Andrew Mitchell, The UK’s international development minister has played down the prospects of imposing a levy on frequent flyers to help fund the rescue and rehabilitation of poor countries stricken by climate disaster.
Available data shows that a small charge on airline tickets is one of several ideas floated by developing countries to provide cash for the loss and damage fund. The fund was set up at the Cop28 UN climate summit but is grossly under-resourced, with only about $700m having been pledged so far.
The needs of developing countries are likely to reach hundreds of billions a year, and this is unlikely to be met only from the public purses of developed countries, so most countries agree that new sources of funding must be found.
An airline levy is said to be one of the frontrunners, but Mitchell indicated it could struggle to gain support from the British government. He told the Guardian at Cop28 that this was not an official position but his own view. However, Rishi Sunak has previously acted to reduce air passenger duty in the UK, so it would be little surprise if he vetoed other levies on flying.
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Recall that the frequent flyer levy was proposed last year by the V20 group of the world’s most vulnerable countries, and has broad support among many developed and developing countries. Eamon Ryan, the Irish environment minister who is charged with examining innovative sources of finance for the EU, said: “There are various principles behind it that make sense: ‘polluter pays’ is a basic principle, and there’s equity to it. It’s the wealthier people in the world who fly.”
He said that the tax need not be large: a small levy on each of the hundreds of millions of international flight tickets sold each year would raise billions, and the EU was already looking at the issue of greenhouse gas emissions from aviation. “It doesn’t have to be punitive,” he told the Guardian in a separate interview at the climate conference.
He explained that other innovative sources of finance under consideration include a possible carbon levy on shipping. Steps have already been taken at the International Maritime Organization to put this into practice, after a softening this year of previously strong opposition from the shipping industry and some countries with large fleets.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
