PARIS — Participants at a Paris summit stopped short Friday of a deal to create a tax on greenhouse gas emissions produced from international shipping, leaving climate NGOs and activists lamenting the lack of ambitious responses to fight climate change and the world’s inequalities brought forward at the meeting.
The two-day gathering of world leaders and finance bosses ended without a major announcement, though organizers did release a promised “road map” aimed at fulfilling French President Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to assess reforms of the international finance system over the next two years.
“We need to be clear that if we don’t change the institutions, the world will remain the same,” Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said. “Those who are rich will stay rich. Those who are poor will remain poor. This is the way it is.”
The idea of a global tax on the greenhouse gas emissions produced from international shipping has been gaining traction and could potentially be adopted at a July meeting of the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency regulating shipping. The money could be directed toward developing countries to help them deal with climate change.
Some experts believe that a tax on shipping alone could raise $100 billion a year, and a strong endorsement of it in Paris would have provided Macron with a symbolic win.
“This is tax-free sector. And there’s no reason why it’s not taxed,” Macron said. But the French president suggested that China and the U.S. were not supporting the idea.
“If China and the U.S. and several key European countries are not on board, then you would put a tax in place that would not have any impact,” he added.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who attended the summit, called the tax “a very constructive suggestion” and said the U.S. would look at it.
It was unclear which countries at the summit supported the proposal, which could be an important step toward getting a heavily emitting industry to pitch in to the cost of fighting climate change. The French presidency said 23 nations backed the initiative.
Shipping accounts for almost 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Maritime Organization. A European Parliament report has warned that share could increase dramatically by 2050.
The gathering had no mandate to make formal decisions, but Macron had pledged to deliver a to-do list that would be accompanied by a progress-tracking tool. A 15-page document released soon after the summit ended relied heavily on calls for action by groups like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others, such as changing the way risk is calculated on projects in the developing world and financing projects with local currency.
Both moves could reduce borrowing costs that are typically much higher for low-income nations that often face massive challenges in adapting to climate change at the same time they’re confronted by poverty and myriad other issues.
