Mobilizing domestic resources for the Agenda 2030 via carbon pricing

Abstract

The 21st century is characterized by an underprovision of basic public goods, such as public health, education, infrastructure, etc., and an overuse of the atmosphere as disposal space for greenhouse gases. Carbon pricing could address both problems simultaneously: a transition from negative carbon prices (fossil fuel subsidies) to positive levels could generate revenues to finance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.Given the scarcity of private sources of finance in many lower income countries, carbon pricing could be a particularly attractive policy option.Our analysis identifies countries where domestic revenues from carbon pricing consistent with the 2°C target could contribute substantially to financing the SDGs.

Five Lessons from COVID-19 for Advancing Climate Change Mitigation

“…These transfers amounted to 28% of median per-capita expenditures of a family of four in Iran in 2011, and lifted millions of households out of poverty (Atansah et al 2017 ). Third, from a perspective of poverty reduction, some countries might be better off investing the proceeds of a carbon price into infrastructure: Jakob et al ( 2015 ) and Franks et al ( 2018 ) demonstrate that removing fossil fuel subsidies would yield sufficient funds to pay for universal access to electricity, water and sanitation for a large set of countries. Fourth, an additional benefit or carbon pricing in economies with large informal sectors is that it is more difficult to evade than labour or income taxes.…”

Pigou in the 21st Century: a tribute on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Economics of Welfare

“…One fundamental objective of every government consists in ensuring that there are sufficient public funds to finance public goods. Pigouvian taxation, with the objective of internalizing the climate externality, would generate substantial public revenues with estimates ranging from 1 to 6% of national GDP (Jakob et al 2016 ; Franks et al 2018 ; Kalkuhl et al 2018 ; IMF 2019a ) and would thus be a part of the national fiscal system. For those governments that have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by the middle of the twenty-first century the additional tax revenues associated with environmental Pigouvian taxes are only temporary.…”

Visitor-Sensing: Involving the Crowd in Cultural Heritage Organizations

“…Indeed, visitors can represent a valuable resource, external to the organization's boundaries, to be leveraged in order to improve the cultural experience offered to the general public, while also increasing the museum's audience. Doing so can exert a positive impact on both the economic and social sustainability of museums [27], thereby generating outcomes that are extremely valuable, especially in the current conditions of chronically scarce financial resources for cultural heritage organizations [56,57], and of great efforts towards Sustainable Development as outlined in the United Nations Agenda 2030 [2,3]. Indeed, the proposed framework could help reach the SDGs proposed by the UN.…”

“…An "Open Innovation in Science" (OIS) approach can help to achieve these aims by leveraging in-bound knowledge flows to generate new scientific knowledge concerning visitors' behavior and preferences, by which museum managers can shape the cultural offerings of their institutions in ways that generate major economic and social impacts. Thus, following an OIS approach, engaging the general public into cultural heritage organizations' activities can contribute to scientific advancements for the benefits of both cultural heritage sites, and the entire society, contributing to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations and outlined in the Agenda 2030 [2,3]. While the benefits of an OIS approach may accrue to cultural heritage organizations in general, the present paper is specifically focused on museums, which represent the majority of cultural heritage sites [4].…”