Publications & Documents

A changing climate is threatening livelihoods and economic activity in Greece and the world. Transitioning to a green economy – mitigating the causes of climate change and adapting to its effects, while sustaining activity and improving well-being – is among the greatest policy challenges of the coming decades. In Greece, legacies of high emission intensity, limited fiscal space and scarce private financing amplify the challenge. Greening Greece’s energy system is at the core of this transition. This entails swiftly developing its large potential for renewable energies and adapting energy consuming sectors. A well-chosen mix of policies – including carbon pricing, public infrastructure investments, and gradually tightening regulations on minimum energy efficiency standards, while providing financial support and protecting vulnerable households – would minimise the cost of this transition. Developing insurance coverage can better protect households and firms from damages resulting from a warming climate, while limiting fiscal exposure. Engaging all stakeholders and supporting those affected by the transition will help build the consensus for implementing these policies into the long-term.

Greece aims to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050. It has made notable progress towards meeting these targets. This includes significantly reducing its reliance on lignite and setting a binding target to end lignite-fired power generation by 2028 while working to ensure a just transition in its lignite mining regions and reducing energy poverty. Greece has also made strong progress on renewable energy, which covered 20% of its total final energy consumption in 2021. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Greece is reducing its reliance on Russian energy imports and ensuring secure access to energy by diversifying its supply and increasing domestic energy production. Despite these notable successes, significant challenges remain. Fossil fuels still account for most of Greece’s energy use and stronger efforts are needed on energy efficiency. n this report, the IEA provides a range of energy policy recommendations to help Greece smoothly manage its transition to a secure, efficient and flexible carbon neutral energy system.

This work leverages globally consistent data on parks from Google Maps, in combination with the computational power of Google Maps Directions API to quantify accessibility to parks across nearly 500 metropolitan areas in six countries: Estonia, France, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States. We combined high resolution population data from Worldpop with parks data and navigation estimates to measure: (1) Fraction of the population with access to parks within a 10-minute walk; and (2) the median walking time to the closest park. We find large differences in access to parks between countries, as well as large variability across cities and their respective commuting zones. To demonstrate how this framework can support cross country comparisons and efforts to track progress towards SDG11, we assessed access to parks by income group in selected countries, finding that the median walking time to a park is shorter for residents of low income neighbourhoods both in French and American metropolitan areas.

This profile identifies strengths, challenges and specific areas of action on cancer prevention and care in Greece as part of the European Cancer Inequalities Registry, a flagship initiative of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. It provides a short synthesis of: the national cancer burden; risk factors for cancer (focusing on behavioural and environmental risk factors); early detection programmes; and cancer care performance (focusing on accessibility, care quality, costs and the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care).

Like many other OECD countries, Greece has embarked on an ambitious digital transformation of its public sector to make it more effective, sustainable, proactive and people-centred. However, digital transformation projects present challenges in terms of governance, procurement, implementation and institutional capacities. This review explores how Greece could overcome these challenges to ensure that digital government investments address critical bottlenecks such as the procurement process and result in policy coherence, achieve value for money, and deliver intended outcomes. It also highlights the crucial role of whole-of-government co-ordination.

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

Understanding adults’ attitudes towards the environment is necessary to gauge the opportunities and challenges of creating effective and politically-feasible climate policies. Using data from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2020, the European Social Survey (Round 8), World Values Survey and EM-DAT, this paper examines how adults’ environmental attitudes vary within and across countries and details how environmental attitudes are associated with adults’ engagement in pro-environmental behaviours and support for environmentally-friendly policies. The paper explores whether the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment over the state of the economy or vice versa depends on individuals’ exposure to natural disasters or negative labour market conditions. Results indicate that people’s economic vulnerability and the sectors they work in impact their attitudes towards their environment and support for public policy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that increases in unemployment and exposure to natural disasters influence the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment.

The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.