Climate Change
News
Land grab: How agri-subsidies encourage Irish farmers to cut back on nature
Irish farmers continue to see annual payments penalised for maintaining biodiversity hotspots despite concerns raised by the State over the climate and biodiversity crises.
‘Greta was right’: Trio of reports warns world at risk of squandering green recovery opportunity
Greta Thunberg’s accusation that world leaders are guilty of ‘blah, blah, blah’ in the face of the escalating climate crisis is ‘spot on’, according to a trio of new reports released today, which warn the opportunity provided by the coronavirus crisis to introduce sweeping fossil fuel subsidy reform and ambitious green stimulus packages is being squandered.
Consider a single carbon tax to make net zero work, economists say
Moving the economy to net zero – emitting less carbon dioxide than it consumes – will be messy and expensive unless the government has a radical rethink about how to simplify its approach to taxing greenhouse gas production.
Reports
Debt-for-Climate Swaps: Analysis, Design, and Implementation (IMF)
In light of the links between climate vulnerability and fiscal risks, debt-for-climate swaps, which is a practice of reducing partial debt in exchange for engaging in climate-related investments, is proposed
Ecological Steering with Value-Added Tax and Taxes on Consumption (FOES)
The current design of some taxes sets a number of ecological disincentives – for example, it encourages the consumption of environmentally harmful products and provides little incentive for more sustainable
Monitoring the Climate Impact of Fiscal Policy – Lessons from Tracking the COVID-19 Response (IMF)
This paper takes stock of the contributions made by these various trackers, identifies strengths and weaknesses of their methodologies, and draws lessons for assessing the climate impact of fiscal policy going forward. It finds that: trackers provided useful assessments of the (generally low) level of greenness and raised awareness; trackers’ methodologies, while valid and innovative, varied significantly with some important, if currently largely unavoidable, weaknesses; and the way forward should involve tracking the greenness of entire government budgets, rather than just their response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Policy Briefs
Share of emissions covered by carbon prices is rising, OECD data shows
As part of their efforts to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, countries have increased their use of carbon pricing through taxes or emissions trading systems, with coverage increasing across countries
Carbon border taxes: What are their implications for developing countries?
Although developing countries may gain significantly from global mitigation efforts in the long run, given their greater exposure to climate risks, in the short run they may have little incentive to undertake costly emission reductions. Can the CBAM incentivize them to comply?
Carbon tax, cross-border carbon leakage, and border tax adjustments
This column analyses the effectiveness of carbon taxes and border tax adjustment policies in reducing emissions and shaping firms’ decisions on abatement investment and firm location.
