The demographic transition to fewer babies and longer lives took a century in Europe and North America. In Asia, this transition will often take place in a single generation. But many of Asia’s retirement-income systems are ill-prepared for the rapid population ageing that will occur over the next two decades. Asia’s pension systems need modernising urgently to ensure that they are financially sustainable and provide adequate retirement incomes.
“Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it,” said Benjamin Franklin. Yet, from Machiavelli through Richelieu to Kissinger, people in power have always relied on good advice from people they trust. But where should the line be drawn (rather than blurred) between influence and intrigue, cost and benefit?
If you are reading this in a big city, the air you are breathing may be doing you harm. Though over 50% of the world’s population now live in urban areas, only 2% of the global urban population lives with acceptable concentrations of particulate matter, or PM, which can cause breathing and respiratory diseases, cancer and premature death. Children, older persons, and people with lung ailments such as asthma or chronic lung disease are especially vulnerable to the effects of PM.
Inventors, entrepreneurs and start-ups offer a glimmer of hope in a time of low growth and austerity, with governments and economists alike shifting their attention towards innovation as a way out of a protracted crisis. Government-supported policies and programmes to support business innovation have been around for decades, but how successful are they and what lessons can be drawn for these more austere times?
Thomas Edison’s assertion that “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” is particularly pertinent to the solar energy sector. This remarkable technology could hold answers to so many of the world’s energy challenges, but only at the cost of hard effort and investment. Solar Energy Perspectives, the first in-depth study dedicated to solar technology from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a sister organisation of the OECD, gives a comprehensive analysis of solar energy’s potential as well as the policies required to increase its capacity in the coming decades.
When the OECD joined the G20 crackdown on tax havens during the economic crisis in 2009, its longstanding work helped to curb this harmful tax practice and implement a global standard of bank transparency. Now the organisation is focusing on another time-honoured malpractice: that of slipping taxable income through fiscal loopholes. Some call this creative accounting, the OECD calls it aggressive tax planning, and because it is hurting government revenue, it is hurting entire economies as well.
Starting a factory? While “quick and dirty” may be the easiest business model to follow, the OECD is encouraging start-ups to start smart, with sustainability in mind. The OECD Sustainable Manufacturing Toolkit is a seven-step checklist to help businesses integrate good environmental practice, and stay on the side of investors, regulators, customers and local communities.
In 1950, less than 1% of the global population was over 80. By 2050, the share of those aged 80 and over is expected to reach nearly 10% across OECD countries. The trouble is, while people are living longer, they are not always able to look after themselves. Relying on family help can be difficult, not just financially, but also because, as people live longer, their children may also be ageing and facing challenges of their own. That is why public authorities are starting to focus on the issue of long-term care and the provision of services for elderly people with reduced functional capacities.
In the last edition of the OECD Observer we showed how investing in a gas-based kitchen can save lives. The simple water closet can also be a means to good health and dignity, and a source of economic wellbeing, says a new OECD report, Benefits of Investing in Water and Sanitation.
As efforts to restart the stalled Doha Development Round negotiations intensify, the policy focus on world trade, and, specifically, its relation to development aid and growth in poorer countries, has become more acute. Trade is a powerful engine for economic growth, as the OECD’s founders argued 50 years ago, and, as such, can contribute to reducing poverty. However, efforts to improve trade in developing countries are often hampered by domestic constraints, particularly a lack of adequate economic infrastructures, as well as institutional and organisational obstacles.
Did globalisation contribute to the economic crisis and if so how? This is one of several interesting questions asked in Measuring Globalisation: OECD Economic Globalisation Indicators 2010. In snapshot mode, this book looks at the financial crisis, trade, technology and multinational enterprises, and asks how these may have influenced the proliferation of the crisis, just as they helped spread prosperity and wealth in the first place.
The road from conflict to peace and from destruction to development is far from smooth. In fact, research shows that half of all countries that have been ravaged by conflict are at war again within a decade. Transition Financing: Building a Better Response, part of the OECD’s Conflict and Fragility series of books, examines how the international community can help countries move from resolving conflicts to a lasting peace, grounded in what the authors describe as “sustainable development”. It involves a transition to greater national ownership and a greater capacity to ensure public safety and welfare.
In 2004, net exports of fish reeled in more than $20 billion to developing countries– nearly four times more than coffee exports and nearly ten times more than tea exports. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that same year, fish provided more than 2.6 billion people around the world with at least 20% of their average per capita animal protein intake. As Globalisation in Fisheries and Aquaculture: Opportunities and Challenges makes clear, only through international co-operation will these vast and crucial industries be saved from their own success.
According to European Union data, around 20% of jobs in Europe are either in the information and communication technology sector or require skills in that field. How prepared are today’s students for living and working in a digital world? The OECD’s New Millennium Learners project explores what drives students to use computers, and how computer use affects education performance. Its study, Are the New Millennium Learners Making the Grade? Technology Use and Educational Performance in PISA, shows that there is not a simple correlation between using computers and doing well in school. Rather, there is evidence of a second “digital divide” emerging–not between students who do and don’t have computers, but between those students who have the skills to benefit from computer use and those who don’t.
The best intentions in the world will not be enough to undo the damage done by the global economic crisis to the hopes of fully achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. With just five years left to that target date, the 2010 edition of the OECD’s Development Co-operation Report alerts readers to the probable shortfalls in aid expected in 2010, as compared with commitments made in 2005 at the Gleneagles G8 and UN Millennium +5 summits. Since the report was published, new OECD data estimate a shortfall of $18 billion in 2010 compared with the 2005 pledges, largely because of reductions in gross national income among donor countries. Africa will be most affected, because some European donors who give large shares of their official development assistance to that continent will not meet their ambitious targets.
As biofuel production grew fourfold from 2000 to 2008, criticism of the industry seemed to increase nearly as dramatically. Production of these transport fuels, which are based on food crops such as grains, sugar cane and vegetable oils, competes with food crops and drives up food prices, experts argue. Also, from land-clearance needed for cultivation, production and use, these biofuels may actually increase, rather than reduce, greenhouse gas emissions.
Malthus is dead, but prosperity for all guarantees neither peace nor happiness. This is the key message emanating from Daniel Cohen’s acclaimed new book, La prospérité du vice: Une introduction (inquiète) à l’économie. This professor of the École Normale Superieure and deputy director of the Paris School of Economics looks back over four centuries and draws on the thinking of the great economists, historians and sociologists in order to bring us to this insight: prosperity alone guarantees neither peace nor happiness. Despite Cohen’s prevailingly pessimistic tone, his pedagogical talent makes this book an exciting and educational read.
Climate change is very much on the development agenda, but according to this guide, Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into Development Co-operation: Policy Guidance, while developing countries account for over half of total carbon emissions, they are also the most vulnerable to climate change. The guide, which is aimed at donors, but is also useful for aid recipients, argues that development-as-usual may be counterproductive. For example, building new, weatherproofed roads in Africa may be good for sustainable development, but what if those roads encourage settlement along flood-endangered coasts? OECD countries donated an estimated $3.8 billion in bilateral aid to developing countries’ climate change mitigation efforts in 2007. The book examines the potential impact of climate change on the Millennium Development Goals and gives examples of aid strategies that take climate change into account.
Despite the mitigated outcome of the recent Copenhagen climate change summit, efforts to develop renewable energy still make progress. Practical solutions to improve the development and implementation of renewable energies and boost their efficiency are constantly being sought. Attention is starting to focus on cities. Considering the fact that about half of the world’s population now lives in an urban environment and produces about 70% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions, it is only logical that the development of renewable energy should be prioritised in cities and towns. Using the immediate environment and locally available resources, such as waste or heat from buildings, ensures that the schemes being implemented do not rely on costly national or international involvement. This also allows for local governments to improve local businesses and employment.
Children are our future; they are also individuals who have a right to their own well-being. According to the OECD's first-ever report on child well-being, Doing Better for Children, the adult world of government is not doing enough to uphold that right. On average across the OECD area, public spending on children under the age of five represents just 24% of all spending on children up to the age of 18. The report argues that increasing spending on our youngest citizens, particularly in the areas of health and education, and especially for disadvantaged children, will help to improve social equity as those children grow up.
Can cutting down on sugar subsidies lead to healthier trade competition and trimmer prices? The 2005 European Union market reforms aim to thin EU farmers’ sugar subsidies and cut out obsolete sugar mills. Sugar Policy Reform in the European Union and in World Sugar Markets maps out how this might work.
In Mexico, 80% of the population lives in relatively dry and hot areas and subterranean resources are being slowly exhausted. Access to water is increasingly becoming an issue in some of the most active and industrialised parts of the country. Yet, says the OECD’s 2004 review of regulatory reform in Mexico, rapid demographic growth and industrial development have increased the overall demand for water.
