Environment Focus
An environmental lens on policies for better lives
Rediscover our top 5 blogs of 2022
2022 has been a year of environmental milestones, in a world faced with climate change and biodiversity loss.
Rediscover our top 5 blogs from 2022 to learn more on a range of topics including ‘green water’, pandemic recovery, Norway’s environmental performance, and the environmental impact of expired medicine.
By Aude Farnault and Xavier Leflaive, Water Team, OECD Environment Directorate
Although extreme heat, droughts, and floods have been recurrent in recent years, weather patterns this summer have reached unprecedented limits: the continuation of catastrophic drought in Western States in the United States and in East Africa, record low levels of water in Europe, and catastrophic floods in Pakistan. The 2022 Stockholm World Water Week took place in this very critical context, with a particularly timely theme: “Seeing the Unseen: The Value of Water”.
Read it here.
By Enrico Botta, OECD Environment Directorate
The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has further exposed the risk posed by dependence on fossil fuels and an undiversified energy mix. While a number of OECD countries use renewable energy to meet around a third of their power demand, the overall role of fossil fuels in the total energy supply remains elevated at around 80% on average. This leaves many OECD countries highly exposed to geopolitical and market volatility.
Read it here.
By Julia Wanjiru Nikiema, OECD Environment Directorate
“We, Norwegians, are we really as green as we think we are? Do we live up to the national and international environmental commitments we made?” some Norwegian stakeholders wondered.
This has been the starting point of the OECD Environmental Performance Review of Norway launched on 22 April 2022 in Oslo, which provides some answers to these questions. The review examines Norway’s environmental performance over the past decade and how it compares with other countries, offering insights and lessons for other OECD members and partner countries.
Read it here.
By OECD (Sigita Strumskyte, Co-ordinator for SDGs and Gender, Environment Directorate; Dimitra Xynou, Policy Analyst, Environment Directorate), UNDP (Esuna Dugarova, Gender Specialist; Verania Chao, Programme Specialist, Climate Gender and Inclusion; Brianna Howell, COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker Analyst) and UN Women (Silke Staab, Research Specialist; Constanza Tabbush, Research Specialist)
2022 International Women’s Day theme “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”, put a spotlight on the role of women and girls in the fight against climate change. Yet International Women’s Day takes place again in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The feminisation of poverty keeps growing, the climate emergency is worsening, conflicts and violence are raging, and the international immunisation effort is not moving fast enough.
Read it here.
By Frithjof Laubinger, Environmental Economist, OECD Environment Directorate
Pharmaceuticals are widely considered as essential for maintaining human and animal health, but many of us do not consider their impact beyond treating infections and disease. In fact, residues from medicine can become an environmental concern when they enter the environment. This can happen in a myriad of ways – not just from improperly discarded unused or expired medicine, but also after they are consumed and excreted. While it is hard to address the latter, the former is more straightforward.
Read it here.
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