Browse by: "PRE-2015"

Agriculture is a major user of water and is responsible for much of its pollution. But the agricultural sector faces increasing competition for scarce water supplies from urban and industrial users and, increasingly, to sustain ecosystems.  This conference proceedings explores how both governments and the private sector can expand the role of markets to allocate water used by all sectors and to get agricultural producers to account for the pollution that their sector generates.

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 publication examines the critical issues surrounding water security (water shortage, water excess, inadequate water quality, the resilience of freshwater systems), providing a rationale for a risk-based approach and the management of trade-offs between water and other (sectoral and environmental) policies.
 
The report sets out a three-step process to “know”, “target” and “manage” water risks: (1) appraising the risks, (2) judging the tolerability and acceptability of risks and weighing risk-risk trade-offs, and (3) calibrating appropriate responses.
 
The publication provides policy analysis and guidance on the use of market-based instruments and the complex links between water security and other policy objectives, such as food security, energy security, climate mitigation and biodiversity protection.

Improving water quality is consistently ranked as a top environmental concern in OECD public opinion surveys. The key challenges for policy makers in addressing water quality issues in agriculture are to reduce water pollution while encourage benefits, such as maintaining aquatic life. This book examines linking policies, farm management and water quality. It looks at recent trends and prospects for water pollution from agriculture and the implications of climate change. It assesses the costs and benefits of agriculture's impact on water systems, and presents a series of case studies. Finally the report provides a set of recommendations for countries for meeting the challenge of improving agricultural water quality.

This report examines the progress made in water management in OECD countries in the light of the objectives of Agenda 21. It presents the experience of the OECD programme of environmental performance reviews and focuses on issues of sustainable use of water resources, pollution control and water economics.

Environmental performance reviews of Australia, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States have already been published.

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 addresses multilevel governance challenges in water policy implementation and identifies good practices for coordinating water policy across ministries, between levels of government, and across local actors at subnational level. Based on a methodological framework, it assesses the main “coordination gaps” in terms of policymaking, financing, information, accountability, objectives and capacity building, and provides a platform of existing governance mechanisms to bridge them. Based on an extensive survey on water governance the report provides a comprehensive institutional mapping of roles and responsibilities in water policy-making at national/subnational level in 17 OECD countries. It concludes on preliminary multilevel governance guidelines for integrated water policy.

This report addresses multilevel governance challenges in water policy in the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) and identifies good practices for co-ordinating water across ministries, between levels of government, and across local and regional actors.  Based on the OECD Multilevel Governance Framework and a survey on water governance, the report i) maps the allocation of roles and responsibilities in 13 LAC countries’ water policy at central government and sub-national level; ii) identifies the main coordination “gaps” in terms of territorial and institutional fragmentation, funding mismatch, information asymmetry, accountability, objectives and capacity, and iii) provides a range of mechanisms to improve water governance at all levels and foster capacity-building.

Water is a vital resource for human health, economic development and environmental quality. Over the past three decades, OECD Member countries have made major strides in the management of their water resources. Increasingly, however, water is coming back onto the policy agenda. Persistent water quality problems, the need for heavy investments in water delivery and treatment infrastructure, and growing competition for finite supplies are forcing greater attention on the mix of policies needed to achieve efficient and effective integrated water resources management.
The integrated management of water resources is not a new concept. The notion of "integration", however, is evolving. Greater emphasis is being given to the full recognition of the water needs of the environment in pricing policies, allocation decisions and institutional reform. There is also a growing number of examples of the integration of a wider range of stakeholders, including the private sector and local communities, in water resources planning and management.
This report presents the discussions and conclusions of the OECD workshop on sustainable water consumption, which was held in Sydney, Australia (10-12 February 1997). Drawing on examples from OECD Member countries and selected countries from the Asia-Pacific, it examines progress made on a range of key water policy issues and examines some of the more innovative attempts to put into practice a wider vision of integration.

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.

Over the past decade, many OECD countries have introduced new policies to tackle excessive waiting times for elective surgery with some success. However, in the wake of the recent economic downturn and severe pressures on public budgets, waiting times times may rise again, and it is important to understand which policies work.  In addition, the European Union has introduced new regulations to allow patients to seek care in other member states, if there are long delays in treatment.   This book provides a framework to understand why there are waiting lists for elective surgery in some OECD countries and not in others. It also describes how waiting times are measured in OECD countries, which differ widely, and makes recommendations for best practice. Finally, it reviews different policy approaches to tackling excessive waiting times. Some countries have introduced guarantees to patients that they will not wait too long for treatment. These policies work only if they are accompanied by sanctions on health providers to ensure the guarantee is met or if they allow greater choice of health-care providers including the private sector. Many countries have also introduced policies to expand supply of surgical services, but these policies have generally not succeeded in the long-term in bringing down waiting times. Given the increasing demand for elective surgery, some countries have experimented with policies to improve priorisation of who is entitled to elective surgery. These policies are promising, but difficult to implement.

Eradicating poverty has long been one of the priorities of development co-operation. Yet, despite undoubted progress towards this goal, the strategies adopted at the international and national levels remain controversial. Poverty reduction is a complex issue, involving numerous players in a host of economic, social, political and environmental policy fields. The originality of this publication lies in its approach to identifying best practice, an approach which is as open and thorough as the state of the art will allow. How realistic is it to seek to cut extreme poverty by half by the year 2015? What are the most effective strategies employed by donors, be they development agencies or developed countries? What lessons can be learned from the experience of the developing countries? Clearly, these and many other questions are still unresolved. This publication approaches them by giving a broad overview of general poverty-reduction strategies and objectives. It also presents five particularly enlightening case studies on Bolivia, Côte d’Ivoire, the State of Kerala in India, Malaysia and Uganda.

Traditionally, pay analysis in the public sector has been based on cross section data, such as average or median wages. This study differs in that micro longitudinal data are used to explain and compare pay determination in the French and Italian civil services. Based on examples, the report presents different readings obtained from aggregate data and individual longitudinal data. It focuses on the weight of various components of human capital -- gender, age, year of birth, seniority, educational level -- on trends in civil servants' pay throughout working life. This type of analysis sheds new light in the area of human resource management in the civil service and, in particular, may be seen as a key tool for analysing gender pay discrimination.

Do voluntary approaches deliver the expected environmental benefits?  Do they help reach environmental targets in a cost-effective way?  This report provides an assessment of the use of voluntary approaches building on a number of new case studies.  Analysis is on the environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency and the administrative costs either used in isolation or as part of “policy mixes”.  The book concludes that the environmental effectiveness of voluntary approaches is often questionable, and their economic efficiency is generally low.

The study Venture Philanthropy in Development: Dynamics, Challenges and Lessons in the Search for Greater Impact, undertaken by the newly created Global Network of Foundations Working for Development (netFWD), is a first step towards offering an in-depth insight on how foundations working for development are evolving in their search for greater impact. It looks at the journeys, enabling environment, incentives and drivers that led a number of philanthropic organisations willing to seek novel ways to address global development issues to (re)define their operating model. While they were once “grant-makers only”, considering allocated money gone for good, an increasing share of foundations are becoming real investors, i.e. expecting a financial return alongside social impact or at least seeking to recover their initial capital.

This report reviews vehicle emissions standards in Europe, Japan and the United States, providing the reader with valuable comparisons. It also examines incentives for sulphur free fuels - which can contribute to reducing both conventional air emissions and carbon dioxide. It describes emissions control technologies and the impact of emissions on health and the environment and assesses the adequacy of emissions limits for new passenger cars and heavy duty diesel engines.