“We’re going to run out of water much much earlier than we’ll run out of oil,” warned Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestlé, at the OECD Forum in May 2012.

The continuity of our societies and the sustainability of our planet will necessarily depend on how we, as a collective, can devise the solutions to the paramount and multifaceted difficulties that have arisen from the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. In fact, if we are to successfully transform these challenges into opportunities, what we need is nothing short of another revolution. And in today’s revolution the bayonets, unquestionably, need to be green. 

The Earth is a unique, interconnected system that mankind has always tried to understand. Although there have been great discoveries made in science, there are many aspects of our planet that are beyond our understanding or control. However, there is one fact we know: we need to live in harmony with nature.

Managing risk could absorb more policy time around the world in the 21st century. How can policymakers be prepared?

After environmental and economic turbulence, Canada’s fisheries are being reformed. The sector is now undergoing a renaissance, though challenges remain.

One area where governments have been looking to raise revenues is green taxes. And with good reason. Taxes can provide a clear incentive to reduce environmental damage. But while the number of environmentally-related taxes has actually been increasing in recent years, revenues from these taxes have been on a slight downward trend in relation to GDP. The decline in revenue partly reflects the drop in demand for fuel in response to recent high oil prices and other factors, which in turn has led to a reduction in total revenues from taxes on energy products.

Climate change is very much on the development agenda, but according to this guide, Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into Development Co-operation: Policy Guidance, while developing countries account for over half of total carbon emissions, they are also the most vulnerable to climate change. The guide, which is aimed at donors, but is also useful for aid recipients, argues that development-as-usual may be counterproductive. For example, building new, weatherproofed roads in Africa may be good for sustainable development, but what if those roads encourage settlement along flood-endangered coasts? OECD countries donated an estimated $3.8 billion in bilateral aid to developing countries’ climate change mitigation efforts in 2007. The book examines the potential impact of climate change on the Millennium Development Goals and gives examples of aid strategies that take climate change into account.

Despite the mitigated outcome of the recent Copenhagen climate change summit, efforts to develop renewable energy still make progress. Practical solutions to improve the development and implementation of renewable energies and boost their efficiency are constantly being sought. Attention is starting to focus on cities. Considering the fact that about half of the world’s population now lives in an urban environment and produces about 70% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions, it is only logical that the development of renewable energy should be prioritised in cities and towns. Using the immediate environment and locally available resources, such as waste or heat from buildings, ensures that the schemes being implemented do not rely on costly national or international involvement. This also allows for local governments to improve local businesses and employment.

At Copenhagen world leaders moved forward in step on climate change. More progress is needed in the year ahead.

After a year of pain and pessimism, we are starting to see signs of an economic recovery. Green shoots are sprouting. Governments' bold economic and financial actions of over the past year are beginning to take effect.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) is 50 years old. It predates the actual OECD itself, having started out in 1958 as a division of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. It has since grown to become a global body spanning four continents. What does its future hold?

The UN Climate Change conference in Poznán, Poland in December ended with a mixed scorecard. There was agreement to move to the next level of negotiations, and some clarification on outstanding issues, but little substantial forward movement.

Financial market turbulence and climate change also featured as headline issues at this year’s OECD Forum (www.oecd.org/forum2008). The Forum is civil society’s chance to influence “OECD Week”, and is held in conjunction with the annual ministerial meeting.

With the world’s attention focused on climate change, the main question is how can global carbon emissions be reduced effectively? There is no single solution, which is why we must look seriously again at the importance of forests, in particular at an approach known as Reducing Emissions from tropical Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), and the incentives needed to achieve it.

How to be green and competitive was the centre of attention when environment ministers of OECD countries met at the end of April for the first time in four years. How to fight climate change and maintain competitiveness is a question that concerns many countries outside the OECD too, and the governments of four candidate countries for OECD membership–Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia–participated at the conference, as did Brazil, China, Indonesia and South Africa, four countries with whom the OECD is strengthening its relations in a programme of “enhanced engagement”.

Transport is a major contributor to CO2 emissions. But can policymakers make a difference? We asked Anu Vehviläinen, Finland’s minister for transport, and chair of the first International Transport Forum in Leipzig in May 2008.

As the UN called recently on the world’s governments in an “extraordinary emergency appeal” for some $500 million to avert a food crisis in poor countries, many people were placing some share of the blame squarely on strong demand for grains from the biofuel industry.

Would adding US$1,500 to the price of a new car be enough to help halt climate change? That’s what US and EU experts broadly agree on as the average price tag for new technologies coming on stream to make cars more fuel-efficient and climate friendly. But what does that price tag entail?

The urgency of reducing fuel consumption rates while transport moves towards massive development over the next two decades, notably among developing economies, is clear. Any weapon counts as part of the overall package. Enter “ecodriving”.

With aviation growing in terms of the number of planes operating and passengers taking to the skies, the industry is engaged in an important and candid dialogue—how to continue to grow responsibly, while further reducing its impact on the global ecosystem

If CO₂ emissions from transport cause climate change, why not encourage more cycling? This is precisely what places like Brussels, Copenhagen, Vienna and Berlin are starting to do. One much talked about initiative is in Paris. As the home of cycling’s greatest race, the Tour de France, you would be forgiven for thinking the French always loved cycling. Yet until last year, cyclists and bicycle lanes were a rarity in the capital.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will address the first International Transport Forum on climate change and transport at Leipzig on 28-30 May.

The OECD's offices are closed 24-31 December 2012 inclusive. The OECD Observer team would like to wish all our readers a very happy holiday season, and a safe and prosperous New Year.

Thomas Edison’s assertion that “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” is particularly pertinent to the solar energy sector. This remarkable technology could hold answers to so many of the world’s energy challenges, but only at the cost of hard effort and investment. Solar Energy Perspectives, the first in-depth study dedicated to solar technology from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a sister organisation of the OECD, gives a comprehensive analysis of solar energy’s potential as well as the policies required to increase its capacity in the coming decades. 

While the world focuses on the ongoing economic crisis, the challenge of climate change grows increasingly desperate. A number of lessons still have to be learned. 

WWF’s 2010 Living Planet Report demonstrates that we are currently using 50% more resources than the earth can provide. If we allow current trends to continue, by 2030 we will need two planets to support us. It’s clear that “business-as-usual” is not the pathway to a prosperous future.

Despite the repeated warnings about its effects on climate change, as well as resource depletion, the most recent projections from the World Energy Outlook 2009 show that coal will still remain the principal powergenerating fuel for decades to come. In fact, its usage is set to double by 2030, 5% more compared with pre-existing projections. The adjustment takes into account a projected 10% consumption increase in non-OECD Asia, as well as an 8% decrease in the OECD area. Nowadays, an additional 217 GW of coalfired capacity is being developed throughout the world, over 80% of which is located in non-OECD countries, mostly in China.

European businesses were disappointed with the climate change agreement hammered out in Copenhagen. Here’s one way forward.

Through the ages, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have been known for their great feats in engineering. The marvels are legion, from the Mesopotamian irrigation systems to the Great Pyramid. But did you know that the first concentrated solar steam engine was built near Cairo in 1914? A century later, solar energy is again putting the region on the cusp of new exploits, this time in renewable energy.

On 2 November, Morocco launched a US$9 billion solar energy programme. With fi ve power plants, the programme aims for a total installed capacity of 2,000 MW by 2020-equivalent to almost 40% of the country's electricity production.

Ensuring Environmental Compliance: Trends and Good Practices

Despite their progress in developing green laws and policies, OECD countries are noton track to achieve some of their key environmental goals and commitments.

“The Chinese government rightly advocates firm opposition to trade and investment protectionism, as emphatically stated by Premier Wen Jiabao on several occasions in the past few weeks. As it did a decade ago during the Asian crisis, China has set itself firmly against inward retrenchment in the face of economic downturn. We celebrate this commitment at OECD.

Concerns for the world economy were already building when OECD governments met for the annual Ministerial Council Meeting (MCM) last June.

On a single busy day in the summer of 2007, 3.2 million people took to the skies above Europe in 33,000 flights which covered a total distance of 34 million km. That’s 42 billion passenger kilometres generated in just one day of European air traffic movements.

Impressive though these numbers appear, they are in fact expected to double shortly after 2025, assuming that the demand forecasts hold true and that the capacity issues across the European air traffic system are solved.

Some 90% of world trade in tonnes is carried by ship, and containers represent 70% of total maritime trade by value. Per kilometre, shipping is one of the lowest emitting freight transport options around; at 10-15 grammes per tonne-kilometre, it is lower than rail (19-41g/tkm), trucking (51-91g/tkm) and aviation (673-867g/tkm). But the carbon footprint of the sector as a whole is as large as some major countries.

The 2008 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting and Forum, the high points of the OECD calendar, could not be more timely. The issues we will be dealing with and the policy responses we will discuss should pave the way for a better world economy. Christine Lagarde, the minister of economy, finance and employment of France–the OECD’s host country–will chair the ministerial meeting.

A 50% rise in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, higher temperatures, with more droughts and storms harming people, crops and buildings; more animal and plant species becoming extinct under expanding farmland and urban sprawl; dwindling natural resources; a billion more people living in water-stressed areas by 2030, with more pollution, disease and premature deaths ahead.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in early December 2007 may have raised new hopes of progress, but as everyone knows, dealing with climate change will require more than just political goodwill. Providing for abundant, affordable, clean energy will require considerable investment in new power generation–more than US$11 trillion to 2030, based on an estimate in the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2006.

Energy consumption, and in particular the burning of fossil fuels, is the main source of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. But energy is also a fuel for economic growth, particularly in the fast developing economies of the world. The challenge is to maintain economic growth, while reducing the carbon-content of energy and increasing the efficiency of its use.

Prof Vaclav Smil’s lucid and measured thinking is correct in that we must be realistic about renewable energy’s future (No 258/259, December 2006). But I wonder if he is not being too dismissive of solar energy.

Satellites are not just about communications or defence, but can help us understand if not resolve some difficult environmental challenges, including climate change. They are investments in innovation whose benefits for humanity should speak for themselves.

Cotis leads top French bureau–
Jean-Philippe Cotis, the OECD’s chief economist, has been appointed as director general of the French national statistics institute INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, or the National Statistics and Economic Studies Institute).

Dear editor, Angel Gurría is right to argue that “subsidies … should target cleaner energy innovations and practices, and not distort or protect markets.” (No. 258/259, December 2006). Unfortunately, apart from a few billion dollars being spent on R&D, distortions and protected markets are exactly what we are witnessing in the biofuels area.

Could nuclear fusion solve the world’s future energy problems? Scientists believe it could. Experiments have been taking place for years to show how a fusion reaction, rather than splitting a nucleus in the way fission does, forces two atomic nuclei together to form heavier ones. That process releases energy.

Global electricity demand is growing rapidly. Demand for transport energy is also rising. Renewable energy is as yet not capable of matching the energy-density of fossil fuels, and it absorbs a lot of land, whether for cultivating biofuels or laying out solar panels. From solar to hydro, renewable sources are also unevenly distributed and supply can be irregular.

Most surface freight transport takes place by rail and road, but with environmental and cost pressures rising, attention is again turning to inland water transport. In the US for instance, inland waterways carried some 500 billion tonne-kilometres of freight in 2003; roads carried three times more, and rail four times.