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The Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) was established at COP26 to urgently enhance mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade. This paper explores how the MWP could build on and amplify relevant existing efforts, within and outside the UNFCCC, to trigger the rapid scale up of mitigation efforts required to keep the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement within reach. As a multilateral platform backed by the legitimacy and convening power of the UNFCCC, the MWP could help to raise awareness of available tools and solutions, build momentum behind relevant ongoing mitigation-related initiatives without being prescriptive, and deliver more effective, targeted mitigation efforts across all fronts in the near-term. This paper also outlines potential options for the annual decision on the MWP which provides an important opportunity to maintain attention on the need to urgently scale up mitigation efforts and encourages learning-by-doing. The annual MWP decision could be structured around different mutually supportive elements including lessons learned from the MWP’s first year, follow-up from MWP activities and related mitigation commitments at previous COPs, synergies with other UNFCCC processes, and how to complement the global stocktake.

The Climate Action Monitor is a key publication of the International Programme for Action on Climate (IPAC). It provides a synthesis of climate action and progress towards net-zero targets for 51 OECD and OECD partner countries. This year's edition presents a summary of information on greenhouse gas emissions, an assessment of climate-related hazards and recent trends in climate action. Directed towards policymakers and practitioners, the findings suggest that without increased ambition and a significant expansion in national climate action, countries will not be able to meet the net-zero challenge.

This report analyses current trends of adaptation finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for developing countries. It explores potential action areas for international providers to scale up funding for climate change adaptation, including by unlocking the potential of the private sector. The analysis is anchored in the context of the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, initially set for 2020 and extended to 2025, while also providing insights to the broader and longer-term objective of supporting developing countries’ ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.

This report presents aggregate trends of annual climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for developing countries for the period 2013-2021. It includes breakdowns by climate theme, sector, financial instrument and recipient country grouping for the period 2016-2021. The report also provides key recommendations for international providers to increase financing towards adaptation and more effectively mobilise private finance for climate action, which are both important policy priorities and current bottlenecks. The recommendations in this report draw from two OECD publications on scaling up private climate finance and adaptation finance.

This report explores evidence-based action areas to increase and accelerate the mobilisation of private finance for climate action in developing countries, and the role of international public finance providers in doing so. It draws on best-available data to provide disaggregated analysis of the sectoral, geographic and other features of private finance mobilised by public climate finance and presents key economy-wide, sector-specific, and institutional challenges to private finance mobilisation. The analysis is anchored in the context of the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, initially set for 2020 and extended to 2025, while also providing insights related to mobilising private finance for climate action in developing countries more broadly.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that makes producers responsible for their products at the post-consumer stage of the lifecycle. It has been widely adopted by governments and companies across the OECD membership and beyond and is currently most commonly used for electronics, packaging, vehicles, and tyres. The success of EPR in increasing material recovery rates has triggered a debate about expanding the use of EPR to additional product groups. Additionally, there is a debate about expanding producer responsibilities to additional impact categories, which go beyond the traditional use of EPR to cover end-of-life costs that occur at the domestic level. This paper presents a discussion of relatively novel applications of EPR to additional product groups (plastic products beyond packaging, textiles, construction materials, and food waste) and to environmental impacts (design considerations, pollution and littering) that occur throughout the product lifecycle. Based on select case studies, this report evaluates the successes and challenges that early adopters of applying the EPR approach to new product groups or additional environmental impact categories have experienced. It reviews the arguments for further application of EPR, possible limitations and provides guidance on when and how to best apply an EPR.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the short and long-term sectoral effect of environmental policy stringency on CO2 emissions, exploiting longitudinal data covering 30 OECD countries and more than 50 sectors. The analysis relies on the OECD Environmental Policy Stringency (EPS) index, a composite index tracking climate change and air pollution mitigation policies. Estimates obtained from panel regressions suggest that more stringent environmental policies are associated with lower emissions, that the effect builds over time and differs across sectors depending on their fossil fuel intensity. A one unit increase in the EPS index (about one standard deviation), is associated with 4% lower CO2 emissions in the sector with median fossil fuel intensity after two years and by 12% after 10 years. For sectors in the top decile of the fossil fuel intensity distribution, the estimates point to a decline in emissions by 11% after two years and 19% after ten years. Environmental policies targeted at energy, manufacturing and transport sectors have the largest potential impact on emissions. Illustrative policy scenarios based on these results indicate that achieving emission reductions consistent with net-zero targets will require raising the stringency of environmental policies more drastically and rapidly than in the past.

Climate change and other environmental threats require urgent government action. This policy paper discusses how governments can use better regulation instruments (good regulatory practices, risk-based and agile approaches, regulatory delivery, international regulatory cooperation, economic regulators, and behavioural insights) to design, implement and evaluate efficient and effective regulations for the environment. It explores the challenges governments face and presents good practices for environmental and other regulations, to ensure that all policy instruments coherently pursue environmental goals. Finally, the paper suggests how regulatory policy systems can meet present and future environmental challenges. It argues that to fully exploit the potential of better regulation for the environment, governments should implement measures that ensure an inclusive, cooperative, outcome-based and global approach to regulating.