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The blue economy is a major driver of urban and regional development, creating millions of local jobs in water-dependent sectors such as fisheries, tourism, and shipping. However, it can also contribute to carbon emissions and ecosystem degradation, while its reliance on freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems exposes it to the impacts of climate change. As the places where the blue economy takes place, creates value and provides jobs, cities and regions play a key role in unlocking the potential of a resilient blue economy that preserves the ecosystems that sustain it. Building on a global survey of 80+ cities, regions and basins, this report highlights the costs and benefits of the blue economy at subnational level, shedding light on the link between the blue economy and water security. This analysis provides an overview of the multi-level governance of the blue economy and related gaps. It calls on cities and regions to develop resilient, inclusive, sustainable and circular (RISC-proof) blue economies by establishing the right governance conditions related to policy making, policy coherence and policy implementation. The report concludes with a RISC Assessment Framework that offers a self-evaluation tool for subnational governments.

This report provides an overview of the impacts of climate change on infrastructure , and key policy areas to be considered to render infrastructure more resilient. It discusses advances and persisting gaps in planning and developing infrastructure across its lifecycle to build in climate resilience and how this can be fostered by place-based approach. The report explores how climate risk awareness and understanding can be strengthened and become a norm for all financing and investment decisions, through standards and financial instruments that integrate climate adaptation and resilience. It includes a spotlight on nature-based solutions and offers insights on how nature can be harnessed as a cost-effective measure to build climate resilience. The report also recognises the specific needs of developing countries as requiring global attention for economic development and through strengthened international partnerships and support. Key policy insights are provided and advocate for national and subnational policy-makers to adopt a multi-level governance approach to resilience, working with infrastructure owners and operators to support decision-making.

This paper provides two innovative measures of well-being for French communes, namely a well-being aggregate index and an index of multi-dimensional poverty. These measures provide an unprecedented view of well-being at the local level by using 7 of the 11 key dimensions of the OECD Better Life Initiative (income, unemployment, housing, education, civic engagement, health and environmental quality). The results show that joint deprivation in at least five dimensions of well-being is starkly concentrated among 316 communes, representing as many as 5.2 million inhabitants (7.7% of the French population).

In today's knowledge-driven societies, universities play a crucial role in fostering innovation and sustainable growth within their ecosystems. Improving knowledge exchange and collaboration (KEC) activities within the Italian university system is essential for societal progress, well-being, and enhancing the productivity of firms of different sizes and stages of development and generate value for society. This document offers a reform roadmap proposal for policies to enhance the knowledge exchange and collaboration system between universities and society in Italy.

This policy paper presents the results of a survey jointly conducted by the OECD, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the European Committee of the Regions on how to localise the SDGs in a changing international landscape marked by disasters and shocks. Findings show declining standards of living in many cities and regions, an increasing relevance of affordable and clean energy due to high energy prices and a growing importance of food security following disruptions in global food supply chains. Moving forward, the paper presents possible strategies to further leverage the SDGs to design sustainable urban and regional development policies. It outlines pathways to counter high price levels and promote decarbonisation in production and consumption. Furthermore, it offers ways to promote sustainable food systems and reduce food waste through a circular economy approach and the integration of food policy into urban development strategies.

Innovation is broader than science and technology, yet often statistics and government programmes narrowly focus on this type of innovation. In rural places, this is particularly relevant as not all firms have the capacity to be competitive in high-tech innovation. With around one in five Canadians living in Canada’s rural regions, better understanding how to promote broader notions of innovation for rural places by increasing entrepreneurship, including for women, advancing the green transition, and improving the provision of services is critical to boost rural productivity, and increase well-being standards. The report sets the scene for rural innovation in Canada, explores the policy and governance environment for key regional innovation initiatives, and includes a special topic chapter on green innovation in rural regions of Canada.

Since 2020, a series of shocks to the global economy has had significant impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs and their access to finance. Most recently, significant inflationary pressures have led to tighter lending conditions, limiting the flow of finance to SMEs and acting as a barrier to investment. Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2024: An OECD Scoreboard monitors SME and entrepreneurship financing trends, conditions and policy developments in close to 50 countries. It documents a strong increase in the cost of SME financing in 2022, alongside a significant decline in SME lending. Equity finance also fell sharply in 2022, after a year of historically high growth in 2021. Women-led and minority-owned businesses, which typically find it more difficult to access venture capital financing, were affected disproportionately. Against this backdrop, the Scoreboard highlights the recent measures governments have taken to support SME access to finance, including finance for the green transition. A continued focus on diversifying financial sources and instruments will be important to meet the different needs of all types of SMEs and entrepreneurs, and enable them to act as an engine of resilient, sustainable and inclusive growth.

Data on online job postings represents an important source of information for local labour markets. Many countries lack statistics on labour demand that are sufficiently up-to-date and disaggregated across regions, sectors and occupations. Web-scraped data from online job postings can provide further insights on the trends in labour demand and the skills needed across regions, sectors and occupations. This paper assesses the comparability and validity between Lightcast and other data sources for Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden, for the years 2019 to 2022 across regions, sectors and occupations. It concludes with some recommendations for labour market analysts that want to use data on online job postings for assessing labour demand trends.

This paper presents the first international assessment of the Lightcast vacancy data representativeness based on benchmarking against officially reported vacancy data in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis compares distributions in the Lightcast data versus official data across large (TL2) regions, industrial sectors and occupational categories. The analysis shows differences in representativeness across countries and on the three dimensions considered. In general, regional representativeness is considerably better than both occupational and sectoral representativeness.