not a new concept. The notion of "integration", however, is evolving. Greater emphasis is being given to the full recognition of the water needs of the environment in pricing policies, allocation decisions and institutional reform. There is also a growing number of examples of the integration of a wider range of stakeholders, including the private sector and local communities, in water resources planning and management.
This report presents the discussions and conclusions of the OECD workshop on sustainable water consumption, which was held in Sydney, Australia (10-12 February 1997). Drawing on examples from OECD Member countries and selected countries from the Asia-Pacific, it examines progress made on a range of key water policy issues and examines some of the more innovative attempts to put into practice a wider vision of integration.

Do voluntary approaches deliver the expected environmental benefits?  Do they help reach environmental targets in a cost-effective way?  This report provides an assessment of the use of voluntary approaches building on a number of new case studies.  Analysis is on the environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency and the administrative costs either used in isolation or as part of “policy mixes”.  The book concludes that the environmental effectiveness of voluntary approaches is often questionable, and their economic efficiency is generally low.

This report reviews vehicle emissions standards in Europe, Japan and the United States, providing the reader with valuable comparisons. It also examines incentives for sulphur free fuels - which can contribute to reducing both conventional air emissions and carbon dioxide. It describes emissions control technologies and the impact of emissions on health and the environment and assesses the adequacy of emissions limits for new passenger cars and heavy duty diesel engines.

Economic valuation is widely used in OECD countries as a way of assessing the (usually monetary) value of goods that have no markets. In the rural context, valuation methods are used to argue for or against projects and policy choices in areas as diverse as agricultural support policies, local economic development, land use and biodiversity assessment.
This volume reviews a range of different valuation methodologies -- stated preferences, cost-benefit, revealed preferences, and others -- and looks at how these different approaches influence choices in rural policy. Its aim is to assess whether some set of international guidelines or standards could be used to reduce the subjectivity of the evidentiary information.

The importance of biodiversity valuation is widely understood in academia and is increasingly used in policy making and other fora. For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), through the Conference of the Parties (COP), recognises that "economic valuation of biodiversity and biological resources is an important tool for well-targeted and calibrated economic incentive measures". Further, it encourages the Parties to "take into account economic, social, cultural and ethical valuation in the development of relevant incentive measures" (CBD COP Decision IV/10). Biodiversity valuation should be an integral part of environmental economic policy, providing information to policy makers in their quest to identify priorities and equate trade-offs. As part of its effort to support governments in using valuation methods to assess the value of biological diversity, the OECD commissioned this series of case studies. They cover the state of the art on economic valuation and on the interface between economic and ecological valuation.

The role of nuclear energy in a sustainable development context has multiple facets, a significant number of which relate to the nuclear fuel cycle. This report provides a description of the developments and trends in the nuclear fuel cycle that may improve the competitiveness and sustainability of nuclear generating systems over the medium and long term. It also presents criteria and indicators for future nuclear energy systems. Prepared by experts from the nuclear industry, government agencies and research organisations, this report will be of interest to those involved in nuclear energy policy and decision making.

The search for cost-effective environmental policy measures has led to an increase in the use of tradeable permit systems.  This publication offers valuable lessons for applying tradeable permits and provides links between policy evaluation and policy making general.  It is for government officials responsible for the implementation and reform of tradeable permit systems, researchers concerned with their analysis and evaluation, and other stakeholders interested in the more general issues associated with environmental policy design and evaluation.

International conventions designed to combat global environmental problems -- known as Multilateral Environmental Agreements or MEAs -- often use trade measures, among other instruments. But in fact the term trade measures covers a variety of provisions, ranging from simple reporting requirements of transboundary movements to the use of trade sanctions imposed to change a country’s environmental behaviour. MEA use of trade measures has not been without controversy in both trade policy and environment policy circles. In order to try and disentangle the various strands of this important set of trade and environment issues, the OECD Joint Session of Trade and Environment Experts focused on the actual experience with the use of trade measures in three universally subscribed MEAs -- CITES (on endangered species), the Montreal Protocol (on ozone layer depleting substances) and the Basel Convention (on hazardous wastes). Whilst the case studies unsurprisingly reveal varying experiences, common issues and main themes, as well as a series of lessons learned, could nonetheless be drawn together from the case study analyses and have been assembled in the concluding chapter of this volume.

The manner in which we produce and consume energy is of crucial importance to sustainable development, as energy has deep relationships with each of its three dimensions -- the economy, the environment and social welfare. These relationships develop in a fast-moving and complex situation characterised by increasing globalisation, growing market liberalisation and new technologies, as well as by growing concerns about climate change and energy-supply security. In order to make energy an integral part of sustainable development, new policies need to be developed. Such policies must strike a balance among the three dimensions of sustainable development. They must reduce our exposure to large-scale risk. The IEA has synthesised a number of experiences with policies aimed to promote sustainable development. These experiences are reported in seven subject chapters on energy supply security, market reform, improving energy efficiency, renewable energies, sustainable transport, flexibility mechanisms for greenhouse gas reductions and on non-Member countries.