The report Water Resources and Extreme Events in the Awash Basin seeks to better understand and quantify this critical economic vulnerability, as well as draw out the implications of this for water management policies.
Energy issues are also a high priority in the Nordic Council. In light of this, the Nordic Council’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee and Business and Industry Committee established a working group – the Energy Group – in the spring of 2015. The group was tasked with evaluating the need for Nordic co-operation on energy policy and developing proposals for how this co-operation can be developed going forwards. The Energy Group submitted its report in the spring of 2016.
The proposals put forward by the Energy Group are concrete and provide guidance as to how future co-operation on energy could be developed.
This report updates the 2001 Guidance Manual for Governments on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which provided a broad overview of the key issues, general considerations, and the potential benefits and costs associated with producer responsibility for managing the waste generated by their products put on the market. Since then, EPR policies to help improve recycling and reduce landfilling have been widely adopted in most OECD countries; product coverage has been expanded in key sectors such as packaging, electronics, batteries and vehicles; and EPR schemes are spreading in emerging economies in Asia, Africa and South America, making it relevant to address the differing policy contexts in developing countries.
In light of all of the changes in the broader global context, this updated review of the guidelines looks at some of the new design and implementation challenges and opportunities of EPR policies, takes into account recent efforts undertaken by governments to better assess the cost and environmental effectiveness of EPR and its overall impact on the market, and addresses some of the specific issues in emerging market economies.
This report assesses why and how some countries within Asia (referred to in this report as Target Countries) have achieved success in attracting renewable energy investment, what are the critical barriers to furthering renewable energy deployment, and the policy measures and practical interventions that may help to overcome these barriers. The report also highlights how lower technology costs, increased competitiveness of renewable energy, and improved energy storage solutions are making the transition to renewable energy a reality and a priority.
This report presents an analysis of the use of carbon pricing on energy in 41 OECD and G20 economies, covering 80% of global energy use and CO2 emissions. Taking a comprehensive view of carbon prices, including specific taxes on energy use, carbon taxes and tradable emission permit prices, this report shows the entire distribution of effective carbon rates by country and the composition of effective carbon rates across six economic sectors. The ‘carbon pricing gap’, a synthetic indicator showing the extent to which effective carbon rates fall short of pricing emissions at EUR 30 per tonne, the low-end estimate of the cost of carbon used in this study, sheds light on potential ways of strengthening carbon pricing.
This 5th edition of the Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) is a data-driven analysis of how 80 countries perform in the global green economy, as well as how expert practitioners rank this performance. This new GGEI presents one such framework, offering an integrated performance assessment of climate change, the environment, efficiency sectors and investment to better understand where nations stand today and what they can improve on or leverage to do better in the future.
The performance index of the 2016 GGEI is defined by 32 underlying indicators and datasets, each contained within one of the four main dimensions of leadership & climate change, efficiency sectors, markets & investment and the environment.
This report provides an overview of the newest GGEI results from the 5th edition, as well as more detail on how GGEI's research and data can enrich the work of others in this space.