Click to read

• Highlights (English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese and other languages)
• Key Facts and Figures
• International media coverage (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish)

Humanity has witnessed unprecedented growth and prosperity in the past decades, with the size of the world economy more than tripling and population increasing by over 3 billion people since 1970. This growth, however, has been accompanied by environmental pollution and natural resource depletion. The current growth model and the mismanagement of natural assets could ultimately undermine human development.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Socioeconomic Developments

Chapter 3. Climate Change

Chapter 4. Biodiversity

Chapter 5. Water

Chapter 6. Health and Environment

Annex: Modelling Framework

In the Press

News releases

• International media coverage (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish)
• Opening Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, delivered at the Meeting of the Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level, 29 March
• Act now or face costly consequences, warns OECD, 15 March 2012.
• The Water Challenge: sharing a precious commodity, 7 March 2012
• Political courage in Durban needed to combat climate change, says Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, 24 November 2011

Speech

Opening Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, delivered at the Meeting of the Environment Policy Committee at Ministerial Level, 29 March 2012

Article

Green Growth: Making it Happen, by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, Article published in Europe's World, 7 February 2012 

Insights Blogs

Better Plays for Better Lives: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, OECD Insights Blog, 25 July 2013

Avoiding death by diesel, by Simon Upton, OECD Environment Director, 19 June 2013

Related Events

• Participation of the OECD: UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, 20-22 June, Brazil
• Meeting of OECD Environment Ministers, 29-30 March 2012, Paris
• World Water Day - OECD Blog, 22 March 2012
• OECD participation in the 6th World Water Forum, 12-17 March 2012, Marseille
• OECD at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban (COP17), 28 November-9 December 2011, South Africa

Access the full report

OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction

This book includes StatLinks, URLs which links to statistical tables and graphs to Excel spreadsheets.

» Browse the full book or individual chapters (OECD iLibrary)

» Order a copy (OECD Online Bookshop)

» Login to our publications site for Access by password for accredited journalists (accreditation and registration required)

Multilingual Summaries (view all)

Czech

Danish

Dutch

Estonian

Finnish

German

Greek

Hebrew

Hungarian

Icelandic

Italian

Korean

Norwegian

Polish

Portuguese

Slovak

Russian

Slovenian

Swedish

Turkish

Previous OECD Environmental Outlook Editions

• OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030 (2008)
• Previous Edition (2001)

• An Overview of the OECD ENV-Linkages Model: Version 3 - This document provides a detailed technical description of the ENV-Linkages model. The OECD ENV-Linkages Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is an economic model that describes how economic activities are inter-linked across several macroeconomic sectors and regions. It links economic activity to environmental pressure, specifically to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The links between economic activities and emissions are projected for several decades into the future, and thus shed light on the impacts of environmental policies for the medium- and long-term future. In this paper specific attention is given to the equations that form the core of the model. The version of the model presented in this paper is used for analysis carried out for the OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050. An updated version of the model is expected to play a key role in the new OECD CIRCLE project. (OECD Environment Working Paper No. 65, June 2014)