Publications & Documents

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.

Ce rapport présente les tendances agrégées du financement climatique annuel fourni et mobilisé par les pays développés pour les pays en développement sur la période 2013-2021. Les tendances sont présentées par thème climatique, secteur, par instrument financier et par groupe de pays bénéficiaires pour la période 2016-2021. Le rapport fournit également des recommandations clés pour les bailleurs de fonds internationaux afin d'augmenter le financement de l'adaptation et de mobiliser plus efficacement le financement privé pour l'action climatique, qui sont à la fois des priorités politiques importantes et des éléments représentants un défi à l’heure actuelle. Les recommandations de ce rapport se basent sur deux publications de l'OCDE sur l'augmentation des financements privés pour le climat et l'adaptation.

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.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the short and long-term sectoral effect of environmental policy stringency on CO2 emissions, exploiting longitudinal data covering 30 OECD countries and more than 50 sectors. The analysis relies on the OECD Environmental Policy Stringency (EPS) index, a composite index tracking climate change and air pollution mitigation policies. Estimates obtained from panel regressions suggest that more stringent environmental policies are associated with lower emissions, that the effect builds over time and differs across sectors depending on their fossil fuel intensity. A one unit increase in the EPS index (about one standard deviation), is associated with 4% lower CO2 emissions in the sector with median fossil fuel intensity after two years and by 12% after 10 years. For sectors in the top decile of the fossil fuel intensity distribution, the estimates point to a decline in emissions by 11% after two years and 19% after ten years. Environmental policies targeted at energy, manufacturing and transport sectors have the largest potential impact on emissions. Illustrative policy scenarios based on these results indicate that achieving emission reductions consistent with net-zero targets will require raising the stringency of environmental policies more drastically and rapidly than in the past.

Climate change and other environmental threats require urgent government action. This policy paper discusses how governments can use better regulation instruments (good regulatory practices, risk-based and agile approaches, regulatory delivery, international regulatory cooperation, economic regulators, and behavioural insights) to design, implement and evaluate efficient and effective regulations for the environment. It explores the challenges governments face and presents good practices for environmental and other regulations, to ensure that all policy instruments coherently pursue environmental goals. Finally, the paper suggests how regulatory policy systems can meet present and future environmental challenges. It argues that to fully exploit the potential of better regulation for the environment, governments should implement measures that ensure an inclusive, cooperative, outcome-based and global approach to regulating.

This report combines multiple novel datasets to provide evidence that government support has contributed to increased carbon emissions from aluminium and steelmaking activities through an increase in production output and by shifting production to more emission intensive plants. While improvements in technology have driven overall emissions downward, there is no evidence that government support in this sector has been targeted at, or has contributed to, developing techniques that improve environmental performance. Removing such support could therefore contribute to a cost-effective decarbonisation strategy. For example, removing government support to aluminium smelting and steel making worldwide would reduce carbon emissions by 75% more than the reduction observed in 2020 resulting from COVID-related restrictions. In addition, the removal of such support would free up scarce public resources for alternative uses.

This paper takes stock of the institutional set-ups, mechanisms and practices used by governments, and in particular centres of government, to steer climate change policy. To respond effectively to climate change, governments need decision-making and co-ordinating processes that reflect the complexity and pressing nature of the climate crisis, the multitude of stakeholders involved, and the need to balance between short-term and long-term policy objectives. With their unique positioning, centres of government in OECD Member countries often play a crucial role in providing leadership and co-ordination for climate policy. The first part of this paper identifies the institutional arrangements, mandates and skillsets of centres of government for climate-related action. The second part analyses the centre’s stewardship role at different stages of the policy cycle, touching on strategic planning, co-ordination, the development of evidence-informed policies, and monitoring as well as overall efforts to 'green' public administrations.

Stimulus packages adopted following the COVID-19 pandemic – such as the US Inflation Reduction Act and NextGenerationEU - have been presented as an opportunity to 'build back better' and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy while re-igniting the economy. But this revival of industrial policy has also raised concerns about the potential for a global green subsidy war. OECD analysed funding measures worth USD 1.3 trillion announced around the world in 2020-21 to support development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. These measures can trigger substantial greenhouse gas emissions reductions while boosting the growth of the clean tech sector in all regions and reducing dependence over fossil fuel imports. This policy brief summarises key findings from our analysis and offers additional recommendations to policymakers.

En tant que pays mégadivers, le Costa Rica est connu dans le monde entier pour avoir réussi à inverser la déforestation et à poursuivre un modèle de croissance fondé sur l'utilisation durable de ses ressources environnementales. Cependant, la consommation d'énergie et les émissions de gaz à effet de serre qui en découlent ont augmenté au cours de la dernière décennie. Les voitures particulières sont une source majeure et croissante d'émissions affectant le climat et la qualité de l'air. L'élimination des déchets repose encore sur les décharges et une grande partie des eaux usées n'est pas traitée. Le vaste réseau de zones protégées du Costa Rica et son programme pionnier de paiement pour les services écosystémiques ont contribué à réduire la perte de biodiversité et à accroître la capacité de séquestration du carbone par les forêts. Toutefois, davantage doit être fait pour lutter contre les pressions exercées sur la biodiversité par le développement des infrastructures et des établissements humains, le tourisme, l'agriculture et la pêche. L'ampleur des investissements nécessaires pour atteindre les Objectifs de développement durable exige d'améliorer l'efficacité des dépenses publiques, de mobiliser les financements privés, d'appliquer strictement les réglementations et de fournir des incitations adéquates. Il s'agit du premier Examen des performances environnementales du Costa Rica par l'OCDE. Il évalue les progrès réalisés par le pays en matière de développement durable, avec un chapitre spécial consacré à la biodiversité, et fournit 52 recommandations. La présente version abrégée contient le résumé, de même que l’évaluation et les recommandations officielles du rapport.