About

The Global Solidarity Levies Task Force: For People and the Planet is a hub for coalitions of countries to come together to explore how to implement progressive solidarity levies to generate new sources of urgently-needed climate and development finance.

• Co-chairs: Barbados, France and Kenya
• Members: Antigua & Barbuda, Colombia, Marshall Islands, Senegal, and Spain
• Observers: European Commission, IMF, UN

The task force was officially launched at COP28 in Dubai in 2023 by Barbados, France and Kenya.

The task force will focus on fostering political will and creating coalitions of willing countries to advance various options for international solidarity levies, to fund climate and development action.

It will look at options that have the potential to mobilize finance at scale while bringing more climate justice and equity to our current financial system, by ensuring the most polluting industries (fossil fuel extraction, aviation, shipping and financial services) and people contribute to financing the fight against climate change and inequalities.

By 2030, developing countries excluding China must mobilize USD $2.4 trillion of public revenues each year to ensure they remain on track to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Implementing global levies would provide a sustainable and predictable source of revenue to support their transition, and that is why this initiative can play a crucial role in a just transition to net zero.

We must ensure that our global financial system better reflects the current needs of society, rather than those rooted in the mid-20th century when it was first established. Many heavily polluting industries have been historically protected from levies and taxes and haven’t paid their share in our collective work to transition to a net-zero economy. We are providing them with a means and opportunity to do so.

Target sectors could include major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, such as oil and gas companies, heavy industries, aviation, and maritime shipping, as well as the financial sector.

Our solidarity levies won’t increase the cost of living for ordinary citizens or impact
things like household bills. This would be counterproductive to our objective of
supporting those who bear the heaviest burdens of the effects of climate change. We will instead ensure that polluters pay more to tackle climate change, which is a global challenge.

We are not reinventing the wheel and there is precedent for our work. For example, the Unitaid airline levy, where countries from around the world (such as Mali, Mauritius, Chile, Brazil, Korea and France) have been using the proceeds to fill a particular gap in global health spending (paying for a mechanism to squash drug prices). On average, low-income countries that participate in this airline levy scheme receive 10 times more than what they pay into it. For this reason, many NGOs and think tanks that support the V20 and the Bridgetown Initiative are also supporting the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force: For People and the Planet.

The task force is keen to ensure that all of its work is complementary to other
existing initiatives like the UN Tax Convention, the OECD Tax Policy reforms, the
IMO shipping levy discussions and the G20 wealth tax discussions.

The task force, its co-chairs and members, all support the idea of progressive levies
to raise money for climate and development. We believe that by enabling coalitions
of willing countries to become the first-movers on these options, we can raise
urgently-needed revenues in a shorter time frame, while also laying the groundwork
and building momentum for the success of other initiatives and scaling up the
solidarity levies we will propose.

There are no specific criteria to join the task force. Countries joining only have to show that they are politically willing to support one or several of the levy options put on the table, and support the global solidarity levy agenda.

The potential revenue will be explored in detail in a rigorous research and consultation phase, and through specific impact studies into each levy option.

Existing research has shown that levies could raise:

• Financial Transactions: a 0.1% levy on the trading of stocks and bonds could deliver up to $418 bn per year on a global level (WIFO 2019 study). 
• Levy on aviation: an aviation levy could raise up to $150 bn per year on a global scale (CAN-Europe 2023).
• Levy on maritime shipping: a levy of $150/ton C02 would raise up to $80bn for a year (IDDRI 2023 and one of the official proposals).
• Fossil fuel companies windfall profits levy: 
  • A fossil fuel extraction levy of $5/ton C02 would raise $210 bn per year rising to an average of $300bn per year by 2050 – assuming significant reduction in demand and an increase of the rate of $10 per ton annually to reach $250 a ton by 2050 (Stamp Out Poverty 2023).
  • A levy on windfall profits of 10% would have raised $300 bn in 2022 as net income for fossil fuel producers in 2022 was $4 trillion with an implied windfall profit of $3 trillion globally (World Energy Investment 2023).

ECF manages the Secretariat of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force: For People and the Planet to support the country co-chairs and members.

The Secretariat is co-led by Laurence Tubiana and another high-level figure from another region.