- The leaders said a global carbon tax is critical to ensuring affordable and accessible finance for climate-positive investments.
- African leaders will use this carbon tax declaration as a negotiating document at the UN climate summit COP28.
African leaders have proposed a global carbon tax where major polluters pay more to help low-income nations finance the rollout of green energy systems. The tax will also prepare these countries for the damaging effects of climate change.
The declaration, signed at the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) in Kenya, calls for a global carbon price on fossil fuel trade, shipping and aviation. It also includes an international financial transaction tax. The leaders called for an almost six-fold increase in renewable energy capacity across the continent, where hundreds of millions of people lack access to energy and clean forms of cooking.
The president of Kenya and ACS host, William Ruto, said it was time for the international community to discuss a carbon tax where all countries contributed. “What we are saying is that we want to pay. We do not want to say, let those guys pay because they are the polluters. We are saying, let’s all pay, and then have a mechanism where we invest these resources and unlock the biggest value on decarbonisation,” he added.
In the declaration, the leaders said a carbon price is vital to ensuring affordable and accessible finance for climate-positive investments at scale. It called for the ringfencing of these resources and decision-making from geopolitical and national interests. The IMF previously said a global carbon price would be among the fastest and most effective ways to cut carbon dioxide emissions globally. However, the idea of a global carbon tax has struggled to gain traction among some countries.
The declaration will be used by African leaders as a negotiating document at the UN climate summit COP28, due to take place in the United Arab Emirates at the end of the year. The event marked the first time the African continent has come together specifically to consider how to tackle the climate crisis, looking at both challenges and solutions.
At the summit, European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen also called on international leaders to cooperate to formulate a global carbon price plan at COP28. African leaders called for an investment of $600bn to meet a renewable energy target of 300GW by 2030, up from the current 56GW. A total of $26 billion in funding and investments was announced for various climate-focused initiatives. The leaders also backed multilateral financial system reforms, arguing that development banks need to increase concessional lending to poorer countries.
The issue of how the World Bank and other multilateral development banks support countries to finance efforts around climate change has become a key battleground in climate discussions. All nations must decarbonise power systems and make additional efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to halt global temperature rises. However, countries in the developing world receive just a fraction of climate finance and investments compared to Western countries.