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How’s Life? charts whether life is getting better for people in 37 OECD countries and 4 partner countries. This fifth edition presents the latest evidence from an updated set of over 80 indicators, covering current well-being outcomes, inequalities, and resources for future well-being. Since 2010, people’s well-being has improved in many respects, but progress has been slow or deteriorated in others, including how people connect with each other and their government. Large gaps by gender, age and education persist across most well-being outcomes. Generally, OECD countries that do better on average also feature greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. Many OECD countries with poorer well-being in 2010 have since experienced the greatest gains. However, advances in current well-being have not always been matched by improvements in the resources that sustain well-being over time, with warning signs emerging across natural, human, economic and social capital. Beyond an overall analysis of well-being trends since 2010, this report explores in detail the 15 dimensions of the OECD Better Life Initiative, including health, subjective well-being, social connections, natural capital, and more, and looks at each country’s performance in dedicated country profiles.

The 2020 edition analyses tourism performance and policy trends across 51 OECD countries and partner economies. It highlights the need for coherent and comprehensive approaches to tourism policy making, and the significance of the tourism economy, with data covering domestic, inbound and outbound tourism, enterprises and employment, and internal tourism consumption. Tourism policy priorities, reforms and developments are analysed and examples of country practices highlighted. Thematic chapters provide insights on preparing tourism businesses for the digital transformation, and rethinking tourism success to promote more sustainable and inclusive tourism development.

Credible statistical information can serve as a powerful tool for the Republic of Kazakhstan to plan for, and monitor progress on, its transition to a green economy. While available data by Kazakhstan's Committee on Statistics already provide some useful information (e.g. investment and operational expenditures as a share of GDP are 0.2% and 0.4% respectively, which remain low), further improvement in coverage, granularity and quality of statistical information can better inform policy-making on green economy transition. This report examines how Kazakhstan’s national statistical system works and how it can be further improved to better measure and understand financial flows that contribute to a green economy transition. The analysis also builds on a range of relevant international and national initiatives on sustainable finance.

This report analyses planned infrastructure projects, decision-making frameworks related to infrastructure development and strategic planning documents in eight countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It compares current investment flows with countries' national development objectives to identify misalignments and provides policy-makers with recommendations to improve the integration of climate change and other environmental concerns into infrastucture development decision-making processes. The report presents a comprehensive overview of infrastructure investment, primarily in the transport and energy sectors, throughout the region and identifies the risks and opportunities emerging from current investment patterns.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in Georgia’s economy. SMEs provide more than 67% of employment and about 62% of gross value added. Although the environmental footprint of individual SMEs may be low, their aggregate impact in many respects exceeds that of large businesses. Commercial banks have an important role to play in providing access to green finance, particularly for SMEs. This report reviews the experience with green lending in the SME sector in Georgia. The analysis identifies the main challenges with lending to SMEs for green projects and discusses possible solutions. The report, in particular, looks at the role of the government and the policy instruments it can use to stimulate higher demand for green lending in the SME sector.

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.

This report updates the data published in the 2015 OECD Compendium of Agri-environmental Indicators to present a summary of the environmental performance of agriculture in OECD countries as of end-2015. It also includes new and innovative material to further strengthen its relevance as a reference document. In particular, the four thematic chapters each cover a targeted set of indicators for which data coverage is generally more consistent across time in OECD countries and that capture the main pressures agriculture exerts on the environment. The thematic chapters cover the following areas: the interlinked issues of land use, pesticides and farmland birds; ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions, the main air pollutants from agricultural activities; nitrogen and phosphorus balances, two indicators that signal air and water pollution; and water use and irrigation in agriculture.

This new web format for Environment at a Glance Indicators provides real-time interactive on-line access to the latest comparable OECD-country data on the environment from the OECD Core Set of Environmental Indicators – a tool to evaluate environmental performance in countries and to track the course towards sustainable development. The web version allows users to play with the data and graphics, download and share them, and consult and download thematic web-books. These indicators provide key messages on major environmental trends in areas such as climate change, biodiversity, water resources, air quality, circular economy and ocean resources. They are accompanied by a short Environment at a Glance report that presents a digest of the key messages stemming from the indicators.

Denmark's energy and carbon intensities are among the lowest in the OECD area. Green taxation as a share of GDP is the highest in the OECD, and the country is a leader in eco-innovation. Denmark has also achieved impressive results in the material recovery of most waste streams and reached a political agreement to move to a circular economy. It is an international standard setter for chemical risk assessment. However, municipal waste generation remains the highest in the OECD area. Many bodies of water do not reach good ecological status. Levels of exposure to fine particles remain above international standards. Terrestrial biodiversity suffers from the lack of well-connected protected areas. Further steps will need to be taken to achieve the stated goal of a climate neutral economy by 2050. This is the third Environmental Performance Review of Denmark. It evaluates progress towards sustainable development and green growth, with special features on waste, materials management and the circular economy and chemicals management.