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This document is a statement of policy set by the 1989 Council Decision-Recommendation on Compliance with Good Laboratory Practice [C(89)87(Final). It reiterates the decisions and the recommendations related to the role and responsibilities of governments, national GLP compliance monitoring authorities and inspectors set out in that Act and its Annexes and states current practices. The Working Group on GLP
is of the opinion that, while the Council Act allows “outsourcing” of inspection functions, this should be the exception rather than the rule and should be used only as an interim solution and primarily by new GLP compliance monitoring programmes.
The global energy landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, reshaping long-held expectations for our energy future. The 2014 edition of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) will incorporate all the latest data and developments to produce a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of medium- and longer-term energy trends. It will complement a full set of energy projections – which extend from today through, for the first time, the year 2040 – with strategic insights into their meaning for energy security, the economy and the environment. Oil, natural gas, coal, renewables and energy efficiency will be covered, along with updates on trends in energy-related CO2 emissions, fossil-fuel and renewable energy subsidies, and universal access to modern energy services.
The WEO-2014 will also provide in-depth analysis of some topical energy sector issues:
Africa: This continent-wide focus, paying particular attention to the energy outlook for sub-Saharan Africa, will include data and projections for the entire region as well as for its key energy-producing and consuming countries. Key elements for analysis will be the prospects for improving access to modern energy services and for developing the region’s huge resource potential in a way that contributes not only to regional and global energy balances but also to local economic and social well-being.
Nuclear power: Uncertainties continue to cloud the future for nuclear – government policy, public confidence, financing in liberalised markets, competitiveness versus other sources of generation and the looming retirement of a large fleet of older plants. The study will assess the outlook for nuclear power and its implications.
Energy sector investment (WEO Special Report to be released 3 June): The analysis will provide a detailed assessment of current flows and future investment needs along the entire energy value chain, examining the scale of investment required and financing options. The report will also show how barriers to investment vary according to the strength of decarbonisation policies.
Many revenue bodies have been developing strategies and approaches to improve the tax collection and recovery processes, so that they are more effective and cost less. Very promising and proven new practices have emerged, which can deliver spectacular improvements in performance in tax collection and recovery. This report provides a comprehensive overview of the best practices in tax debt management, with a particular emphasis on how to better differentiate debtors when deciding how to best secure payment and what can be done to ensure that payment issues are considered earlier in the compliance and collection process.
This Emission Scenario Document (ESD) presents an approach to estimate the emissions of substances used in wood preservatives (EU Product Type 8) from two stages of their life cycle: 1) application (industrial applications / in situ applications by professionals and amateurs) and storage of treated wood prior to shipment, and 2) treated wood-in service.
Achieving gender equality in the economy and in the political leadership remains an ongoing challenge across the world. This report aims to address this gap. It provides comparative data and policy benchmarks on women's access to public leadership and inclusive gender-responsive policy-making across OECD countries. The report is prepared in the context of the OECD Gender Initiative, launched by the OECD Ministers.
Public institutions play a critical role in promoting gender-sensitive policies and gender equality more broadly, in the MENA region and around the world. Advancing gender balance in public institutions and public life more generally, including the judiciary, parliaments, and the political executive constitutes a major step towards gender-responsive policies and non-discrimination and serves as a key milestone in promoting gender equality. This report provides a comparative overview of the policies affecting women’s participation in public life across the MENA region. It examines the existing barriers to women’s access to public decision-making positions, and provides a cross-country assessment of current instruments and institutions to advance women’s empowerment in the MENA region. The report undertakes an analysis of the existing legal barriers for gender equality in public life, including with regard to political and economic rights, freedom of movement, labour law, family law, access to justice and gender-based violence and provides focused policy-recommendations to close legal and institutional gaps. The report has been prepared by the OECD, in partnership with Centre for Arab Women Training and Research (CAWTAR) and with the support of the Arab Administrative Development Organisation (ARADO) and covers the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Women in Business 2014 summarises the progress made by the OECD-MENA Women Business Forum (WBF) since the publication of its first Women in Business report in 2012. In 2012, five groups of actions had been identified as priorities to be carried out by governments, international stakeholders, financial and business support organisations, as well as statistical agencies. In two years, the WBF has developed inputs for three of these areas of priority actions. The WBF’s contributions are growing along with its increased recognition as a hub which spurs concrete improvements in the business climate for women entrepreneurs in the MENA region.
Today, women’s entrepreneurship is all the more important as governments in the region are facing the colossal challenge of rebooting job creation to improve the well-being of a growing workforce and confidence in the economy. The economic prospects of MENA economies that are going through a political transition have improved but unemployment has increased, inflation is rising and public finances have deteriorated. In these countries, political uncertainties add to long term structural difficulties. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the challenges still lie in the diversification of their economies.
This OECD Emission Scenario Document (ESD) provides information on the
sources, use patterns and release pathways of chemicals used in the treatment of water in a number of areas to assist in the estimation of releases of chemicals to the environment.
This report assesses the extent to which Dutch water governance is fit for future challenges and sketches an agenda for the reform of water policies in the Netherlands. It builds on a one-year policy dialogue with over 100 Dutch stakeholders, supported by robust analytical work and drawing on international best practice.
This report diagnoses the main governance and financing challenges to private sector participation in the water supply and wastewater sector of Tunisia, and provides ways forward to address these challenges. It been developed as part of a water policy dialogue conducted by the OECD jointly with the Global Water Partnership-Mediterranean (GWP-Med) in the context of the project labelled by the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) "Governance and Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector", with the support of the FEMIP Trust Fund of the European Investment Bank.
This report assesses the main governance and financing challenges to private sector participation (PSP) in the water supply and sanitation sector of Jordan, and provides ways forward to address them, based on international experience and OECD compendium of principles and good practices. Using the diagnostic analysis of the governance challenges to PSP in the Jordan water sector (Chapter 1), the report identifies ways forward to overcome bottlenecks focusing on three key pillars (Chapter 2): i) managing public-private partnership in a fiscally constrained environment through appropriate budget processes; ii) reducing the regulatory risks through supporting the development of a high-quality framework; and iii)managing and enhancing stakeholder engagement to improve accountability and buy-in. The report also includes an action plan with concrete measures to implement the recommendations proposed in the report.
The report has been developed as part of a water policy dialogue conducted by the OECD jointly with the Global Water Partnership-Mediterranean (GWP-Med) in the context of the project labelled by the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) “Governance and Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector”, with the support of the FEMIP Trust Fund of the European Investment Bank.
This OECD Emission Scenario Document (ESD) is intended to provide information on the sources, use patterns, and potential release pathways of chemicals to be used in water washing machines at industrial and institutional laundries. The document presents standard approaches for estimating the environmental releases of and occupational exposures to chemicals used in water washing machines in laundries.
The experience of transport systems users, in terms of comfort, reliability, safety and above all convenience, is critical in determining demand for transport services, at least when there is a choice of alternative ways to travel. Convenience is one of the strongest attractions of the private car for passenger transport. For users of public transport, convenience is also clearly important but not always clearly defined and not often measured in designing transport systems or monitoring their operating performance. In many situations, an increase in public transport convenience reduces the unit costs of travel (euros/dollars per hour or cents per minute) and so provides benefits equivalent to an increase in travel speed.
This report focuses on convenience and its importance to the user experience. It reviews operational definitions of convenience, evidence for the willingness of users to pay for convenience and the use of indicators to assess and improve the convenience of public transport, with a view to making it more effective and more competitive.
Uranium is the raw material used to fuel over 400 operational nuclear reactors around the world that produce large amounts of electricity and benefit from life cycle carbon emissions as low as renewable energy sources. Although a valuable commodity, declining market prices for uranium since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in 2011, driven by uncertainties concerning the future of nuclear power, have led to the postponement of mine development plans in a number of countries and raised questions about continued uranium supply. This 25th edition of the “Red Book”, a recognised world reference on uranium jointly prepared by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency, provides analyses and information from 45 producing and consuming countries in order to address these and other questions. It includes data on global uranium exploration, resources, production and reactor-related requirements. It offers updated information on established uranium production centres and mine development plans, as well as projections of nuclear generating capacity and reactor-related requirements through 2035, incorporating policy changes following the Fukushima accident, in order to address long-term uranium supply and demand issues.
This second edition of Understanding National Accounts, that provides a comprehensive explanation of how national accounts are compiled, contains new data and new chapters, and is adapted to the new systems of national accounts, SNA 2008 and ESA 2010, that came into effect in September 2014. It approaches national accounts from a truly global perspective, with special chapters dedicated to international comparisons, globalisation and well-being as well as to the national systems used in major OECD economies, such as the United States.
Each chapter of the manual uses practical examples to explain key concepts in national accounts in a clear and accessible way. And, each chapter concludes with a synthesis of key points covered in the chapter, followed by resources for further exploring the topic, and by a set of exercises to test your knowledge. It is an ideal guide to national accounts for students and other interested readers.
This OECD Emission Scenario Document (ESD) provides information on the sources and release pathways of chemicals during their transport and storage in a wide range of industries, to help estimate releases of chemicals into the environment. This ESD covers the transport and storage of chemicals either as pure chemicals or as components of finished products. However, it does not consider the following: mixed waste streams, radioactive substances, biological and infectious materials and foodstuffs.
Education and media services both provide services that embody local cultures, in which there is extensive public sector participation and significant domestic regulation. At the same time, they are dramatically affected by the information and communication technology revolution. The production of information content now involves huge costs in terms of research and development or artistic talent, while the cost of making such products available to other consumers is very low. This in turn challenges the effectiveness of domestic regulation and raises fundamental questions about its purpose, calling for an increased scope for international trade and investment, and the development of supply chains. This book provides readers with a comprehensive and consistent treatment of policy in the higher education and media services sector across a range of Asian economies little studied in the existing literature. It gives an overview of global trends in each area, followed by detailed, country-specific studies. Through comparative work, it identifies common elements across these sectors and highlights critical implications for trade policy.
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.
As the significance of the creative economy continues to grow, important synergies with tourism are emerging, offering considerable potential to grow demand and develop new products, experiences and markets.These new links are driving a shift from conventional models of cultural tourism to new models of creative tourism based on intangible culture and contemporary creativity. This report examines the growing relationship between the tourism and creative sectors to guide the development of effective policies in this area. Drawing on recent case studies, it considers how to strengthen these linkages and take advantage of the opportunities to generate added value. Active policies are needed so that countries, regions and cities can realise the potential benefits from linking tourism and creativity. Key policy issues are identified.
The space sector plays an increasingly pivotal role in the functioning of modern societies and their economic development as the use of satellite technology gives rise to new applications, uses and markets. Space Economy at a Glance offers a statistical overview of the global space sector and its contributions to economic activity using data from over 40 countries with space programmes, and identifies new dynamics in the space sector.