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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.

Urban, demographic and climate trends are increasingly exposing cities to risks of having too little, too much and too polluted water. Facing these challenges requires robust public policies and sound governance frameworks to co-ordinate across multiple scales, authorities, and policy domains. Building on a survey of 48 cities in OECD countries and emerging economies, the report analyses key factors affecting urban water governance, discusses trends in allocating roles and responsibilities across levels of government, and assesses multi-level governance gaps in urban water management. It provides a framework for mitigating territorial and institutional fragmentation and raising the profile of water in the broader sustainable development agenda, focusing in particular on the contribution of metropolitan governance, rural-urban partnerships and stakeholder engagement.

In 2018, the city of Cape Town, South Africa, was close to the “Day Zero”, requiring all taps to be shut off and citizens to fetch a daily 25 litre per person. Though the day-zero was avoided, it is estimated that, at the current rate, South Africa will experience a 17% water deficit by 2030 if no action is taken to respond to existing trends. Lessons learned during that drought crisis have been valuable for the city to manage the short-term COVID-19 implications and design long-term solutions towards greater water resilience. As a result of a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue involving 100+ stakeholders from the city of Cape Town and South Africa, this report assesses key water risks and governance challenges in Cape Town, and provides policy recommendations towards more effective, efficient and inclusive water management building on the OECD Principles on Water Governance. In particular, the report calls for strengthening integrated basin governance, transparency, integrity, stakeholder engagement, capacities at all levels of government, financial sustainability and for advancing the water allocation reform to better manage trade-offs across multiple users.

Ensuring long-term water security is essential in the pathway towards sustainable development in Argentina. Floods cause 60% of all critical events in the country and are responsible for 95% of economic losses. Severe droughts, in a country where the agricultural sector accounts for 6.4% of GDP as compared to a global average of 3.6%, have a strong impact in the economy. The country is also home to some of the most polluted basins worldwide. Furthermore, climate change will likely shift further water availability, uses and demand. The report is the result of a policy dialogue with more than 200 stakeholders at different levels in Argentina. It assesses water governance in Argentina, identifies several key challenges to effective, efficient and inclusive water policies, and provides a set of policy recommendations to enhance water governance as a means to address relevant societal challenges, both within the scope of water management and beyond. In particular, ways forward for Argentina include strengthening the co-ordination between national and provincial water policies, setting up a multilevel water planning and investment framework, improving basin management practices, and enhancing economic regulation for water services.

The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a magnifying glass on pressing water and sanitation challenges in African cities, stressing and widening inequalities, especially for the 56% of the urban population living in informal settlements, lacking basic handwashing facilities, and relying on public water points and shared toilets. Before the pandemic, African countries and cities were already facing mounting water challenges with, in Sub-Saharan Africa only, 418 million people lacking basic access to water supply and 717 million to sanitation, in addition to concomitant floods, droughts and pollution issues. Megatrends related to climate change, urbanisation and population growth add more pressure on water resources and require urgent attention for African cities to cope with future water challenges. Building on a Survey on Water Governance across 36 cities of all size in Africa, this report provides a regional overview of the allocation of roles and responsibilities for water management, the existence and implementation of institutional, policy and regulatory frameworks, as well as the critical governance gaps that need to be bridged in order to boost city government capacity to drive water security in the continent.

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 report examines the current system of water abstraction and pollution charges in operation in Brazil. It assesses the current system’s implementation challenges and provides possible solutions. The report explores how water charges can be both an effective means for dealing with water security issues, and a tool for enhancing economic growth and social welfare. Specific analysis is put forward for three case studies in the State of Rio de Janiero, the Paraiba do Sul River Basin and the Piancó-Piranhas-Açu River Basin. The report highlights that water charges need to operate in conjunction with an effective water regulatory regime and concludes with an Action Plan based on practical steps and recommendations for its implementation in the short, medium and long-term.
 

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.

This report provides a cross-country review of waste, materials management and circular economy policies in selected OECD countries, drawing on OECD’s Environmental Performance Reviews during the period 2010-17. It presents the main achievements in the countries reviewed, along with common trends and policy challenges, and provides insights into the effectiveness and efficiency of waste, materials management and circular economy policy frameworks. As the selected reviews were published over a seven-year period, information for some countries may be more recent than for others. Nevertheless, the policy recommendations emerging from the reviews may provide useful lessons for other OECD countries and partner economies.

Long waiting times for health services is an important policy issue in most OECD countries. Reducing the time that people have to wait to get a consultation with a general practitioner, or a diagnostic test or treatment, can go a long way in improving patient experience and avoiding possible deterioration in their health. Governments in many countries have taken various measures to reduce waiting times, often supported by additional funding, with mixed success. This report looks at how waiting times for elective treatment, which is usually the longest wait, have stalled over the past decade in many countries, and have started to rise again in some others. It also analyses the differences in how long people have to wait to get a consultation with general practitioners or specialists across countries. The report reviews a range of policies that countries have used to tackle waiting times for different services, including elective surgery and primary care consultations, but also cancer care and mental health services, with a focus on identifying the most successful ones.

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.

Wytyczne OECD dla przedsiębiorstw wielonarodowych dotyczące odpowiedzialnego prowadzenia działalności biznesowej to zalecenia kierowane przez rządy do przedsiębiorstw wielonarodowych. Ich celem jest zachęcanie przedsiębiorstw do wnoszenia pozytywnego wkładu w postęp gospodarczy, środowiskowy i społeczny oraz minimalizowania negatywnych skutków w odniesieniu do kwestii objętych Wytycznymi OECD, które mogą być związane z działalnością, produktami i usługami przedsiębiorstwa. Wytyczne OECD obejmują wszystkie kluczowe obszary odpowiedzialności biznesu, w tym prawa człowieka, prawa pracownicze, środowisko, przekupstwo, interesy konsumenta, ujawnianie informacji, naukę i technologię, konkurencję i podatki. Wytyczne OECD, edycja 2023 r. zawiera zaktualizowane zalecenia dotyczące odpowiedzialnego prowadzenia działalności biznesowej w kluczowych obszarach, takich jak zmiana klimatu, różnorodność biologiczna, technologia, uczciwość biznesowa i należyta staranność w łańcuchu dostaw, a także zaktualizowane procedury wdrażania dla Krajowych Punktów Kontaktowych OECD ds. odpowiedzialnego biznesu.

Eine alternde Bevölkerung und ein steigender Bedarf an Kompetenzen verstärken die Erwartungen, dass die Hochschulen Weiterbildungsangebote für Erwachsene, die ihre Qualifikationen auf einem höheren Niveau erneuern oder erweitern wollen, ausbauen werden. Weiterbildung wird auch in Deutschland und insbesondere im Land Brandenburg immer wichtiger, um den Bestand an hochqualifizierten Arbeitskräften zu erhalten. Die öffentlichen Hochschuleinrichtungen in Brandenburg tragen bislang jedoch nur vergleichsweise wenig dazu bei. Um ihr Angebot an wissenschaftlicher Weiterbildung zu erweitern, bräuchten diese Einrichtungen mehr Rechtssicherheit bei der Verwendung öffentlicher Mittel angesichts der politischen Vorgaben der Europäischen Union (EU) zu staatlichen Beihilfen. Die EU-Beihilfepolitik gewährleistet, dass öffentliche Subventionen (staatliche Beihilfen) von staatlichen Stellen nicht zur Verdrängung anderer Akteure (wirtschaftlicher Tätigkeiten) von den Märkten verwendet werden. Es gibt keine klaren Vorgaben auf EU-, Bundes- oder Landesebene dazu, ob Weiterbildung eine nicht-wirtschaftliche Tätigkeit darstellt und somit von den EU-Beihilfevorschriften ausgenommen ist. Der vorliegende Bericht analysiert die rechtlichen Grundlagen und gibt Empfehlungen an die Landesregierung und öffentliche Hochschuleinrichtungen in Brandenburg dazu, wie sich der Status der wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung als staatlich geförderte Tätigkeit klären lässt. Darüber hinaus werden Hinweise für die Auslegung und künftige Reform des EU-Beihilferahmens gegeben und Impulse für politisches Handeln auch in anderen deutschen Bundesländern und auf Bundesebene gesetzt.

Wytyczne OECD dla przedsiębiorstw wielonarodowych zachęcają przedsiębiorstwa do podejmowania działań na rzecz rozwoju gospodarczego, ochrony środowiska naturalnego oraz rozwoju społecznego, a także stwierdzają, że działalność prowadzona przez przedsiębiorstwa może wywoływać negatywne skutki w odniesieniu do pracowników, poszanowania praw człowieka, ochrony środowiska, zachowań korupcyjnych, ochrony interesów konsumentów oraz ładu korporacyjnego.