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.

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.

Malthus is dead, but prosperity for all guarantees neither peace nor happiness. This is the key message emanating from Daniel Cohen’s acclaimed new book, La prospérité du vice: Une introduction (inquiète) à l’économie. This professor of the École Normale Superieure and deputy director of the Paris School of Economics looks back over four centuries and draws on the thinking of the great economists, historians and sociologists in order to bring us to this insight: prosperity alone guarantees neither peace nor happiness. Despite Cohen’s prevailingly pessimistic tone, his pedagogical talent makes this book an exciting and educational read.

Unemployment at historic highs, declining oil prices, plummeting government budgets and low investment due to persistent political uncertainty-one or more of these barriers to progress exist in many MENA states, but add them all and combine the security concerns in the aftermath of war and that is the unique challenge for Iraq. For years, arms and oil have been the major trade activity, but with security improvements being implemented in tandem with political, legal and regulatory reforms, investors are once again beginning to view the Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation also as a cradle of investment.

"This makes you my competitor", said oil pioneer Daniel Plainview on learning that his son wanted to quit the wells in California to drill his own in Mexico, in the 2007 movie, There will be Blood. And to be sure, Mexico did become a competitor, producing oil in the early 1900s and becoming the second largest producer in the Americas after the US by the 1990s.

Children are our future; they are also individuals who have a right to their own well-being. According to the OECD's first-ever report on child well-being, Doing Better for Children, the adult world of government is not doing enough to uphold that right. On average across the OECD area, public spending on children under the age of five represents just 24% of all spending on children up to the age of 18. The report argues that increasing spending on our youngest citizens, particularly in the areas of health and education, and especially for disadvantaged children, will help to improve social equity as those children grow up.

Governments and state-owned enterprises buy a wide variety of goods and services, from basic computer equipment to the construction of roads. But did you know that such public procurement represents some 10% to15% of GDP across the world?

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.

Gadgets and Gigawatts: Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics

Most people would be able to count between 20 and 30 electronic gadgets scattered around their own homes, from televisions to battery chargers. By 2010, there will be over 3.5 billion mobile phonesubscribers around the world, 2 billion TVs in use and 1 billion personal computers.

The trouble with crises is that it is hard to predict which direction they will go. Concerted efforts can help reduce the risk of a deterioriation, but not guarantee it.

Did you know that the number of people living in high-growth economies or in countries with per capita incomes at OECD levels has increased fourfold over the last 30 years to 4 billion?

As every number cruncher knows, there is a plethora of statistics available in print or online. Very often, the trouble is not how to find the numbers you want, but what to choose and how to use them when you do? How can you be sure about the quality of statistics you find?

Does accountability always spur better school performance? Not necessarily as people think, as this extract from Improving School Leadership explains:

Humanity has few stranger monuments than the moai of Easter Island. Weighing up to 270 tonnes, these huge figures, like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, are all that’s left of what must once have been a creative and complex society–but a society that also used its resources unsustainably, effectively destroying the ecosystem base of its island home.

The developing world needs millions of trained health workers immediately just to provide the most basic healthcare, yet doctors are leaving poor countries to go to richer ones.

Education is a long-term investment, though at the same time it is faced with pressures from constant social and economic change.

Anyone ordering salmon in a European restaurant will easily recognise the similarity between salmone (Italian), salmão (Portuguese), saumon (French) or solomós (Greek), and may make the leap from the Yiddish lox to lachs (German), laks (Norwegian) or lax (Swedish). But identifying the same fish as yeoneo (Korean), som balig˘i (Turkish), sake masu-rui (Japanese) or losos (Croatian) calls for a fish glossary.

Imagine a road surface that turns pink when cold. A new road varnish developed by a French firm, Eurovia, promises to do just that. Road surfaces treated with the varnish change colour, so drivers would be warned when roads turn icy.

Improving the diversity of biological habitats and ecosystems is a vital goal in itself, yet policies to encourage biodiversity, like most legislation, will have both supporters and naysayers. Limitations on land use to protect biodiversity can sometimes reduce income, but have broad benefits for the general public.

Two major international sporting events take place this summer, with the Olympic Games in Beijing and the European football championships in Austria and Switzerland. The question on many policymakers’ minds will be less about medals on the track or pitch, but whether holding such major events can make or break the cities that host them?

Can cutting down on sugar subsidies lead to healthier trade competition and trimmer prices? The 2005 European Union market reforms aim to thin EU farmers’ sugar subsidies and cut out obsolete sugar mills. Sugar Policy Reform in the European Union and in World Sugar Markets maps out how this might work.

“Attitudes are the real disability”, says Henry Holden, a well-known comedian and advocate for the disabled. Education is clearly important in this respect, but ironically, schools themselves have much to do in how they deal with disabled students.

Fisheries may be an ancient economic activity, but nowadays they are at the forefront of globalisation. First, there is the trade itself: a blue hake caught off the coast of New Zealand by a Japanese vessel may be processed in China before being flown to a market in London or Paris.

Striking a balance between going to work and raising children is not just a concern for families. Getting the balance wrong reduces birth rates, labour supply and gender equity, and can even harm child development. It puts the shape of society in the future in question.

How can governments promote higher living standards? A pertinent question for many countries in light of today’s rather unsettled economic picture. A basic step is to ensure good policies that support both productivity and labour market participation. Is this being done?

Did you know that 60% of international tourism takes place in the OECD area? Or that it accounts for between 2 and 12% of GDP in OECD countries and between 3 and 11% of employment? The tourism industry is an important economic activity, surpassing traditional sectors like agriculture in many countries. Should policymakers take note?

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.

This is an era in which science is needed, arguably more than ever. In the environment, energy and innovation generally, smart investors rely on smart thinkers. The public needs trusty scientists, to pursue knowledge and to arbitrate in debates about the likes of climate change, nuclear energy or nanotechnology.

Centres of higher learning often exude a rarefied air. From the spires of Oxford to the lanes of Bologna, a remoteness from local communities and disdain for the commercial world are still a common characterisation, if not a tradition.

Everyone accepts that education is vital for a healthy economy, but now there is strong evidence that it contributes to a healthy body too. Understanding the Social Outcomes of Learning makes the claim that those with more schooling also tend to have better health, as well as more civic engagement.

Was the dot.com boom a fortuitous circumstance, or the fruit of brilliant minds? Was it the hardware or the software that spurred the IT revolution? And to what extent did government efforts to free up markets and provide enabling business and innovation environments play a role?

There are roughly 45 million disabled people living in Europe, but how do they and elderly people like to get around? They would call a taxi. The combination of the personal service that taxis offer, their wide availability and door-to-door operations enable them to respond particularly well to this population’s special travel needs. Although several countries have made progress in improving the accessibility of taxi services, much remains to be done.

Latin America is looking towards China and Asia–and China and Asia are looking right back. This is a major shift. For the first time in its history, Latin America can benefit from not one but three major engines of world growth.

Anyone shopping in fruit markets this summer will agree that judging the quality of agricultural products is a serious business. After all, customers want their apples to look and taste like apples. But ever wonder how those standards are ensured from the farm to the marketplace? Standards play a vital role in growing, pricing, trading, shipping and public safety. They serve the global market, simplify import and export procedures, and increase transparency, confidence and traceability.

Offshoring and Employment: Trends and Impacts.

Remember The Travels of the T-Shirt in the Global Economy? As we reported in these pages, this award-winning book tracked the circuitous making and marketing of a T-shirt, from the cotton fields of Texas and a factory in China to a used-clothes bazaar in Africa (“Global yarn”, in No. 251, September 2005, search www.oecdobserver.org).

Nuclear energy is attracting renewed public support. It is a virtually carbon-free energy source and can help produce a sizeable percentage of electricity needs in many countries. But while more people are prepared to accept nuclear energy, loving it is not easy, mainly because of the problem of nuclear waste. Treating it, burying it and generally making it safer are ongoing challenges. Can waste be minimised in the first place?

City managers are important economic players, handling as they do billion-dollar budgets and thousands of employees. In its second territorial review in a series on competitive cities, the OECD explains that in the last few decades, city managers have recognised that inner city problems could not be resolved by throwing more money at them.

Are you a left-brain or a right-brain person? Do you learn while you sleep? Do men and boys have different brains than women and girls? Popular misconceptions such as these pepper ads, magazine covers and conversations. What is fiction and what is fact, and where did they originate?

Ever wonder what marriage and cooks have to do with economic growth? The OECD has the answer. The organisation’s publications are stocked in university libraries around the world, but it has rarely produced a textbook. Yet, questions are often asked about how national accounts are calculated.

In today’s knowledge economy, the value of learning is becoming ever more apparent. Whether you’re an aged grandmother in Kenya, a 55-year-old manager in Kyoto, or a 25-year-old graduate in Kansas, the economic value of your education is rising.

How do investors choose whether to set up shop in, say, Somalia rather than Spain, Colombia rather than Canada? Siemens, the German engineering company, and the Swiss technologies company ABB both recently stopped doing business in Sudan, claiming moral and political reasons, while many multinationals are still operating in the high-risk countries of Afghanistan, Congo and Iraq.

The Icelandic Health Sector Database was started in 1998 to develop improved methods of achieving better health, and prediction, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Worthwhile goals, yet it was stalled by controversy over the issue of consent. The CARTaGENE project, a proposed 50-year genetic profile of the Quebec population, got started in 1999, and is still awaiting ethics and privacy approval from the government.

League tables of competitiveness give an easily comparable ranking of the global economic performance, but they leave underlying questions unanswered. Why are the “poor” countries four times less productive than the “rich” ones, for instance? And what do these rankings say about the role of human capital, or financial markets or physical infrastructure?

Transport is the main cause of carbon dioxide emissions, ahead of power generation or industry. While aviation accounts for 14% of transport-based CO2 emissions in the EU, roads have a larger effect. In OECD countries, road transport accounts for over 80% of all transport-related energy consumption, for most of the accidents and the majority of air pollutant emissions, noise and habitat degradation.

Tax inspectors may be an eagle-eyed lot, but in today’s global, technology-sophisticated world, their job has become extra challenging. The OECD’s 1996 Recommendation on the Tax Deductibility of Bribes to Foreign Public Officials is designed to discourage international corruption by disallowing bribes that take the form of tax-deductible expenses, for instance.

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.