When G20 finance ministers gather in Rio de Janeiro this week, Brazil and France have a chance to put these powerful countries on track to deliver a global wealth tax that could raise over $680 billion per year in the fight to tackle poverty and the climate crisis. Both countries have been vocal supporters of taxing the super-rich to fund international development and climate action.  

In April, finance ministers Fernando Haddad (Brazil) and Bruno Le Maire (France) announced their intent to tax the wealth of billionaires by at least two percent annually, prompting ministers from Germany, South Africa and Spain to back the proposal. As the current host of the G20, Brazil commissioned an investigation into the feasibility of this global wealth tax – and the results were published by French economist Gabriel Zucman in June, generating further momentum in efforts to fill the funding gap for climate and development.  

Zucman’s findings show that a global wealth tax on the super-rich – billionaires and people with assets worth more than $100 million – could be enforced successfully even if all countries did not adopt it. It is also a popular measure: more than two-thirds of people across seventeen G20 countries show support for making the super-rich pay higher taxes as a means of funding major improvements to our economy and lifestyles.  

This isn’t surprising. Ensuring that billionaires are properly taxed could deliver significant, tangible benefits in people’s lives and go some way to addressing the systemic injustices and inequality reflected by the climate crisis and poverty. 

The world needs a new global deal on climate and development finance

An ambitious global wealth tax, together with higher and permanent tax on oil corporations and extraction, would provide hundreds of billions of dollars/euros each year to properly fund scaling up renewable energy, rolling out heat pumps and insulation programmes to lower the cost of heating or cooling our homes, new public transport links, future-proof jobs and much more – helping communities to thrive.  

It would also end more than a decade of broken promises by G20 states, ensuring that some of the world’s wealthiest countries have enough money in their national coffers to provide adequate finance to pay for those suffering the consequences of climate impacts now. Helping the poorest communities prepare for unnatural disasters like increased wildfires, flooding and sea level rise, and ensuring people can rebuild their homes, infrastructure and places of work when preventative measures are not an option. 

Power to communities

A global wealth tax is a moral imperative. By implementing a fairer system of taxation, the G20 could accelerate a just transition to a low-carbon economy, cutting dangerous carbon emissions and boosting living standards and energy access at great scale, while also tackling deep-rooted injustice. Delivering finance for community-oriented renewable energy projects across Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific would put power back in the hands of communities that continue to suffer from the violent legacy of colonialism and extractive profiteering. 

For this to be achieved France, and other wealthy nations in the G20 like Germany and the UK, must be willing to make concessions and assume historical responsibility for exploiting fossil fuel extraction in the economically poorer countries whose citizens are experiencing the worst consequences of the climate crisis. The emerging French government must deliver concrete plans to redirect its fortune and tax its billionaires towards a renewable energy-powered planet. 

Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation

It is incumbent on both Brazil and France to seize the opportunity presented by growing support to deliver a global wealth tax at the meeting of powerful finance ministers this week. Both countries must do everything they can to build trust and political will around the crucial proposal. But this will be a challenge if they undermine their stance on the international stage with contrasting domestic policy, something both governments are guilty of. 

Brazil has been pushing for new oil projects, including in the Amazon and is gearing up to become the fourth-largest oil producer in the world. France, despite being fined by the European Commission, is still not on track to meet its domestic renewable energy targets and announced in February a two billion-euro cut to the budget allocated for environmental and energy transition programmes. It is high time for both countries to stop the smoke and mirrors approach to international diplomacy, by aligning their commitments at national and international levels. 

Leaders’ summit

This week, ministers Haddad and Le Maire have a responsibility to rally their G20 counterparts around the wealth tax proposal and send a strong and unified signal to heads of state and governments to take concrete action that delivers a global wealth tax on billionaires when they meet in November. 

The stakes are high. The vast scale of global inequality means that nearly one in eleven people around the world live below the poverty line according the World Bank. In addition, this is set to be yet another record-breaking year for climate impacts, in a critical decade to prevent global heating from tipping over the 1.5°C threshold – a limit beyond which the ability of impacted communities to survive and thrive will be put at intolerable risk. We need to see vast quantities of finance mobilised to scale up renewable energy at the speed needed, and billionaires and multi-millionaires need to be forced to pay up.  

We’re all rooting for this one to work – it can take us a long way.

The post A global wealth tax is needed to help fund a just green transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Veteran climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana is in contention to be France’s new prime minister, with three left-wing parties backing her as a compromise candidate following inconclusive legislative elections. But infighting among the leftist political coalition that won the most seats means she has yet to be confirmed as its official choice.

France’s Green Party (EELV), Socialist Party (PS) and Communist Party (PCF) have proposed Tubiana – a key figure in securing the Paris Agreement on climate change – for the leadership role, representing the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition of left-wing parties. She has no formal political affiliation.

The head of the PS, Olivier Faure, said Tubiana “completely corresponds to what we are promoting”, praising her as the “architect of COP21 [where the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015], commissioner for the climate convention, economist and diplomat engaged in both the environmental and social fields”.

But the biggest member of the NFP alliance, hard-left party France Unbowed (La France insoumise, LFI), is opposed to Tubiana getting the job, as they fear she is too close to the current President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist Renaissance party. “If this is the profile our partners are working on, I’ll fall off my chair,” said LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on Tuesday, adding the suggestion was “not serious”.

In the July 7 elections, which resulted in a surprise defeat for the far right, no block won a majority of seats in the French legislature, known as the National Assembly. Of the 577 seats, the NFP left-wing alliance won 182, President Macron’s centrist party 168 and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) 143.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, although he will lead a caretaker government with a limited mandate until a new government is named.

The choice of the new prime minister is ultimately up to President Macron, but in order to govern, the PM must have the support of a majority of National Assembly deputies.

The left-wing parties have been searching for a joint candidate and, after the LFI’s suggestion of Huguette Bello was rejected by the Socialists, Tubiana’s name was put forward. Faure said Tubiana had been consulted before the suggestion was made.

UK court ruling provides ammo for anti-fossil fuel lawyers worldwide

Tubiana, he said, is “someone who has strong convictions, who has never compromised. She has always been on that side [the left], she has never deviated. This is a demonstration of her ability to stand her ground.”

But according to French newspaper Le Monde, the LFI suspects she is too close to Macron. He twice offered her the job of ecological transition minister, which she declined, and she recently co-signed an editorial calling for the the left-wing block to reach out to Macron’s centrist party in order to govern.

Climate pedigree

Tubiana started out at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research before setting up and leading an NGO working on food security and the global environment called Solagral through the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1997, then French President Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party appointed her as his environmental advisor until he stepped down in 2022.

Tubiana next founded an influential French think-tank called the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) before re-entering government as France’s lead negotiator in the run up to COP21, at which the landmark Paris Agreement was signed.

Since then, she has been an official United Nations champion on climate action, as well as president and CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), which funds green think-tanks and media outlets including Climate Home News.

Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation

In these roles, she has pushed for governments at UN climate summits to agree to phase out fossil fuels, and called carbon capture and storage a false solution to the fossil fuel industries’ emissions.

In 2018, Macron appointed her as a member of France’s official climate advisory body, the High Council on Climate Change.

The ECF has recently worked alongside the French and Kenyan governments looking into global green taxes that could fund climate action.

Laurence Tubiana (left) celebrates the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 (credit: IISD.ca/Kiara Worth)

Environmental lawyer Arnaud Gossement said Tubiana’s appointment as France’s prime minister would be “a really good idea” as she is “a recognised climate specialist”.

Florence Faucher, professor of political science at French university Sciences Po, told Climate Home that Tubiana’s appointment “would certainly be interesting” but “I really doubt it [will happen]”.

The leftist coalition has said it hopes to find agreement on a candidate soon, with the new National Assembly set to meet for the first time on Thursday. One way the matter could be settled is by holding a vote among the new left-wing deputies.

On Wednesday morning, EELV deputy Sandrine Rousseau told French TV: “The discussions are not over – we will find a solution.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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Europe’s first comprehensive climate risk assessment, published in May, sent a clear and unequivocal message: climate risks facing Europe have reached a critical level and urgently require decisive actions from European policymakers.  

Yet the recent EU parliamentary elections – which delivered significant gains for Europe’s far-right and dealt a blow to its green parties – alongside a recently leaked list of EU Council priorities for the next five years, indicate a marked U-turn in the EU’s commitment to climate action.  

The EU has faced a dramatically changed geopolitical situation over the past few years, marked by the upsurge of far-right political forces in several member states, growing trade-tensions with China, and a humanitarian disaster and heightened energy security risk caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

Against this backdrop, EU policymakers have had to make tough decisions on strengthening security in Europe, diverting their attention to defense, security and migration issues, although this has come at the expense of the EU’s much flagged international climate leadership and green agenda.  

IEA calls for next national climate plans to target coal phase-down

We argue that the EU should stay the course on climate action. Despite geopolitical turns and a backlash from some industries over legislation brought on by the Green Deal, European policymakers have a responsibility to follow through on climate commitments – and thereby avoid the tremendous risks that face us if they do not. 

Exacerbating geopolitical risks 

Protests have included those by European farmers against sustainability provisions in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Recently, the EU Council only just managed to approve the highly anticipated, but embattled Nature Restoration Law, thanks to a rare display of political defiance by the Austrian environment minister.  

The law provides critical policy levers for improving Europe’s much degraded ecosystems, strengthening their resilience towards climate change. Hence this vote was critical, although it may still face a legal challenge.  

Despite dilution, officials say new nature law can restore EU carbon sinks

There is ample irony in the notion that political efforts and financial resources should be diverted to enhance Europe’s defence and security capabilities and strengthen the EU’s external borders from human migration. Climate change is certain to exacerbate the impacts and risks from geopolitical conflicts and wars and will be the mega-driver of migration over the coming years. 

And while legislation that requires businesses to take action on climate change and biodiversity loss is certainly going to be burdensome for some, these costs pale in comparison with the effects that climate change will have on the European economy.  

Corporate credit rating downgrades due to companies’ exposure to climate risks have already accelerated, according to S&P Global. And climate-induced disruptions of supply chains are likely to cost the global economy up to $25 trillion over the next 35 years under the current trajectory. Much of this cost will be borne by businesses. 

Ways to protect Europe 

EU-level policies are currently dangerously inadequate to safeguard European lives and livelihoods from the majority of the potentially catastrophic threats that will loom over Europe in the coming years and decades.  

But there are solutions, if bold action is taken in the following areas: 

• Protect and restore marine and coastal ecosystems by minimising pressures from overfishing, agricultural runoff and other industrial activities to avoid disastrous degradation of marine ecosystems. 
• Conserve and restore Europe’s forests through the recently passed Nature Restoration Law to safeguard Europe’s ecosystems and their many services on which the European economy and wider society heavily depend. 
• Leverage the Common Agricultural Policy to strengthen incentives and policy certainty for transforming and adapting Europe’s agricultural sector to extreme heat and drought. 
• Shore up the preparedness of healthcare systems and resources against the impacts of heat waves on vulnerable populations and outdoor workers, especially in southern Europe.  

• Bolster investments in climate adaptation abroad. This support will also be critical to reduce cascading climate risks that originate beyond Europe’s outer borders.   

With this comprehensive body of scientific evidence and advice at hand, European policymakers must resist the urge to adopt a tunnel-vision approach and focus solely on near-term risks, but rather approach climate change as a systemic threat to European’s economy, society and natural capital.  

The scientific community already has called on policymakers to reverse the current course of retreat from the EU environmental agenda, in an open letter to the EU’s legislative bodies.  

EU warns “delaying tactics” have made plastic treaty deal “very difficult”

The actions taken by the incoming group of elected lawmakers and appointed officials will determine the level of harm and damage European citizens will have to endure over the coming decades. It is critical that European policymakers take the long view.  

The decisions and actions they take today will lock our children’s future onto a path. Only today’s policymakers can make sure that path takes us towards a world that can sustain a functioning social order and human life.  

The post New European Parliament must act on climate change as a systemic threat   appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the closing session of the two-week talks on Thursday evening, many countries expressed their disappointment and frustration at the lack of any outcome on the Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP), noting the urgency of stepping up efforts to curb greenhouse gas pollution this decade.

The co-chairs of the talks said those discussions had not reached any conclusion and would need to resume at the annual climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, unleashing a stream of disgruntled interventions from both developed and developing countries.

Samoa’s lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), emphasised that “we really can’t afford these failures”. “We have failed to show the world that we are responding with the purpose and urgency required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” she said.

Anne Rasmussen of Samoa, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Governments, from Latin America to Africa and Europe, lamented the lack of progress on the MWP because of its central role in keeping warming to the 1.5C temperature ceiling enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

Current policies to cut emissions are forecast to lead to warming of 2.7C, even as the world is already struggling with worsening floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels at global average temperatures around 1.3C higher than pre-industrial times.

Mitigation a taboo topic?

Despite the clear need to act fast, a deep sense of mistrust seeped into talks on the MWP in Bonn, with negotiators disagreeing fundamentally over its direction, according to sources in the room.

Developed countries and some developing ones said that the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), led primarily by Saudi Arabia and China, as well as some members of the African Group, had refused to engage constructively in the discussions.

“The reason is that they fear this would put pressure on them to keep moving away from fossil fuels,” an EU delegate told Climate Home.

Bonn bulletin: Fossil fuel transition left homeless

Bolivia’s Diego Pacheco, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs, rejected that view in the final plenary session, while describing the atmosphere in the MWP talks as “strange and shocking”. He also accused developed countries of trying to bury data showing their emissions will rise rather than fall over the course of this decade.

The EU and Switzerland said it was incomprehensible that a body charged with cutting greenhouse gas emissions had not even been allowed to discuss them.

“Mitigation must not be taboo as a topic,” said Switzerland’s negotiator, adding that otherwise the outcome and credibility of the COP29 summit would be at risk.

Rows over process

Before MWP negotiations broke down in Bonn, its co-facilitators – Kay Harrison of New Zealand and Carlos Fuller of Belize – had made a last-ditch attempt to rescue some semblance of progress.

They produced draft conclusions calling for new inputs ahead of COP29 and an informal note summarising the diverging views aired during the fraught exchanges. For many delegates, the adoption of those documents would have provided a springboard for more meaningful discussions in Baku.

But the LMDC and Arab groups refused to consider this, arguing that the co-facilitators had no mandate to produce them and calling their legitimacy into question – a claim rebutted by the UN climate secretariat, according to observers. Frantic efforts to find common ground ultimately came to nothing.

A session of the Mitigation Work Programme in Bonn. Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Fernanda de Carvalho, climate and energy policy head for green group WWF, said the MWP discussions must advance if the world is to collectively reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 from 2019 levels, as scientists say is needed.

The MWP should be focused on supporting countries to deliver stronger national climate action plans (NDCs) – due by early next year – that set targets through to 2035, she said.

“Instead, we saw [government] Parties diverging way more than converging on hard discussions that never made it beyond process,” she added.

‘Collective amnesia’

Some developing countries, including the Africa Group, pushed back against what they saw as efforts by rich nations to force them to make bigger cuts in emissions while ducking their own responsibilities to move first and provide more finance to help poorer countries adopt clean energy.

Brazil – which will host the COP30 summit in 2025 – said the MWP was the main channel for the talks to be able to find solutions to put into practice the agreement struck at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair way.

But to enable that, “we have to create a safe environment of trust that will leverage it as a cooperative laboratory”, he said, instead of the “courthouse” it has become “where we accuse and judge each other”.

Observers in Bonn pointed to the absence of discussions on implementing the COP28 deal on fossil fuels, which was hailed last December as “historic”.

“It seems like we have collective amnesia,” veteran watcher Alden Meyer, a senior associate at think-tank E3G, told journalists. “We’ve forgotten that we made that agreement. It’s taboo to talk about it in these halls.”

‘Detour on the road to Baku’

After the exchange of views, UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell noted that the Bonn talks had taken “modest steps forward” on issues like the global goal on adaptation, increased transparency of climate action and fixing the rules for a new global carbon market.

“But we took a detour on the road to Baku. Too many issues were left unresolved. Too many items are still on the table,” he added.

The closing plenary of the Bonn Climate Change Conference. Photo: Lucia Vasquez / UNFCCC

Another key area where the talks failed to make much progress was on producing clear options for ministers to negotiate a new post-2025 climate finance goal, as developed countries refused to discuss dollar amounts as demanded by the Africa and Arab groups, among others.

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Developing nations also complained about this in the final session, while others expressed their concern that a separate track of the negotiations on scientific research had failed to address the topic in a rigorous enough manner.

In his closing speech, Stiell reminded countries that “we must uphold the science”, and urged them to accelerate their efforts to find common ground on key issues well ahead of COP29.

The next opportunities to move forward on the new finance goal – expected as the main outcome from the Baku summit – will be a “retreat” of heads of delegations in July followed by a technical meeting in October, including a high-level ministerial dialogue on the issue.

But several observers told Climate Home that highly contentious issues – such as the size of the funding pot and the list of donors – are beyond the remit of negotiators and are unlikely to be resolved until the political heavyweights, including ministers, take them up in Azerbaijan in November.

Rising costs of climate crisis

“Business-as-usual is a recipe for failure, on climate finance, and on many other fronts, in humanity’s climate fight,” Stiell said. “We can’t keep pushing this year’s issues off into the next year. The costs of the climate crisis – for every nation’s people and economy – are only getting worse.”

Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based energy and climate think-tank Power Shift Africa, warned that “multiple factors are setting us up for a terrible shock at COP29″, saying this “ticking disaster threatens to undermine” the NDCs and in turn the 1.5C warming limit.

North Africa’s disappearing nomads: Why my community needs climate finance

In comments posted on X, formerly Twitter, Adow called for justice for those dying from the impacts of climate change such as extreme heat in India and Sudan in recent days, arguing that climate finance remains “a vital part in securing a safe and secure future for us all”.

But, he said, Bonn did not deliver a beacon of hope for vulnerable people. “Developing countries are expected to slay the climate dragon with invisible swords, having gotten zero assurances on the long-term finance they need,” he added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling and Matteo Civillini, editing by Joe Lo)

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The head of the EU’s executive branch Ursula Von Der Leyen announced yesterday that she was nominating Hoekstra to lead the EU’s climate finance work and climate diplomacy in the run-up to Cop28.

But while he has the approval of Von Der Leyen’s European Commission, Hoekstra still has to win over the European Parliament’s environment committee.

Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts

That will be difficult as left-wing members argue that the centre-right Dutchman does not have a good enough climate record.

Analysts and campaigners have expressed similar concerns, arguing that Hoekstra has not expressed interest in climate change and that his hardline fiscal conservatism is likely to obstruct climate finance to the developing world.

Fiscal hawk

In Europe, Hoekstra is best known for opposing wealthier north European nations like the Netherlands lending money to poorer southern European countries.

In March 2020, Portugese prime minister António Costa branded Hoekstra “repugnant” and “senseless” after he called for the EU to investigate why some countries did not have enough savings to deal with the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Developing countries call for $100 billion loss and damage target

If he is confirmed, Hoekstra will lead the EU’s negotiations at Cop28 on the new fund for the loss and damage caused by climate change and on other climate finance issues.

“I think the parallel between intra-EU solidarity and international solidarity is an obvious one,” said Dutch E3G analyst Pieter De Pous,”I’m sure he’s going to get a lot of questions on that.”

Domestic disinterest

Hoekstra’s domestic climate record has also been criticised, with Greenpeace EU campaigner Silvia Pastorelli saying it “doesn’t inspire much confidence”.

After leaving university, Hoekstra spent three years working for the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell in various junior positions.

Much later, as finance minister, he bailed out the airline KLM without putting substantial green conditions on the money.

Kenyan president William Ruto courts logging controversy

Pastorelli accused him of having “led the attack in government against rules to cut nitrogen pollution”.

These rules provoked fierce protests from farmers, who De Pous said are the traditional voters of Hoekstra’s centre-right party.

Partly as a result of this pushback, Hoekstra’s party has sunk in the polls and so, with elections scheduled for November, his domestic political prospects have sunk.

Dutch election

Since 2019, the EU’s climate work has been led by Dutch politician Frans Timmermans.

Last month, he announced he was stepping down from that role to campaign to be prime minister in the Netherlands’ November elections.

The Dutch government chose Hoekstra to replace him and, after an interview, Von Der Leyen accepted their choice.

If approved, Hoekstra will lead on climate action “under the guidance” of Slovakian commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.

Parliament hearing key

Hoekstra will soon have a hearing with the European parliament’s environment committee where he will be grilled on his record and suitability for the job.

To get approval, Hoekstra needs a two-thirds majority of the committee’s 87 members.

But his and Von Der Leyen’s centre-right European Peoples Party group only has a quarter of these members.

Nature fund launched but financing questions remain

Members from other groups have already expressed scepticism. Centrist French member Pascal Canfin said that his confirmation was “not a done deal” and “he will have to prove that he is the right man”.

Left-wing Dutch member Mohammed Chamim told Euractiv: “I was not very enthusiastic upon hearing about Hoekstra’s nomination. He has never shown any interest or ambition regarding climate policy before.”

The date of the hearing has not yet been set. If rejected by the European parliament, the Dutch government will have to nominate another candidate.

Dutch media has suggested that Centrist Sigrid Kaag may be chosen. De Pous said the former profesional diplomat be “more qualified” because of her international experience.

The post EU nominates Wopke Hoekstra as top climate diplomat appeared first on Climate Home News.