By Patrick Galey
Global Environment and Science Correspondent
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Ambitious climate policies could reduce extreme poverty in developing countries if governments opted for robust taxes on emitters that were then fairly distributed to help the poor, new research showed.
Authors of the study said the results showed that policymakers were facing a false choice between climate change mitigation and poverty reduction.
Since fossil fuels and agricultural chemicals such as fertilizers are so heavily subsidized, any attempt to remove taxpayer support to these unsustainable practices frequently prompts fears of higher prices for consumers.
Industry lobbyists also argue that cheap sources of energy such as coal have a role to play in expanding access to electricity in developing countries.
Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) used computer models to predict how levels of global poverty might be affected by various interventions aimed at limiting global warming.
They found that the world was on course to have around 350 million people living in extreme policy – i.e. on less than US$1.90 a day – by 2030, far short of the UN goal to eradicate extreme poverty by the end of the decade.
The authors noted that this figure did not factor in the economic disruption caused by the pandemic, or the adverse effects of climate change.