Reports

Social impact measurement and management is a particularly helpful practice for social economy entities to understand their contribution to society and potentially improve the achievement of their mission. Impact areas that are particularly important for the social economy, such as economic prosperity and employment, social inclusion and well-being and community, are often the hardest to translate into quantitative metrics. Current social impact measurement and management practices are largely shaped by funders and for-profits with limited focus on the social economy. This guide offers a simple, straightforward approach for social economy entities to measure, manage and ultimately maximise their impact, and to prioritise the use of findings for strategic organisational learning and improvement.

The state of Paraná in Brazil has turned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guiding framework for its territorial development policy since 2016. Building on the recommendations from the OECD report on 'A Territorial Approach to the SDGs in Paraná, Brazil' (2021), the state has continued to leverage the SDGs as a vehicle to address territorial disparities and challenges in a number of policy domains, including agriculture, health, education, economic growth, environmental conservation and public safety. This report assesses the state’s progress on the 2021 OECD recommendations and offers renewed guidance on how to harness the SDGs to tackle the state’s main challenges, including designing a state-wide Sustainable Development Plan and integrating the SDGs in its new 2053 Strategic Vision.

The blue economy is a major driver of urban and regional development, creating millions of local jobs in water-dependent sectors such as fisheries, tourism, and shipping. However, it can also contribute to carbon emissions and ecosystem degradation, while its reliance on freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems exposes it to the impacts of climate change. As the places where the blue economy takes place, creates value and provides jobs, cities and regions play a key role in unlocking the potential of a resilient blue economy that preserves the ecosystems that sustain it. Building on a global survey of 80+ cities, regions and basins, this report highlights the costs and benefits of the blue economy at subnational level, shedding light on the link between the blue economy and water security. This analysis provides an overview of the multi-level governance of the blue economy and related gaps. It calls on cities and regions to develop resilient, inclusive, sustainable and circular (RISC-proof) blue economies by establishing the right governance conditions related to policy making, policy coherence and policy implementation. The report concludes with a RISC Assessment Framework that offers a self-evaluation tool for subnational governments.

Ce rapport fournit une vue d'ensemble des effets du changement climatique sur les infrastructures et des principaux domaines dans lesquels les pouvoirs publics peuvent intervenir pour les rendre plus résilientes. Y sont examinées les avancées obtenues et les lacunes à combler dans la planification et le développement des infrastructures tout au long de leur cycle de vie pour intégrer la résilience climatique, ainsi que la question de savoir comment favoriser cette intégration par une approche territoriale. L’analyse porte également sur la manière de renforcer la prise de conscience et la compréhension des risques climatiques et d’en imposer la prise en compte dans toutes les décisions de financement et d'investissement, à l’aide de normes et d’instruments financiers qui intègrent l'adaptation et la résilience climatiques. Les solutions fondées sur la nature occupent une place particulière dans le rapport, qui donne des pistes pour en tirer parti efficacement, au service de la résilience climatique. Il est également reconnu que le développement économique des pays en développement suppose d’accorder une attention mondiale aux besoins qui leur sont propres ainsi que de renforcer le soutien et les partenariats internationaux. Ces travaux apportent des éléments utiles sur l’action à mener et plaident pour que les responsables de l’élaboration des politiques nationales et infranationales adoptent une approche de la résilience fondée sur une gouvernance pluri-niveaux, en travaillant avec les propriétaires et les exploitants d'infrastructures pour soutenir la prise de décision.

This policy paper presents the results of a survey jointly conducted by the OECD, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the European Committee of the Regions on how to localise the SDGs in a changing international landscape marked by disasters and shocks. Findings show declining standards of living in many cities and regions, an increasing relevance of affordable and clean energy due to high energy prices and a growing importance of food security following disruptions in global food supply chains. Moving forward, the paper presents possible strategies to further leverage the SDGs to design sustainable urban and regional development policies. It outlines pathways to counter high price levels and promote decarbonisation in production and consumption. Furthermore, it offers ways to promote sustainable food systems and reduce food waste through a circular economy approach and the integration of food policy into urban development strategies.

Innovation is broader than science and technology, yet often statistics and government programmes narrowly focus on this type of innovation. In rural places, this is particularly relevant as not all firms have the capacity to be competitive in high-tech innovation. With around one in five Canadians living in Canada’s rural regions, better understanding how to promote broader notions of innovation for rural places by increasing entrepreneurship, including for women, advancing the green transition, and improving the provision of services is critical to boost rural productivity, and increase well-being standards. The report sets the scene for rural innovation in Canada, explores the policy and governance environment for key regional innovation initiatives, and includes a special topic chapter on green innovation in rural regions of Canada.

What are the structural barriers to women's empowerment and inclusive development in Southeast Asia? Building on data from the fifth edition of the SIGI, the SIGI 2024 Regional Report for Southeast Asia: Time to Care provides new evidence-based analysis on the progress and setbacks in eliminating the root causes of gender inequality in 11 countries of the region. It underscores how multiple personal status laws perpetuate gender-based legal discrimination. The analysis also shows that social norms governing gender roles and responsibilities worsened between 2014 and 2022, particularly affecting women’s educational and economic rights. The report explores a critical policy area for the region, the care economy. Stressing the gendered, informal, and unpaid dimensions of care, it draws on social, demographic, educational and economic evidence to forecast a growing demand for care services in Southeast Asian countries. The report advocates for the strategic development of formal care systems as a unique opportunity to accelerate women's economic empowerment, build inclusive societies and strengthen the region's resilience to external shocks – including those induced by climate change. To dismantle the barriers that prevent the emergence and expansion of such a formal care economy, it provides concrete recommendations to policy makers and other stakeholders.

Data on online job postings represents an important source of information for local labour markets. Many countries lack statistics on labour demand that are sufficiently up-to-date and disaggregated across regions, sectors and occupations. Web-scraped data from online job postings can provide further insights on the trends in labour demand and the skills needed across regions, sectors and occupations. This paper assesses the comparability and validity between Lightcast and other data sources for Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden, for the years 2019 to 2022 across regions, sectors and occupations. It concludes with some recommendations for labour market analysts that want to use data on online job postings for assessing labour demand trends.

This paper presents the first international assessment of the Lightcast vacancy data representativeness based on benchmarking against officially reported vacancy data in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis compares distributions in the Lightcast data versus official data across large (TL2) regions, industrial sectors and occupational categories. The analysis shows differences in representativeness across countries and on the three dimensions considered. In general, regional representativeness is considerably better than both occupational and sectoral representativeness.