Standards

WHAT'S NEXT?: Improving standards are likely to be driven more by business and technological improvement than governments in the future. The latter will be under severe pressure to cut bureaucracy, speed policy making and improve their nation's productivity performance.

• [New] In the short term, Nando's has signed the Better Chicken Commitment, which means that it pledges to fully implement higher standards of welfare for chickens in its supply chain by 2026.
• [New] The world risks the possible loss of the best instrument of dispute settlement in the multilateral system, and a crucial one for guaranteeing that countries abide by WTO rules.
• [New] Regulators should require a system of regular stress testing by 2024 for energy, water, digital, road and rail infrastructure operators, to ensure that infrastructure operators' systems and decision-making can credibly meet resilience standards for infrastructure services.
• A major change to guidance for building rules in England will require the addition of large and well-equipped accessible toilet facilities to be designed and built into new public buildings, from next year.
• In the next few years, strategic investments in IT solutions and services in the healthcare and public safety sectors will pave the way for high-quality health and safety standards globally.
• Farming throughout the UK has high standards of safety and welfare with an ambition to be net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
• Biden's plan outlines specific and aggressive US targets, including achieving an emissions-free power sector by 2035 and upgrading 4 million buildings over four years to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency.
• The United Nations Development Program predicts a decline in global human development - education, health, and living standards - for the first time in 30 years.
• Improving living standards of consumers in emerging economies, including India and China, have been creating numerous opportunities for the regional market.
• EPA is amending carbon dioxide standards for model years 2021 and later, and NHTSA is amending fuel economy standards for model year 2021 and setting new fuel economy standards for model years 2022-2026.
• The convenience retail market in the UK will grow 8% to £44.7bn in 2020 - up from 2.6% growth last year - as the sector benefits from changing shopper behaviour during the coronavirus outbreak.
• European Union regulators are working this year to create a set of universal green bond standards that will be vital to the maturation of a market that to date has been constrained by a lack of legal standards about what makes a bond green.
• The strength of the global economic recovery will depend in part on how quickly countries are able to open up for economic activity safely, and in particular how effectively societies comply with social distancing rules.
• The use of digital services offered by Europe's largest banks has accelerated due to social distancing rules, according to Moody's, but the ratings agency warns that heightened adoption of digital services will require further investments in IT infrastructure and may increase cyber risk.
• With improving living standards and the global economy expected to almost double over the next three decades, energy intensity - the amount of energy used per unit of GDP - will likely rise.
• The coronavirus outbreak is going to have a lasting impact on consumer behavior, meaning there's a higher chance that oil demand will peak this decade.
• A dramatic fall in living standards and higher unemployment expected as a result of the coronavirus crisis could trigger a protest vote, which would be an unprecedented setback for Putin.
• In what can be viewed as a successor to Made in China 2025, Beijing will soon release China Standards 2035, a 15-year blueprint laying out its plan to set the global standards for the next generation of technologies.
• Canada's ACA aims to achieve a barrier free nation by 2040 and empowers a number of regulatory bodies to create legal requirements (standards) around accessibility at the federal level.
• Ships based in China, for instance, could be among the first to resume departures, if only because China has started relaxing social distancing rules ahead of other countries.
• With 5G's rollout expected to gain pace in coming years, the race to dominate standards and control security and data traffic underpins much of the current high-tech rivalry between the United States and China.

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Last updated: 06 August 2020