On 22 March, World Water Day 2007, 21 Chinese environmental NGOs came together to launch a new “Green Choice Initiative”. Aimed at China’s vast consumer population, the hope is to encourage all individuals to consider a company’s environmental performance in guiding their daily purchasing decisions.

Graduate teaching courses are becoming more popular again in many countries, though ageing continues to affect the profession, and making the career more attractive for longer remains a challenge. For insight, we asked a retired teacher to explain why, despite the challenges, he stayed in the job.

Letter to the editor: A shade over two years ago, you wrote in this magazine (Taxation in a global environment, OECD Observer No.230 January 2002) that the time was ripe for a new social compact between governments and citizens. You wrote that the former would provide services in an efficient and cost-effective manner, while the latter would pay their taxes. Aggressive tax planning “would be considered socially unacceptable”.

The global economy is dangerously volatile: extreme currency swings and the risk of stock market collapse are a recurrent feature, bearing an extreme cost in terms of poverty and unemployment. According to the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects 2004, the number of people surviving on less than US$2 a day has reached 2.7 billion.

In an age obsessed with economic efficiency and tax cuts, it is ironic that by allowing health systems in developing countries to deteriorate, the industrialised world is engaged in one of the most dangerous experiments in false economy in history.

Letter to the editor: "Are you sure that people spent so much less on transport in the 17th century than they do now?

Social science research and international organisations are awash with jargon that many non-specialists find either confusing or unhelpful. Can this be said of the notion of social capital? According to Robert D. Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the JFK School of Government at Harvard, and author of the influential book, Bowling Alone, social capital is an idea whose time has come.

Who would disagree that education and training are among the most significant investments a society can make for its own development? Not many, though it begs the question: why, then, have so many countries allowed public investment in education and training to lag growth in national wealth?

Educating children is vital for maintaining our standard of living now and in the future. This thought is not new and most of us are well aware of it. What is new is the way we need to work to prepare our children for that future.

WTO talks have to be put back on track, but there is time to do some thinking first. In particular, to work properly, free trade needs to be backed by strong competition rules.

Through the latter part of the 20th century, many of the world’s high-income countries embraced a market-centred approach to economic and social policy. Many low-income countries embraced the same approach, somewhat less willingly, as a condition of loans from the IMF or the World Bank.

Interplanetary space is not entirely empty. As the Earth orbits the Sun, it encounters particles and objects ranging from microscopic dust to large asteroids and comets. The tiniest particles are numerous and harmless; they cause flashes of light, and are known as meteors or “shooting stars”. The large asteroids and comets are very rare; the chance that one might hit the Earth during our lifetimes is extremely small.

Although the OECD Observer is celebrating its 40th anniversary, the OECD’s roots and the origins of the trade union advisory committee (TUAC) to the OECD go back further, to 1948. This was a time when the industrial nations were creating the arrangements of the post-war global economy – the Bretton Woods institutions, the Marshall Plan and the beginning of European co-operation.

Since late last year we have watched the steady march towards war in Iraq with a mounting sense of horror and disbelief. This has stemmed in part from deep concern about the immediate destructive consequences of war upon the Iraqi population and the further inflammation of the Middle East, but also from a belief that the situation in Iraq is symptomatic of a larger global crisis that has immense implications for human rights, civil liberties, and social and economic development.

A desiccated floodplain in Cameroon is restored to life and again provides grains and fish to local people. An agreement in Canada has assured indigenous peoples access to water from a nearby dam. And water is now supplied to a village in Nepal, thanks to a successful partnership between users, government and a donor.

Consumers International began life in 1960, around the same time as the OECD, with a mission to represent the rights of users of products and services throughout the world. It started with six members but now has more than 200 in 110 countries, as well as over 50 government consumer agencies in affiliate membership. Consumer rights have improved in 40 years, says Louise Sylvan, but there remain serious challenges, not least in improving corporate behaviour.

After the accounting debacles of Enron and WorldCom, the credibility of large companies hit rock bottom. In a bid to restore confidence, the US authorities now require chief executives and chief financial officers of large listed companies to swear to the truth of their financial statements. The chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer may be charged with civil and criminal offences if any of their financial statements are found to be false.

What should globalisation mean for human rights? Clearly, human rights are central to any effort to manage the tide of globalisation to the benefit of all peoples in an equitable manner. But globalisation must not be confined to political and economic forces; it must also apply to social, cultural and civil movements. This means recognising the interdependence of all these aspects. Our clarion call should be “Globalise this – human rights!”

All people are consumers of health services. It is about time they were treated as such. Only then will quality be improved.

OECD countries tend to be great rivals when it comes to comparing their healthcare. What do the patients think? Results from a recent survey reveal some interesting common features, and disparities too.

Patients increasingly expect choice as well as quality in healthcare. But in order to make informed choices, they need to know how well different hospitals or doctors are performing compared with their colleagues elsewhere. This consumer power helps hospitals to improve, as the case of Dr Foster, a UK company, shows.

The future performance of OECD health systems will depend on how healthcare is progressing globally. A greater effort, including investment, is needed to improve health systems in other (particularly poorer) countries.

The OECD’s Brazil economic survey comes with a long echo. As a young reporter, I attended a 1980s news conference in Rio de Janeiro at which Brazil was presented as having “excellent long-term prospects”. It made me think of Harry Hopkins’ famous comment during the Great Depression: “People don’t eat in the long run.” Brazil has been the country of the future at least since I got here in 1977. The problem with this long tomorrow is that it never quite comes. There’s always a temporary obstacle in its way. In the late 1970s, Brazil was stymied by the energy crisis but “long-term prospects” were good.

Over the last decade in particular, there has been much talk about the role of non-governmental organisations and their influence on politics and policymaking, but also on business strategies. Are these NGOs “friend or foe”? The answer to that is largely up to governments.

An international coalition of companies, accountants, NGOs and trade unions is quietly changing the way companies report on sustainability issues.

The revised OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) have a vital role to play in a world where big business and its activities are often viewed with deep-rooted suspicion by civil society organisations.

The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises have been rewritten to bring them up to date with today’s world. This is a good step. Now it is time to think about where we go from here on implementation and enforcement. First, a reminder of some basic points. The Guidelines are important, but being guidelines they are not a substitute for binding legal regimes that protect workers, the environment, and corporations that follow a high road from those who would degrade workers and despoil the environment. However, they do have an important role in establishing the OECD standard that governments have agreed should be followed wherever their multinationals operate.

Businesses have a key role to play in bringing e-commerce to developing countries. But the challenges are great.

Should governments be responsible for protecting consumers’ rights in the Internet economy? If the answer is yes, how can governments safeguard their citizens’ interests when they do business from a home computer with companies on the other side of the globe? These are the key challenges facing governments in the Internet age. Apart from consumer protection, policy makers have to decide what to do about privacy, taxation, copyright and a whole series of other issues that have acquired a new importance because of the digital revolution.

The issue of GMOs in food and their possible effects on the environment have featured highly in the European media since the start of the year. The OECD Observer invited Julie Hill to explain the reasons behind this upsurge in concern.