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This report explores evidence-based action areas to increase and accelerate the mobilisation of private finance for climate action in developing countries, and the role of international public finance providers in doing so. It draws on best-available data to provide disaggregated analysis of the sectoral, geographic and other features of private finance mobilised by public climate finance and presents key economy-wide, sector-specific, and institutional challenges to private finance mobilisation. The analysis is anchored in the context of the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, initially set for 2020 and extended to 2025, while also providing insights related to mobilising private finance for climate action in developing countries more broadly.

This report presents aggregate trends of annual climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for developing countries for the period 2013-2021. It includes breakdowns by climate theme, sector, financial instrument and recipient country grouping for the period 2016-2021. The report also provides key recommendations for international providers to increase financing towards adaptation and more effectively mobilise private finance for climate action, which are both important policy priorities and current bottlenecks. The recommendations in this report draw from two OECD publications on scaling up private climate finance and adaptation finance.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that makes producers responsible for their products at the post-consumer stage of the lifecycle. It has been widely adopted by governments and companies across the OECD membership and beyond and is currently most commonly used for electronics, packaging, vehicles, and tyres. The success of EPR in increasing material recovery rates has triggered a debate about expanding the use of EPR to additional product groups. Additionally, there is a debate about expanding producer responsibilities to additional impact categories, which go beyond the traditional use of EPR to cover end-of-life costs that occur at the domestic level. This paper presents a discussion of relatively novel applications of EPR to additional product groups (plastic products beyond packaging, textiles, construction materials, and food waste) and to environmental impacts (design considerations, pollution and littering) that occur throughout the product lifecycle. Based on select case studies, this report evaluates the successes and challenges that early adopters of applying the EPR approach to new product groups or additional environmental impact categories have experienced. It reviews the arguments for further application of EPR, possible limitations and provides guidance on when and how to best apply an EPR.

Climate shocks such as extreme floods and storms, droughts and heatwaves have complex, inter-connected and far-reaching consequences across multiple policy sectors and systems. Shocks in other systems, such as financial or health crises, can, in turn, affect climate challenges. Applying a systems approach to climate change helps policymakers understand linkages between issues that are treated separately and propose cross-sectoral, multi-disciplinary solutions in cities. This paper proposes a four-pronged policy framework to disentangle the different elements of economic, social, environmental, and other systems operating in cities, maximise co-benefits and manage trade-offs across systems, and build systemic climate resilience in cities. It summarises the contribution of the Working Party on Urban Policy and the Regional Development Policy Committee to the 2021-2022 OECD Horizontal Project on 'Building Climate and Economic Resilience in the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy'.

Stressors that exhibit immunosuppression might act by different mechanisms, i.e. alter the number of cells involved in the immune response, the ability of the cells to produce cytokines, chemokines, antibodies or growth factors, the composition of the subpopulations of cells present at the site of the response, or the function of the cells. This Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) describes how impairment of the signaling receptor IL-1R1 in T cells can lead to impaired T cell activation and antibody production, leading to increased susceptibility to infection. The AOP focuses on the blocking of binding of IL-1 to IL-1R1, leading to the Inhibition of Nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB). This AOP is referred to as AOP 277 in the Collaborative Adverse Outcome Pathway Wiki (AOP-Wiki).

The present Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) describes the linkage between lung cancer initiated from the Deposition of Energy (DoE) into a cell by a prototypic stressor such as radon gas. The multiple ionization events from DoE can directly break DNA double strands and initiate the activation of repair machinery through non-homologous end joining, an efficient, but error-prone process. When double strand breaks occur in DNA regions that transcribe critical genes, mutations generated by faulty repair may alter the function of these genes or cause chromosomal aberrations. These events alter the functions of many gene products and affect cell growth, cycling, and apoptosis. Cell proliferation is then promoted by escaping the regulatory control and forming hyperplasia in lung epithelial cells, leading eventually to lung cancer. Although the weight of evidence for this AOP is strong, uncertainties remain on dose-effect relationships across KEs, particularly for DoE delivered at low doses and dose-rates.

The cardiovascular system is the first functional organ system to develop in the vertebrate embryo, reflecting its critical role during normal development and pregnancy. This Adverse Outcome Pathway focuses on the regulation and disruption of vasculogenesis-angiogenesis during embryonic development via disruption of the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) signaling pathway. This pathway is a critical regulatory system for assembly of embryonic blood vessels. Genetic studies have shown that perturbing the VEGF signaling system can invoke varying degrees of adverse consequences, ranging from congenital angiodysplasia to fetal malformations and embryolethality. This AOP is referred to as AOP 43 in the Collaborative Adverse Outcome Pathway Wiki (AOP-Wiki).

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are contaminants of emerging environmental and health concern that have been detected in freshwater, wastewater and drinking water. They interfere with the endocrine system in humans and wildlife, and produce adverse effects such as developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effects. Their presence in water raises concerns for the integrity of ecosystems and biodiversity. Addressing the challenges of EDCs in water is particularly complex due to their ability to trigger adverse effects at very low concentrations, their potency in mixtures with other chemicals, and the vast range of sources and entryways of this group of chemicals into the environment. This report presents new water quality monitoring methods, such as bioassays and non-targeted analysis, that are well equipped to capture the impacts of EDCs in water. These new methods supplement the traditional substance-by-substance chemical analysis of water quality. The report also outlines policy instruments to manage the chemicals’ lifecycle from source to end-of-pipe. It proposes tools and regulations that respond to the negative effects of endocrine disruption, even if the culprit chemical is still unknown. The analysis draws on case studies from OECD countries to provide practical examples and concrete policy actions.