This guide shows how a life cycle approach can be used to identify and reduce the environmental and health impacts of the products we use. It underlines the importance of considering these issues across the entire life cycle of a product and sets them within the context of policy development,...

This Country Focus studies the development of private consumption in France during the decade before the crisis. Are French consumers greater spendthrifts than their European fellows? In this paper, we estimate a consumption function to show that strong growth of private consumption in France...

In Germany private consumption virtually stagnated for nearly a decade and clearly lagged behind GDP growth. This Country Focus uses the estimation of a consumption function to show that the drop in employment is the most important factor behind the reluctance to consume in the first half of...

This brochure in the EU action on climate change series provides an overview of the many ways in which the EU is assisting developing countries in adapting to the negative effects of climate change and mitigating its causes, with a special focus on cooperation with developing countries in Asia.

The negative external effects of profit orientated businesses on the environment and society are most visible and destructive in developing countries, where compensation measures for adversely affected groups rarely exist and where high corruption rates often impede meaningful enforcement of...

The study investigates the contribution of selected important agricultural production systems and technologies (incl. rainwater harvesting, conservation agriculture, rice intensification system, organic farming, agroforestry systems and transgenic plants) to higher food production and food...

Biofuels have gone from being hailed as a greenalternative to fossil fuels to being accusedof increasing global warming, causing loss offorests and other valuable habitats, and ofincreasing poverty in the developing world. This brief examines some of the key issues surrounding biofuels and...