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The Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) offers a large and diverse market of over 400 million people and natural resource wealth, and yet it is not currently living up to its potential as a destination for international investment. Inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region have been declining over time, and have not always delivered on promoting sustainable development. This report serves as a baseline diagnostic to explore ways to reinvigorate the reform of the ECOWAS investment climate while also improving sustainable outcomes from investment. It also highlights areas where further collaboration between ECOWAS and the OECD could contribute to improved investment climates throughout the region. Building upon the OECD Policy Framework for Investment and the FDI Qualities Policy Toolkit, the report covers the national regulatory framework encapsulated in national investment laws and how this compares with initiatives at a regional level, investment promotion and facilitation, investment incentives, investment for green growth and responsible business conduct.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a large and dynamic regional economic community (REC) with the second highest level of regional integration among all African RECs. It has also been at the forefront of regional investment policymaking in Africa, with the Finance and Investment Protocol, the Investment Policy Framework, and the SADC Model Bilateral Investment Treaty. However, like much of Africa, SADC faces difficulties in attracting foreign direct investment which can contribute to sustainable development in the region. This report introduces newly developed OECD tools and analysis to the SADC region, including both FDI Qualities and a database on investment incentives. It is designed as a baseline diagnostic to explore ways to reinvigorate the reform of the SADC investment climate in order to prepare the region for the African Continental Free Trade Area, while also focusing on how to improve sustainable outcomes from investment. The report explores the national regulatory framework encapsulated in national investment laws and how this compares with initiatives at a regional level, investment promotion and facilitation in SADC, investment incentives, investment for green growth and responsible business conduct.
Agriculture is the major user of water in most countries. It also faces the enormous challenge of producing almost 50% more food by 2030 and doubling production by 2050. This will likely need to be achieved with less water, mainly because of growing pressures from urbanisation, industrialisation and climate change. In this context, it will be important in future for farmers to receive the right signals to increase water use efficiency and improve agricultural water management, while preserving aquatic ecosystems.
This report calls on policy makers to recognise the complexity and diversity of water resource management in agriculture and the wide range of issues at stake. And it gives them the tools to do so, offering a wealth of information on recent trends and the outlook for water resource use in agriculture, including the impacts of climate change. It examines the policy experiences of OECD countries in managing their water resources for agriculture, with focus on: the extent to which countries subsidise the supply of water to farmers; flood and drought risk policies; and institutional organisation and governance as it relates to water and the agricultural sector. The report offers concrete recommendations on what countries should be doing and why.
Pressure on the quantity and quality of water from agriculture is a concern in many OECD countries. But the use of water in agriculture is essential to meet growing demands for food, and also provides environmental and social benefits. Key questions for policy makers are how to ensure the sustainable management of water resources in agriculture through coherent policies in the areas of agriculture, water and the environment.
The Athens Workshop helped to illustrate what needs to be done to manage water sustainably in agriculture, in particular through reviewing the experiences in OECD countries. The main conclusions are: continuing the reform of agricultural policies; improving the transparency of water management policies; enhancing water pricing mechanisms; ensuring that all stakeholders are involved in policy formulation; and undertaking cost-benefit analysis in the design of water projects, taking into account environmental considerations.
Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) is increasingly recognised as a policy approach that can make a key contribution to green growth and the challenges that are posed by sustained global economic and demogarphic growth. One of the key challenges of the SMM approach is to effectively address the environmental impacts that can occur along the life-cycle of materials, which frequently extends across borders and involves a multitude of different economic actors. This book outlines a series of policy principles for SMM, examines how to set and use targets for SMM, and explores various policy instruments for SMM. In addition it provides examples of policy action plans from the UK and the Netherlands, before presenting a series of conclusions and recommendations.
Adopting more sustainable ways of managing the ocean is a global priority: protecting its health will bring benefits to all. Developing countries face specific challenges, as many depend heavily on ocean-based industries and are overly exposed to the consequences of ocean degradation. Enhancing their access to science, policy advice and financing would allow them to tap better into the opportunities of a more sustainable ocean economy, including more decent jobs, cleaner energy, improved food security and enhanced resilience, while contributing to the protection of the world’s ocean.
This report provides policy makers in developing countries, as well as their development co-operation partners with a wealth of fresh evidence on (i) the latest trends in selected ocean-based industries; (ii) policy instruments, including economic incentives, to promote ocean sustainability in various contexts; (iii) the first review of development finance and development co-operation practices in support of more sustainable ocean economies, including a discussion of how development co-operation can help re-orient private finance towards sustainability.
Since the scale of the economic crisis began to emerge, the IEA has been leading the calls for governments to make the recovery as sustainable and resilient as possible. This means immediately addressing the core issues of global recession and soaring unemployment – and doing so in a way that also takes into account the key challenge of building cleaner and more secure energy systems.
As they design economic recovery plans, policy makers are having to make enormously consequential decisions in a very short space of time. These decisions will shape economic and energy infrastructure for decades to come and will almost certainly determine whether the world has a chance of meeting its long-term energy and climate goals.
The Sustainable Recovery Plan set out in this report shows governments have a unique opportunity today to boost economic growth, create millions of new jobs and put global greenhouse gas emissions into structural decline. This work was done in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund.
Two-thirds of the world's poor live in Asia. The major objective for the region, therefore, must be to reduce poverty. It has become clear in the wake of the crisis that the public sector can no longer shoulder the burden of financing pro-poor growth alone. At the same time, it is also clear that official aid flows throughout the world, and particularly in Asia, have been declining since the middle of the 1990s. Therefore, the private sector must be encouraged to provide at least part of the financing. This is the major message of the book. Two ways of achieving this are proposed. One is to attract more foreign direct investment and portfolio investment, rather than to rely on borrowing, to reduce financial vulnerability. The other is to promote partnerships between the state and the private sector, rather than simply to privatise the more lucrative branches of publicly owned and operated services. This book, co-edited by the OECD Development Centre and the Asian Development Bank, presents an original and comprehensive approach to the problem of obtaining support for maintaining development projects in the wake of the global financial crisis. The book brings together varied and complementary opinions from participants -- from the worlds of business, finance, government, academia and the media -- in the sixth annual International Forum on Asian Perspectives, held in Paris in July 2000. Sustainable Recovery in Asia: Mobilising Resources for Development constitutes a reference work on Asia and provides an excellent basis for policy advice for governments and policy makers.
For many OECD countries, how to ensure the safe and dignified return to their origin countries of migrants who do not have grounds to remain is a key question. Alongside removal, return and reintegration assistance have become an integral part of the response. Development cooperation is expanding its activity to support the capacity of countries of origin to reintegrate all returning migrants.
Sustainable Reintegration of Returning Migrants: A Better Homecoming reports the results of a multi-country peer review project carried out by the OECD, with support from the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It examines factors that can help improve the sustainability of reintegration at the individual level and at the programme level in countries of destination and origin. The report examines how casework and community-based programmes can increase uptake and improve outcomes. It identifies key elements of an effective individual reintegration programme, including outreach and counselling, case management and referral, and partnerships. The report makes proposals about how to improve programme design, evaluation, and monitoring, indicating areas where countries could co-operate more in implementation of programmes and in coordination with origin countries.
Governments and providers of development co-operation increasingly use Sustainable Development Goal indicators to guide their policies and practices. The close examination of three large recipients of development co-operation: Ethiopia, Kenya and Myanmar across the sectors of Education, Sanitation and Energy reveals four inter-related challenges in using SDG indicators at country level. First, the cost of using specific SDG indicators varies in relation to indicator complexity – complementary investments in country statistical systems may be necessary. Second, providers synchronising their country-level results planning with partner countries find it easier to align to and measure SDG indicators together with the partner country and other providers. Third, reliance on joint monitoring approaches is helping providers reduce the cost of SDG monitoring. Finally, while disaggregating SDG data by gender and by urban-rural dimensions is common, other data disaggregation relevant to ensure that no one is left behind are rare.
- Substantial progress has been made in improving the sustainability of transport in Europe in a number of areas and is reported in this paper. Nevertheless there remain important problems and challenges: - unsustainable rates of traffic growth, locally and in some cases at regional or international scales; - sometimes severe noise, severance and intimidation nuisances from traffic in built up areas; - persistent growth in emissions of greenhouse gases from road and air transport; - poor air quality in specific locations despite major improvements in vehicle emissions controls; - destruction and fragmentation of protected landscapes and habitats. - The European Conference of Ministers of Transport is working to improve policies and move towards solutions in many of these areas. This free brochure sets out a common approach to working towards sustainable transport systems endorsed by Ministers from ECMT’s Member and Associate countries at their Council meeting in Prague in May 2000. It is a summary of a number of detailed reports which are currently being prepared for publication.
This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Sweden as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system.
This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.
This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Sweden as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This edition has a special focus on the impact of COVID‑19.
This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.
This profile provides a concise and policy-focused overview of the state of health and the healthcare system in Sweden, as a part of the broader series of Country Health Profiles from the State of Health in the EU initiative. It presents a succinct analysis encompassing the following key aspects: the current health status in Sweden; the determinants of health, focusing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the Swedish healthcare system; and an evaluation of the health system's effectiveness, accessibility, and resilience. Moreover, the 2023 edition presents a thematic section on the state of mental health and associated services in Sweden.
This profile is the collaborative effort of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, carried out in cooperation with the European Commission.
Emerging Field of Synthetic Biology” was held in July 2009 in Washington, DC
under the auspices of the United States National Academies, the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Royal Society.
How can assessment and evaluation policies work together more effectively to improve student outcomes in primary and secondary schools? Countries increasingly use a range of techniques for student assessment, teacher appraisal, school evaluation, school leader appraisal and education system evaluation. However, they often face difficulties in implementing evaluation and assessment policies. This may arise as a result of poor policy design, lack of analysis of unintended consequences, little capacity for school agents to put evaluation procedures into practice, lack of an evaluation culture, or deficient use of evaluation results.
This report provides an international comparative analysis and policy advice to countries on how evaluation and assessment arrangements can be embedded within a consistent framework to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school education. It builds upon a major 3-year review of evaluation and assessment policies in 28 countries, the OECD Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes. As well as analysing strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, the report provides recommendations for improvement including how results should be incorporated into policy and practice.
This report uses systems thinking tools to address pervasive problems in Slovenia's procurement system that the government has struggled to remedy through traditional regulatory means. The report outlines how room for innovation can be created within highly regulated policy domains and how governments can systematically benefit from it. Systems thinking allows for a new understanding of the role of procurement. The report explores potential reforms that could be designed from the bottom-up, to address specific behavioural and structural barriers – such as public perception, risk aversion, accountability and control functions – that cannot be addressed using only a legalistic approach.
This roadmap starts with an overview of the prevailing institutional framework related to the renewables and electricity sectors respectively, and the related policy landscape. The wider context of both the renewables and electricity sectors in Moldova is then outlined. This is followed by the body of the roadmap, which focuses on: Removing barriers to the deployment of renewables; Establishing flexible electricity markets with enhanced regional co-ordination; Enhancing technical flexibility of the power system. In these three focus areas, a substantial amount of knowledge, experience and expertise has already been accrued by other countries and regions in their own energy transitions.
This roadmap therefore provides relevant examples from international experiences with a view to providing an idea of the possibilities for Moldova.
The roadmap outlines specific policies and actionable items in order to apply these international best practice examples, taking into account the particular characteristics of the Moldovan electricity system. Finally, these recommended actions are put in a co ordinated package of measures to be implemented for a vision of a secure, clean and modern electricity supply generated from domestic VRE sources. This includes a timeline of measures to be targeted over three distinct periods in the short-, medium- and long-term to deliver this modern electricity system, and in turn provide the social, economic and environmental benefits from Moldova’s clean energy transition.
Ecosystem accounting is a relatively new and emerging field dealing with integrating complex biophysical data, tracking changes in ecosystems and linking those changes to economic and other human activity. Considering the increasing demand for statistics on ecosystems within analytical and policy frameworks on environmental sustainability, human well-being and economic growth and development, there has been an increasing urgency to advance this emerging field of statistics.
Although considerable experience exists in related areas of statistics such as land cover and land use statistics, the integration of these and other information into an ecosystem accounting framework is new. Also, there is considerable existing expertise in the ecosystem sciences and economics fields that is relevant, and again it is the focussing of these different areas of expertise on the proposed ecosystem accounting approach that is new.
SEEA-Experimental Ecosystem Accounting provides a synthesis of the current knowledge in this area and provides a starting point for the development of ecosystem accounting at national and sub-national levels. It represents an important step forward on ecosystem accounting, providing a common set of terms, concepts, accounting principles and classifications; an integrated accounting structure of ecosystem services and ecosystem condition in both physical and monetary terms; and the recognition of spatial areas as forming the basic focus for measurement.