‘Climate policy can reduce poverty’

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 Tuesday.

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 fertilisers are so heavily subsidised, 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.