This paper identifies opportunities to refine OECD’s indicators of land cover and land use and their regular production for all OECD and G20 countries. A comprehensive review is conducted of the available datasets at the global, regional and national levels, including data derived from remote...

Changes in the biophysical characteristics of natural habitats – that can be measured with data on land cover – are the best proxy to monitor pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity. This paper presents a suite of indicators that track land cover change over time in a globally consistent...

Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use policies implemented in OECD countries could be made more environmentally effective and cost-effective. Several policy innovations could change this, however. To test this, a theoretical framework was developed to describe farmers’ participation in...

This paper reviews the impacts and costs of pesticide and fertiliser pollution as well as the policy responses to counter these in selected OECD countries. More specifically, the paper begins with an overview of the main biodiversity and health impacts of excess pesticide and fertiliser. In...

The bio-economy is gaining increasing prominence in the policy debate, with several countries developing bio-economy strategies to decouple economic growth from dependence on fossil fuel, as well a pathway to supporting some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and commitments under...

This report assesses the crucial drivers of ecosystem services and proposes actions to develop a more effective policy mix. Several elements form the basis of this report. First, a literature review provides an overview of the state and trends of ecosystem services linked to agriculture,...

The effects of six common forms of fisheries support are estimated using a bioeconomic model of the global fishery. The results show that all have the potential to provoke overfishing, to lead to fish stocks being overfished, to encourage illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing and to...

This paper reviews and compares five case studies on quantification and economic valuation of benefits in cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) of regulating phthalates, mercury, PFOA (perfluoro-octanic acid) and its salts, NMP (1 methyl-2-pyrroloidine) and formaldehyde. The case studies had all been...

This report provides an overview of methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of policy instruments for biodiversity, covering impact evaluation, cost-effectiveness analysis and other more commonly used approaches. It then provides an inventory of biodiversity-relevant impact evaluation...

Little is known yet about the impact of the COVID crisis on household income and jobs in absence of real time information on these variables. A recent literature strand has sought to overcome data limitations to assess the distributional impact of policy measures taken in the EU using various...