Tax Polluters For Global Warming Funds - UN Official
CHINA: November 10, 2008
BEIJING - The global financial gloom will make citizens of rich nations
reluctant to use their taxes to fight global warming and any plan to help
poor nations should make the polluters pay, a top UN climate official said.
His warning cast doubt on a Chinese proposal to ask the world's rich nations
to devote up to 1 percent of their total economic worth to pay for cleaner
expansion in the poor world.
"It is undeniable that the financial crisis will have an impact on the
climate change negotiations," said Yvo de Boer, who heads the UN Climate
Change Secretariat.
More than 190 nations have agreed to seek a new UN treaty by the end of 2009
to try to cut greenhouse gases from human activity and slow rising
temperatures bringing more heatwaves, droughts, more powerful storms and
rising sea levels.
"If we go to citizens under the current circumstances...and say 'I'm
increasing your tax burden in order to pay for climate policy', that might
not go down very well," he told Reuters.
The solution, he said, was to directly target the polluters as a source of
revenue to help developing countries.
Speaking ahead of a major conference on climate technology transfer in
Beijing, de Boer warned the rich world that under a roadmap for a climate
deal to replace the current Kyoto Protocol, they had to create revenue to
help developing nations fund greener growth.
The plan agreed in Bali last year committed poor countries to curbing
emissions if rich governments helped with technology so they did not have to
sacrifice economic growth.
De Boer said the developed world has focused on commitments to cut emissions
as part of the pact to be finalised at a high-level meeting in Copenhagen
next year but not paid sufficient attention to technology transfer.
He praised China's leadership in negotiations over recent years, and its
effort to firm up demands for technology.
"This is a great opportunity for the country that has put so much emphasis
on this issue to really focus the debate on how technology transfer can be
part of the long-term climate change response...(and) create the
institutional arrangements that will finally make this rather elusive
concept find a practical base."
NEW IMPETUS
De Boer said while the financial crisis threatened global efforts to tackle
global warming it could also give impetus to talks aimed at forging a new
climate-change pact.
The crisis has also highlighted the benefits of a trading system, currently
favoured by most rich nations, that sets pollution limits but allows
companies to buy and sell quotas to meet their targets.
The auction of credits to pollute could fund cleaner development in poor
nations, he said.
"This offers the opportunity to generate resources for international
co-operation from within the climate change regime...without having to go to
finance ministers them to raise income taxes or other taxes to generate that
revenue."
A flat carbon tax would be more efficient than the current system, but far
more complicated to implement, he said.
(Editing by Valerie Lee)
Story by Emma Graham-Harrison
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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