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This report updates the 2001 Guidance Manual for Governments on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which provided a broad overview of the key issues, general considerations, and the potential benefits and costs associated with producer responsibility for managing the waste generated by their products put on the market. Since then, EPR policies to help improve recycling and reduce landfilling have been widely adopted in most OECD countries; product coverage has been expanded in key sectors such as packaging, electronics, batteries and vehicles; and EPR schemes are spreading in emerging economies in Asia, Africa and South America, making it relevant to address the differing policy contexts in developing countries.
 
In light of all of the changes in the broader global context, this updated review of the guidelines looks at some of the new design and implementation challenges and opportunities of EPR policies, takes into account recent efforts undertaken by governments to better assess the cost and environmental effectiveness of EPR and its overall impact on the market, and addresses some of the specific issues in emerging market economies.

Municipal waste has increased 22 % per capita from 1980 to 1997. At the same time, the difficulty of siting new waste disposal facilities has increased. While major progress has been made to lessen the per capita generation of air and water pollution over the past decades, waste generation is still on the rise. Faced with the increase of waste, many governments have reviewed available policy options and concluded that placing the responsibility for the post-consumer phase of certain goods on producers could provide a means to relieve certain environmental pressures, arising from post-consumer waste. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach under which producers accept significant responsibility - financial and/or physical - for the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products. Assigning such responsibility could provide incentives to prevent wastes at the source, promote product design for the environment and support the achievement of public recycling and materials management goals. Within the OECD the trend is towards the extension of EPR to new products, product groups and waste streams such as electrical appliances and electronics. This guidance manual represents one means to inform national governments about the potential benefits and costs associated with EPR.

As countries seek to learn from the COVID-19 crisis and increase their resilience for the future, evaluations are important tools to understand what worked or not, why and for whom. This report is the first of its kind. It evaluates Luxembourg’s responses to the COVID-19 crisis in terms of risk preparedness, crisis management, as well as public health, education, economic and fiscal, and social and labour market policies. While Luxembourg’s response to the pandemic has been particularly agile, preserving the country’s resilience will require maintaining high levels of trust in government, reducing inequalities, and laying the foundations for inclusive growth. The findings and recommendations of this report will provide guidance to public authorities in these efforts.

As countries seek to draw lessons the COVID-19 crisis and increase their future resilience, evaluations are important tools to understand what worked or not, why and for whom. This report builds on the OECD work on “government evaluations of COVID-19 responses”. It evaluates Belgium’s responses to the pandemic in terms of risk preparedness, crisis management, as well as public health, education, economic and fiscal, and social and labour market policies. Preserving the country’s resilience in the future will require promoting trust in public institutions and whole-of-government approaches to crisis management, reducing inequalities, and preserving the fiscal balance. The findings and recommendations of this report will provide guidance to public authorities in these efforts.

The OECD report Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave (2020) demonstrated that public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Citizens’ Juries, and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems. As the use of such processes increases, so does the need to determine and ultimately improve their quality. The purpose of this document is to help public authorities initiate and develop better representative deliberative processes by establishing a minimum standard for their evaluation. These guidelines provide policy makers and practitioners with an evaluation framework and methodology, as well as evaluation questionnaires.

Evaluating Public Participation in Policy Making examines the key issues for consideration when evaluating information, consultation and public participation. It looks at theory and practice, and draws heavily upon the insights of experts from OECD countries. Rather than a technical manual for professional evaluators, it offers strategic guidance for policy makers and senior government officials responsible for commissioning and using evaluations of public engagement. It offers concrete examples drawn from current practice in Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

Economic regulators are key to the performance of network sectors such as energy, e-communications, transport and water. They regulate and supervise to ensure sectors that can efficiently deliver essential services for the benefit of society. Operating from a unique position in relation to consumers, operators and government, they provide evidence-based and objective decision making that can build trust in the regulatory system and public institutions. A crucial factor in their ability to do this is their governance, including how they are resourced. Resourcing arrangements can make or break regulators’ effectiveness. Constraints in their funding or in their autonomy to manage resources may limit regulators’ agility or capacity to act. Where these constraints are significant, they may undermine the regulator’s ability to fulfil their mandates. This report discusses the implications of funding and staff arrangements for the autonomy, agility, accountability and transparency of regulators in the energy, e-communications, transport and water sectors. It identifies trends, challenges, opportunities and good practices, drawing upon survey responses from 57 economic regulators across 31 countries.

This report looks at how governments can ensure that everyone has access to justice, and that justice processes and services are responsive to people’s needs. Based on lessons derived from people-centred service delivery, the report identifies access to justice principles and promising practices, as well as measurement tools and indicators to help countries monitor their progress. It sets out a framework for people-centred service design and delivery that can be applied to the entire legal and justice chain. Drawing on over five years of research and collaboration with OECD member countries and partner economies, the report contributes to our collective understanding of effective access to justice and the crucial role it plays in inclusive and sustainable growth and development.

This book provides a detailed examination of the environment chapter of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and other relevant provisions of the Guidelines and gives concrete ideas and guidance to enterprises wishing to implement the Guidelines. Topics covered include environmental management systems; public information and stakeholder consultation; life cycle assessment; risk management; emergency preparedness and response; continuous improvements in environmental performance; environmental education and training; and contributing to the development of environmental policy.

This publication examines how to strengthen the scope and effectiveness of entrepreneurship policies for women. It examines both dedicated measures for women and ensuring that mainstream policies for all entrepreneurs are appropriate for women. Evidence is offered on the gender gap in entrepreneurship and its causes. At the heart of the report are 27 policy insight notes by leading international experts on the role of public policy in facilitating entrepreneurship by women and how policies can be strengthened. They highlight many long‑standing issues related to the scope and effectiveness of women’s entrepreneurship policies – many of which have been exacerbated by the COVID‑19 pandemic – and point the way to more effective policy. Issues addressed include fostering a gender‑sensitive entrepreneurship culture, building entrepreneurship skills for women, improving women’s access to financial capital, supporting networks for women entrepreneurs and creating supportive regulatory environments. Issues in the design and delivery of policy support are also addressed. The report was prepared by the OECD in collaboration with members of the Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Policy Research Project (Global WEP), a network of established researchers from over 30 counties.

Despite progress in recent years, there is growing evidence that OECD countries are not on track to reach some of their key environmental goals. This report examines the strategies and instruments that governments use to ensure compliance with pollution prevention and control regulations, particularly in the industrial sector. It compares the compliance assurance systems of six OECD countries – Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States – as well as those of China and Russia. The report provides policy makers, environmental regulators, and other stakeholders with a comprehensive analysis of the design, management aspects, and the main elements of government compliance and enforcement programmes. Focusing on compliance promotion, compliance monitoring, and non-compliance response, it identifies and compares good practices, sets them in context of different countries’ regulatory cultures and highlights the key international trends.

The impact of the work of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) largely depends on the ability and willingness of the audited entities to implement the changes suggested in the audit reports issued by the SAIs. Applying behavioural insights (BI) can help SAIs promote the uptake of their audit reports and recommendations. BI is a perspective based on psychology, cognitive science, and social science that takes into account how humans actually make choices, and can be used to help design better policies. The report analyses how the SAI of Chile, the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR), produces audit reports and monitors their follow-up. Based on this analysis, the report identifies and discusses challenges hampering the timely follow-up and identifies opportunities to use behavioural insights to address them. Ultimately, a behaviourally informed review of the auditing and follow-up process could help significantly improve the added value of the CGR’s work and thus the effectiveness and efficiency of the public administration in Chile.

This report aims to support the development of a sound economic regulatory system for the water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector in the Republic of Moldova (hereafter “Moldova”). The prevailing policy framework calls for drastic developments in WSS to modernise and optimise WSS systems and improve operational efficiency (non-revenue water, staff-output ratios etc.) – in line with domestic and international commitments (including the Association Agreement with the European Union, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the national WSS strategy). This report outlines ways and means for strengthening the capacity of the Moldovan government to provide sound regulation and that of WSS operators to deliver higher standards of service while ensuring the affordability of WSS services. Such a transition cannot happen overnight. It requires a sound economic regulatory system conducive to affordability, cost recovery and debt servicing, and a realistic performance improvement path for water utilities.