By Date

This report examines land-use trends, policies and practices in Korea, in particular in the city of Busan, through the lens of urban regeneration and citizen participation. Land-use planning is critical for the efficient and inclusive management of cities, pursuing sustainable and balanced development and improving quality of life and regional competitiveness. Korea has benefitted from comprehensive and well-structured, hierarchical land-use planning and urban regeneration frameworks. However, faced with a series of demographic and economic challenges, together with geographic factors and historical developments, Korea needs to re-evaluate land-use management and urban regeneration to leverage inclusive growth and boost competitiveness in Korean cities. This report argues that involving citizens in land-use planning and urban regeneration is essential to collect better quality information as a basis for plans, decisions and outcomes. This report is of relevant to urban planners, land use especialists, and city managers who work on urban regeneration projects and citizens’ participation.

This report presents the governance framework in Kazakhstan for managing disaster risks. A wide range of disaster risks are present throughout the national territory, primarily floods, landslides, avalanches, but also extreme cold and heatwaves. The report reviews how the central government sets up a national strategy to manage these disaster risks, and how a national risk governance framework is formulated and executed. It examines the role of the private sector and other non-governmental actors in contributing to resilience at a national and subnational level.

Well-designed systems of energy taxation encourage citizens and investors to favour clean over polluting energy sources. In particular, fuel excise and carbon taxes are simple and cost-effective tools to curb dangerous climate change. Energy and carbon taxes also contribute to limiting health damage from local pollution. Taxing Energy Use (TEU) 2019 presents a snapshot of where countries stand in deploying energy and carbon taxes, tracks progress made, and makes actionable recommendations on how governments could do better. The report contains new and original data on energy and carbon taxes in OECD and G20 countries, and in international aviation and maritime transport.

Well-designed systems of energy taxation encourage citizens and investors to favour clean over polluting energy sources. In particular, fuel excise and carbon taxes are simple and cost-effective tools to curb dangerous climate change. Energy and carbon taxes also contribute to limiting health damage from local pollution. Taxing Energy Use (TEU) 2019 presents a snapshot of where countries stand in deploying energy and carbon taxes, tracks progress made, and makes actionable recommendations on how governments could do better. The report contains new and original data on energy and carbon taxes in OECD and G20 countries, and in international aviation and maritime transport.

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s 15th Conference of the Parties (CBD COP15) in 2020 marks a critical juncture for one of the defining global challenges of our time: the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, which underpin nearly all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Transformative changes are needed to ensure biodiversity conservation and sustainable use and the delivery of the ecosystem services upon which all life depends. This report sets the economic and business case for urgent and ambitious action on biodiversity. It presents a preliminary assessment of current biodiversity-related finance flows, and discusses the key data and indicator gaps that need to be addressed to underpin effective monitoring of both the pressures on biodiversity and the actions (i.e. responses) being implemented. The report concludes with ten priority areas where G7 and other countries can prioritise their efforts.

Pharmaceuticals are essential for human and animal health but they are increasingly recognised as a contaminant to environmental and human health when their residues enter freshwater systems: psychiatric drugs alter fish behaviour; endocrine disrupting pharmaceuticals cause reproduction toxicity in fish and increased risk of breast or prostate cancer in humans; and the overuse of antibiotics is linked to antimicrobial resistance – a global health crisis. The situation is set to worsen with growing use of pharmaceuticals projected with economic growth, ageing populations, advances in healthcare, and increased livestock and fish production. This report helps to close the science-policy loop. It provides policy guidance to cost-effectively reduce human and veterinary pharmaceuticals in freshwater, and their associated risks to human and environmental health. Voluntary participation alone will not deliver; economic and regulatory drivers from central government are needed. Ultimately, a life-cycle approach combining a policy mix of source-directed, use-orientated and end-of-pipe measures, involving several policy sectors, is required to effectively deal with pharmaceuticals across their life cycle.

Markets that function well within a stable regulatory and policy environment are key to improving the productivity and sustainability of the food and agriculture sector. This report contains the main findings and policy lessons gained from a series of wide-ranging country reviews on how government policies can improve sectoral productivity and sustainability through their impact on innovation, structural change, natural resource use, and climate change. Improving the policy environment would require rolling back those policies that distort markets the most and retain farmers in uncompetitive and low-income activities, harm the environment, stifle innovation, slow structural and generational change, and weaken resilience. Agriculture policy should focus instead on measures that facilitate the uptake of technologies and practices that use resources more efficiently and sustainably, and which contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Of equal importance are: a more collaborative approach, more effective governance systems, the development of long-term strategies, strengthened linkages between national and international actors, and comprehensive and coherent evaluation procedures. Public funding of food and agricultural research is also crucial, and private efforts need to be strengthened, including through public-private partnerships. Finally, improving overall policy coherence would contribute to building trust, and to increasing policy effectiveness at each step of the food and agriculture chain.

For most countries in the Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) region, mining is an important economic sector that contributes to employment and public revenue. Despite mining’s potential to cause long-term negative environmental impacts, governments in the region have a vital role to play in supporting better environmental performance in the sector and ensuring the industry can be a progressive part of a greener economy. This report examines the environmental impacts of mining in the EECCA and provides policy makers with guidance to reconcile environmental and competitiveness objectives in the mining sector.