8 June 2011 | Ethan Nechin
Climate Change, Energy, Finance/insurance, Forestry and wood products, Legislation

 

Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN, called for tax on international financial transactions at the Bonn summit, yesterday (June 7).  This is to help fund $100 billion of climate change aid for developing countries.

“Instead of waiting we should produce new concrete ways of funding,” Solon said.

According to the planned tax, countries could opt to charge a 0.01 per cent tax on any transaction coming in from abroad. This tax would go into projects of renewable energy, green technology as well as help fight deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.

Solon complained that most of the $30 billion “fast-start” finance pledged by developed nations at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 had not come through. The initial funds were supposed to be distributed by 2012 with the rest being distributed by 2020.

Complaints from developing countries and NGO’s that funds had not been transferred have been growing. Claire Parker, senior policy advisor at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said: "The Green Climate Change Fund needs to receive the funds and be in a position to disburse them as soon as possible."

According to experts, the proposed tax could see a “real change” in the way funds are created.

Larry Summers, a former director of President Obama’s National Economic Council, said that an international financial transactions tax could generate $27 billion a year.

Mr. Solon also called for a renewal of the Kyoto Protocol as he said that there is no time to renegotiate another legally binding document. The agreement ends in 2012 and officials say that a post Kyoto gap will be “unavoidable”.

He said: “We cannot come out of South Africa with the targets we have now, as the UN Environment Programme has shown they will lead us to 4C of global warming by 2050. We must have targets that limit temperature rise to between 1C and 1.5C to preserve life.”

Solon also said that his country will oppose any UN talks that advocate use of “fictitious” carbon markets to help protect forests.  

183 countries are participating in the two-week Bonn summit ahead of COP17 to be held in Durban in December.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said in the opening speech: “Governments lit a beacon in Cancún towards a low-emissions world which is resilient to climate change.”

“Now, more than ever, it is critical that all efforts are mobilised towards living up to this commitment,” she added.  

 

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