By Date

The paper is the second in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The first paper is titled ‘Young people’s environmental sustainability competence: Emotional, cognitive, behavioural and attitudinal dimensions in EU and OECD countries.

Combatting climate change is among the most critical issues on the global policy agenda. The transition towards a greener economy will require a pivot towards more sustainable production processes and consumption patterns. Entrepreneurs have the potential to be a major driving force behind this effort through their capacity to develop and propagate innovative green solutions. To unlock this potential, it is crucial for policy makers to implement appropriate policies and measures that enable green entrepreneurs to thrive. This report identifies lessons from international policy practices in stimulating and supporting green entrepreneurship from three case study countries – Canada, Germany and Israel – to inform Denmark about effective policy practices and pitfalls to avoid as it implements initiatives to strengthen its green transition. Recommendations are offered across a number of areas such as promoting greater co-ordination between relevant policy actors, strengthening specialised support for green entrepreneurs and building green markets.

Start-ups and scale-ups often make outsized contributions to innovation and job creation. However, while entrepreneurial ecosystems in countries and regions are increasingly studied, less is known about differences by sector. What role do start-ups and scale-ups play in the development of different future growth sectors? What problems and bottlenecks does government policy need to address? To what extent do the start-up and scale-up contributions and obstacles vary by sector, and what is in common across sectors? This report examines the entrepreneurial ecosystems of three of Denmark's sector strongholds, sectors where future growth is likely to be generated - advanced production, energy technology and food and bio resources. A focus on Denmark includes the scale and nature of start-ups and scale-ups in different sectors, the bottlenecks, the current policies and how they can be refined. In addition, nine international policy experiences are presented as inspiring practices for Denmark and other countries - covering Austria, Canada, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Recommendations are offered for Denmark across areas such as entrepreneurial finance, networks, public procurement, and cluster management organisations, covering both cross-sector and sector-specific recommendations.

Denmark has been a frontrunner in policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and now plans to cut emissions by 70% by 2030 from 1990 levels and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Such ambition induces halving emissions from 2019 levels and making the same emission abatement effort in ten years than the past thirty years. Cutting emissions at such fast pace will be challenging with substantial disruptions and macroeconomic consequences. A balanced mix of pricing policies, public investment, regulation and enabling policies should allow smoothing the potential economic and social shocks and accompanying the reallocation of resources. This paper investigates further sectoral climate strategies in Denmark. In the energy sector (electricity and district heating), past progress made to ramp up clean technologies provides a good blueprint to achieve further decarbonisation, but the focus will need to be put soon on lowering reliance on woody biomass. In the transport sector, emissions have continued to increase despite the shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles, highlighting the need for more transformative policies to expand alternatives to individual car uses. In agriculture, little has been done so far to cut emissions, especially from livestock. The sector is subject to leakage risks, but nonetheless should be encouraged to transform its practices. Helping farmers to monitor their GHG emissions should be combined with more stringent regulation.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Denmark as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This edition has a special focus on the impact of COVID‑19. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.

The thematic policy brief on Resourcing Higher Education in Denmark is the first in a series of thematic policy briefs produced as part of the OECD's Resourcing Higher Education Project. This project aims to develop a shared knowledge base for OECD member and partner countries on effective policies for higher education resourcing through system-specific and comparative policy analysis. In 2017, Denmark embarked on an ambitious reform of its system for funding higher education institutions, aiming to improve teaching quality, graduates’ transition to the labour market and institutional leadership and profiling. Developed for the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the thematic policy brief compares the Danish system for funding higher education institutions with systems in peer OECD jurisdictions, focusing on the design of different components of the funding model, the use of performance-related mechanisms elements and mechanisms to promote social inclusion and the regional coverage of the higher education system. The brief identifies policy issues that may warrant further attention as part of a planned future review of the Danish funding system.

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts peer reviews of individual members once every five to six years. Reviews seek to improve the quality and effectiveness of members’ development co-operation, highlighting good practices and recommending improvements. Denmark’s development co‑operation is integrated into its foreign policy. Broad political and public support enables Denmark to provide 0.7% of its national income as official development assistance. Denmark champions gender equality, human rights and democracy, supports transparent communication and empowers its partners. Climate change and irregular migration shape Denmark’s approach to development co-operation. Mainstreaming climate objectives would complement Denmark’s significant investments in climate diplomacy. A global leader in fragile contexts, Denmark could better implement the peace component of the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. The Doing Development Differently approach enables flexible budgets and trusting partnerships. Denmark could better integrate poverty reduction across its programme.

Increasing productivity at farm level is a key policy objective across most countries and fundamental to the overall performance of agricultural and food systems. This paper applies dynamic statistical methods to farm level data in order to identify the determinants of farm performance over time, in terms of productivity and measures of local sustainability. The analysis sheds light on the effects of policies on productivity, and the links between productivity and sustainability outcomes. It draws on key findings from seven case studies: crop farms in Australia, France, Italy and the United Kingdom (England and Wales); and dairy farms in the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway, with different sample periods, from the most recent three decades to the last five years. A key finding is that policy changes increasing the degree of decoupling of payments have a positive impact on productivity. Furthermore, with the right incentives, productivity growth can be more locally sustainable insofar as farms can produce more output with less inputs that harm the environment. The detailed background work on the seven samples of crops and dairy farms in the above countries is available in OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Paper N°165.

This paper provides detailed farm level data evidence on the dynamics of farm performance from case studies covering crop farms in Australia, France, Italy and the United Kingdom (England and Wales), and dairy farms in the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway, with different recent sample periods of five to thirty years. An increase in productivity over time is common to all countries and most crop farm classes, but productivity dynamics vary significantly. In Australia, strong productivity growth among the most productive crop farms has led to an increase in the gap between the highest and lowest performing farms; whereas in France, Italy and the United Kingdom, productivity growth was weak among the most productive crop farms and the lowest performing farms closed the productivity gap. Productivity also increased among dairy farms, with an increasing gap between the most and the least productive farm classes in the three sample countries. The impact of policy changes on performance dynamics is analysed for decoupled payments in France and England, and dairy payments in the Czech Republic. The main findings across countries and policy implications are discussed in OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Paper N°164.