Landscape of carbon prices in 2017

Attention is growing to the need to tackle climate and social issues jointly. Indeed, both climate change and climate policies affect social issues such as poverty, inequality, or access to healthcare. A well-known example is that of carbon pricing, a climate policy which can have regressive effects in some contexts. As another example, climate change induced heatwaves are disproportionately likely to impact poorer individuals who typically have more constrained access to healthcare, physical jobs in outdoor conditions, and through indirectly driving up food prices. To foster an effective and sustainable transition to low-carbon and resilient economies, policymakers need to ensure individuals do not lose more from climate policies than they already lose from the effects of climate change, but instead benefit from them.

Tense climate negotiations just ended in Bonn with limited progress on finance and the revised climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. During the opening ceremony of the sixtieth sessions of the subsidiary bodies (SB 60) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell –Executive Secretary– highlighted the need to “make serious progress on finance, the great enabler of climate action” and to aim for bolder, broader and inclusive third generation Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) that “can serve as blueprints to propel economies and societies forward and drive more resilience”.

Last month, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Simon Stiell, stressed how important this and next year are for the achievement of the Paris Agreement and called for “a quantum leap in climate finance” ahead of the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund. Indeed, with emissions required to peak before 2025, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing to keep 1.5°C within reach. More and better finance is urgently needed. Carbon pricing policies and their revenues are part of the tools available that can help fill the climate finance gap.