If average global temperature rises are to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels
(in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement),
climate finance globally will need to increase to about
$9 trillion a year globally by 2030,
up from just under $1.3 trillion in 2021-22.
According to the International Energy Agency, 30 percent of climate finance globally needed
—around $2.7 trillion
—will have to come from the public sector, with the remaining 70 percent coming from the private sector.
This is the scale of the world’s climate finance needs.
However, when viewed in the context of governments’ other spending priorities,
$2.7 trillion in public money is achievable.
In 2022 governments spent $7 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies alone.
The real challenge is more direct: Who pays?
Industries will always pass the tax on to the consumer
—but which consumers, where?
There is also a question of equity and justice:
Why should consumers in developing countries be taxed to pay for a problem they did not create?
It’s possible to create taxes that incorporate such concerns.
Founded in 2006 by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway, and the United Kingdom and hosted by the World Health Organization,
#Unitaid is a successful global health program for low- and middle-income countries
that receives over half its funding from air passenger levies.
The levies
—introduced as low as 1 euro for economy seats on flights within Europe and up to 40 euros for business seats on long-haul flights
—are collected and earmarked for Unitaid by governments in 10 developed and developing countries.
By 2012, the levies were raising between 162 million and 175 million euros per year, totaling 1 billion euros since its creation.
According to an assessment by the French government in 2009,
“The introduction of the levy had no apparent effect on the volume of air traffic passing through French airports nor on the volume of air traffic affecting France.”
But finding examples of similar financing success is hard, especially on a global scale.
Many options have been proposed, such as taxes on shipping, aviation, fossil fuel production or exchange, financial transactions, and extreme wealth,
but only shipping has made serious institutional progress.
Last year, countries in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed on a decarbonization strategy for the shipping industry that depends on the introduction of a global tax.
This would make a tax on shipping, responsible for 3-4 percent of global emissions,
the first global carbon tax.
According to estimates from the World Bank, such a tax could raise $40 billion to $60 billion per year.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/05/1150386
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/03/climate-finance-small-island-states-taxes-adaptation/
Headlines Africa
Chuck Darwin
Diario de México