This is the third review of Mexico's environmental performance. It analyses progress in achieving a range of national objectives and international commitments, and presents 29 recommendations on how performance could be improved. Progress towards a green, low carbon economy is part of the assessment.
Moving towards low-carbon, high-efficiency energy systems, mitigating climate change, securing energy supplies, and resolving the imbalance of payments caused by energy imports, are impending problems that nations worldwide are striving hard to resolve. This paper addresses three aspects of this problem:
- the role of markets, prices, and governments in this energy transformation
- identification of policy interventions that can become productive investments in the future
- the potential for low-carbon, high-efficiency energy to drive green growth
The paper notes that the policy choices for an energy system transformation largely relate to:
This report presents, for the first time a local ‘green growth’ indicator framework. This indicator framework was developed from the OECD ‘green growth’ strategy at the national level, but modified to highlight issues of transition that are most relevant for local areas. The Copenhagen report is the first trialling of this approach, along with an indicator visualisation tool – or dashboard. The dashboard allows easy assessment of the progress of a particular local area in a number of indicator variables.
The need to reform water policies is as urgent as ever. Water is essential for economic growth, human health, and the environment. Yet governments around the world face significant challenges in managing their water resources effectively. The problems are multiple and complex: billions of people are still without access to safe water and adequate sanitation; competition for water is increasing among the different uses and users; and major investment is required to maintain and improve water infrastructure in OECD and non-OECD countries. Despite progress on many fronts, governments around the world are still confronted with the need to reform their existing water policies in order to meet current objectives and future challenges. Building on the water challenges identified by the OECD Environment Outlook to 2050, this report examines three fundamental areas that need to be addressed whatever reform agendas are pursued by governments: financing of the water sector; the governance and institutional arrangements that are in place; and coherence between water policies and policies in place in other sectors of the economy.
Improving energy-efficiency is essential to any strategy to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). New generations of household appliances are becoming ever more energy-efficient due to continuing technological advances, often spurred by government policies. These products are manufactured, sold and used on a global scale not imagined a decade ago. Yet achieving the full market potential of these best-available technologies has proven elusive, due to a variety of factors, some of which are trade-related. This paper considers these factors and looks at ways of addressing them. It examines four products in the residential sector that have considerable potential for significantly reducing GHG emissions: refrigerators, televisions, lighting, and air conditioners. These technologies are also widely traded globally. To develop a better understanding of how improvements in energy efficiency could affect CO2 emission reductions, the paper draws on work undertaken by Japan’s Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), using their DNE21+ model.