Mia Mottley a prominent developing-world leader on the issue of climate change, has called for global taxation of financial services, oil and gas and shipping industries to help pay for poorer countries’ efforts to cope with global warming.
The Barbados Prime Minister was speaking at the UN’s Cop28 climate conference in Dubai. Topics included how developing countries could find the trillions of dollars that experts say they will need to adapt to climate change, reduce its future impact and make good losses and damage caused by climate-related disasters such as floods, forest fires and heatwaves.
Mottley praised last week’s official launch of a loss and damage fund at Cop28, to which several governments, including Germany and summit host the United Arab Emirates, have pledged hundreds of millions, but she warned that the total so far is way short of what is needed.
A tax on global financial services, set at 0.1 per cent, could raise $420 billion for loss and damage costs, she insisted, “not $720 million where we are today.”
“If we took 5 per cent of oil and gas profits last year — oil and gas profits were $4 trillion — that would give us $200bn, “ Mottley said. “If we had a 1 per cent tax on the value of shipping — last year, the value of that was $7tn — that would give us $70bn.”
Climate activists chimed in by staging a protest at the venue where tens of thousands of political leaders, economists, business heads, philanthropists and others gathered for the two-week conference.
“Billions, not millions! Fill the fund now!” they chanted.
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