...Much of the air at COP15 was sucked up by discussions on closing that financial gap. They centered around three tense issues:
1) How much money will the world commit, in total, to biodiversity conservation each year?
2) How much of that money will wealthy nations give to developing countries?
3) Who will manage and distribute the money?
While the Climate Home News didn't credit Earth Track in it's article, our analysis of environmentally harmful subsidies played a central role in CHN's discussion of both the challenges to, and potential from, EHS reform during the COP15 deliberations. Excerpt below:
"With one week left to strike a “once-in-a-generation” deal to protect nature in Montreal, Canada, governments are split over how to stop subsidising harmful activities like unsustainable fisheries and agriculture.
Negotiators have proposed targets to protect roughly one-third of the planet as part of UN talks aimed at striking a global deal to reverse the destruction of nature...
As well as setting out conservation goals, the draft text proposes tripling the amount of international finance by 2030, pledging $200bn annually to increase global biodiversity. This would include increasing contributions from developed economies to developing economies to at least $20bn per year by 2025, and $30bn per year by 2030.
El estudio, publicado por The B Team y Business for Nature, analiza los conocidos como subsidios ambientalmente dañinos (EHS, por sus siglas en inglés), enmarcados en los programas gubernamentales de distintos países. Unas ayudas dirigidas, en definitiva, a provocar daños en el medioambiente. Desde la exención de impuestos para producir carne en el Amazonas hasta el apoyo a la extracción desmedida de agua en Oriente Medio.
Governments worldwide are spending at least $1.8tn a year on subsidies in support of heavily polluting industries led by coal, oil, gas and agriculture, according to new research, despite their commitment to climate change targets.
About 2 per cent of global gross domestic product was spent annually on subsidies that encourage unsustainable production or consumption, deplete natural resources and degrade ecosystems, the independent researchers Doug Koplow and Ronald Steenblik concluded.
The world is spending at least $1.8tn (£1.3tn) every year on subsidies driving the annihilation of wildlife and a rise in global heating, according to a new study, prompting warnings that humanity is financing its own extinction.
From tax breaks for beef production in the Amazon to financial support for unsustainable groundwater pumping in the Middle East, billions of pounds of government spending and other subsidies are harming the environment, says the first cross-sector assessment for more than a decade.
