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...

Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

This report analyses trends in agriculture for the US Southwest region, one of the most water stressed and productive agricultural regions in the world expected to face further water shortages in the future due to climate change and continued growth. It examines projected water risks by...

House prices have increased significantly in Canada over the past decade, driving household debt and residential construction activity to historical highs. Although macro-prudential tightening has slowed the pace of household borrowing in the last few years, house prices have continued to trend...

Making housing more affordable ranks high on the policy agenda across the world. One way to achieve affordable housing is to ensure sufficiently elastic supply of the housing stock in response to demand shocks. This paper aims at disentangling policy from non-policy drivers in explaining...

Housing is key for well-being and for spatial and social mobility. In India, the housing market is characterised by excess demand for affordable dwellings, a small rental market and an oversupply of high-end housing, especially in urban areas.

The U.S. population is becoming increasingly urban and has gradually shifted to the south and west. Policy restrictions have played a role in preventing dynamic areas expanding, and when they do expand it can be through low-density housing sprawl. Land use restrictions and a sluggish housing...

By combining fresh estimates of housing supply and prices with recent long-term projections for their fundamental drivers such as population, income and interest rates, this paper produces scenarios for residential investment and real house prices up to 2050. For half of the covered countries,...

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...

Patent data provide an increasingly used means to analyse innovation performance worldwide including in countries with incomplete data coverage, such as some developing countries. This paper discusses the specific issues associated with using patent data for measuring and analysing innovation in...