As political leaders gathered in Heiligendamm in northern Germany this June and before that at the OECD in Paris in May, the concern on everyone’s minds was the future shape of the global economy.

Announcements about enlarging the OECD’s membership and strengthening co-operation with other countries took much of the limelight at this year’s annual ministerial meeting. Below is an extract on enlargement from the Chair’s summary, followed by some selected highlights of the meeting.

Higher education cannot escape major and sometimes difficult change, and OECD governments were determined to lead those changes, rather than be driven by them. This was how Marietta Giannakou, minister of national education and religious affairs of Greece, wrapped up her conclusions as chair of the 2006 Education Ministers’ Meeting.

As the ocean covers three quarters of the surface of the earth, little wonder people see it as a possible source of freshwater. That basically means desalinating it to make it at least clean enough for agriculture and even good enough to drink. How does it work? Distillation is the cheap option, responsible for most desalinised water, but a newer filtering process using membranes, called reverse osmosis, now accounts for nearly half the world’s capacity to turn ocean into freshwater.

Should water-scarce countries import water-intensive products and cultivate less water-intensive ones? After all, since all goods contain a certain amount of water in their production, exporting farm produce is rather like exporting water, albeit in virtual form. A thousand litres of water may be needed to produce a kilo of wheat, but five to ten times more is needed for a kilo of meat.

New scientific research centres are a fairly common event these days, but in January 2003 a facility with a difference will see the light of day in Amman, Jordan. The international backers of the new research centre, called SESAME, are determined that scientific collaboration will help open the door to greater co-operation in the Middle East.

Israel has signed up to the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, which calls for foreign investors to be treated no less favourably than domestic enterprises. The declaration also promotes voluntary standards of business conduct through the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Adherence to the declaration will enable Israel to share experiences with the 30 OECD members and other non-OECD signatories, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia.