Climate discussions like those we’ve just been seeing at the UN summit in Katowice, Poland tend to focus on working together to deliver existing climate commitments and raising ambition—getting countries to reduce more GHG emissions, faster. But there’s an equally important issue that gets far less attention: ensuring climate action is delivered in a way that doesn’t leave anyone behind, particularly the world’s most vulnerable people.
See Helen Mountford and Molly McGregors’ latest blog post on how carbon pricing can benefit the poor and reduce emissions.
The Arab Gulf States – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE –are highly vulnerable to oil price shocks due to their high economic reliance on oil and gas export revenues. Historically, oil price shocks have been a source of pressure on the Arab Gulf States economies. However, only since mid-2014 have oil prices seemed to pressure on political regimes to consider domestic economic reforms and development of alternative sources of income (i.e. economic diversification).
To avoid long-term negative implications – such as increasing total CO2 emissions and deterioration of air quality associated with increasing downstream petrochemical energy intensive industries, fossil fuel subsidy reforms, enhancing energy efficiency and the use of clean energy technologies are indeed instrumental to tackle such issues. In this article, carbon pricing is proposed as a useful instrument to complement the aforementioned tools.
To address the global development risks posed by climate change, a major technological shift leading to a substantial reduction in the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be necessary. In parallel, the substantial global economic and development distortions - that lead to inequality - do not enable the technological and financial transfers needed for a sustainable and equitable global economy. This brings us to a fundamental question: when climate change only imposes an additional threat of unseen scale, how can we change the economic status-quo?
Statoil has been operating in a market where an external carbon price has existed since the early 1990s. Due to CO2 tax and other regulatory measures the oil and gas industry in Norway has adopted emission-reduction measures corresponding to more than five million tonnes of CO2 per annum since 1996. Consequently, Norwegian oil and gas production is in the global premier division for low GHG emissions and the average amount emitted per unit produced is about half the world average.
Success in addressing climate change will require a shift in investment toward clean infrastructure and technologies. Countries in adopting the Paris Climate Change Agreement recognized this, and now look more and more to the private sector and non-state actors for engagement. With less than three weeks to go before the start of this year’s Latin American and Caribbean Carbon Forum (LACCF 2017), UNFCCC Newsroom sat with James Grabert, Director of the Sustainable Development Mechanisms Programme and lead officer of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action at UN Climate Change, to discuss this year’s event, its importance, and its place in the international response to climate change.
In India, Mahindra & Mahindra became the first Indian company to announce an internal carbon price of USD 10 per ton of carbon emitted. Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (Mahindra), a utility vehicle and farm solutions provider, is the flagship company of the Mahindra Group. It has committed to reduce its carbon intensity by 25% until 2019 against base year 2016 and the investments through the carbon pricing mechanism will help it achieve its goal.
The OECD report Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth released today shows that there need not be a trade-off: combining climate change and pro-growth measures, and in some countries a judicious recycling of carbon tax revenues, can lead to long-term inclusive growth as part of a “decisive transition” to decarbonisation
Over the last year, students have been organizing and lobbying across the country around carbon pricing. While the climate crisis can seem intimidating to the generation that will face its most significant impacts, young leaders are uniting to pass strong policies through the Put A Price On It campaign.
