Fair Climate. Green taxes against ecological inequality.

Report on the panel discussion on 20 November 2019

Speakers

Anke Schaffartzik

is Senior Scientist at the Institute for Social Ecology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Research areas include global resource use and international trade, the international division of labor, extractivism as well as social metabolism (the flows of materials and energy between nature and society).

Karlygash Kuralbayeva

is a Lecturer in Economics at the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. Previously she was a teaching fellow at London School of Economics (LSE). Her research interests include macroeconomics, development, climate change economics and environmental economics.

Rodrigo Pizarro (Videointerview)

is professor at the University of Santiago of Chile (USACH). He was the former Head of the Environmental Economics Division of the Ministry of the Environment of Chile (2014-2018), where he designed and implemented the first Environmental Tax in Chile, among other major initiatives.

Margarete Grandner

is Professor for Development Studies and History at the Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna.

Martina Neuwirth

works at the VIDC on international economic and finance policy issues, with a focus on tax.

Author

Martina Neuwirth (VIDC)

Headline Cooperations

The use of natural resources is unequally distributed at a global level. Those who use the least resources, bear most of the effects of excessive resource use, above all the impact of climate change.  Thus, “environmental inequality” might reinforce income inequality as well as gender inequality, within and between countries. Could environmental taxes be a useful instrument to fight environmental inequality and raise much-needed revenues? Which experiences have been made in countries of the Global South?

Anke Schaffartzik called for a radical break with our economic system. Karlygash Kuralbayeva, on the other hand, presented strategies for an orderly transition, especially for resource-rich countries. Rodrigo Pizarro presented in his video statement the green tax reform in Chile. The panel was moderated by Martina Neuwirth from the VIDC. The event began with a short book presentation by Margarete Grandner.

Luana Schäfer of the Paulo Freie Zentrum has written a report ("CO2-Steuern gegen Ungleichheit?", in German) about the event.

The event has been fully recorded. You can access the video about hier.