The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, spoke on Monday about how global taxes on the financial services, oil and gas, and shipping industries could raise hundreds of billions for poor countries to adapt to and cope with global warming.
Challenges Facing Poor Countries
The Prime Minister of Barbados emphasized how poor countries, with the help of wealthier nations and international financing, bear the enormous costs of adapting to climate change, mitigating its future impacts, and coping with losses and damages caused by climate disasters such as floods, wildfires, and heatwaves that are sweeping through communities.
Global Financing for Climate Change
The UN climate summit known as COP28 focused on how developing countries could be supported in obtaining amounts reaching trillions of dollars that experts say they will need to adapt to climate change.
“Perhaps this is the greatest progress we have seen in the past 12 months in the financing realm,” Mottley said to reporters regarding commitments to finance the transition to clean energy, adapting to climate change, and responding to extreme weather events. “But we are not where we need to be yet.”
World Bank’s Climate Finance Goals
The World Bank has identified five target areas for climate finance. The bank wants to reduce methane emissions from waste management and agriculture; help Africa access more environmentally friendly energy; support “voluntary” carbon markets such as forestry projects; and allow developing countries impacted by natural disasters to suspend debt repayments.
Above all, the multilateral development bank aims to enhance its role in climate finance in the short term.
Developing Countries Coping with Climate Disasters
Climate talks highlight a key issue: developing countries are the most vulnerable to climate disasters, yet they are least responsible for global warming compared to industrialized nations, which have been emitting carbon into the atmosphere for generations as their wealth has increased – and this excess greenhouse gas in the air traps heat close to the Earth.
Small island nations have pushed for climate finance in negotiations, stating that it is essential for nations to be able to adapt to rising sea levels approaching their territories.
Cedric Schuster, Minister of Natural Resources in Samoa, expressed optimism that climate talks could make progress on the financing issue, but he urged countries that they are still far from the level they need to be at.
Funding Needed to Combat Climate Change
Mottley lauded the official launch of the “Loss and Damage” fund at COP28, which organizers say has already attracted amounts up to $720 million, but she noted it is still far from the required $420 billion.
Mottley stated that a global financial services tax of 0.1 percent could raise $420 billion for her, “not $720 million as is the case today.”
Mottley said, “If we take 5 percent of last year’s profits from oil and gas – which were $4 trillion – that would give us $200 billion. If we had a 1 percent tax on the value of shipping – which was valued at $7 trillion last year – that would give us $70 billion.”
The G20, a group of major developing and industrialized nations responsible for four-fifths of greenhouse gas emissions, stated in New Delhi earlier this year that developing countries would need $5.9 trillion by 2030 to meet their climate goals. They say an additional $4 trillion must be secured if they are to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Secretary-General of the Vulnerable Group of Countries exposed to climate change stated he does not believe those funds will be pledged anytime soon.
He said
Mohamed Nasheed, who was also the former President of the Maldives: “We are trapped in the millions. So, I can’t see it reaching the trillions.”
The United States, the richest country in the world, has never adopted a global tax, and Republicans in the U.S. Congress are hesitant to embrace new taxes and are particularly reluctant to fund various multilateral institutions and programs.
Lord Nicholas Stern, co-chair of a panel of experts looking into the cost of financing climate change mitigation: “Imposing an international tax is not easy. It requires agreement among countries to impose those taxes.”
With the associated press
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