Manuel bemoans lack of price for carbon emissions 03.05.2011
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http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=141521
CAPE TOWN — The absence of a price for something as destructive as carbon emissions was a "manifest market failure", Planning Minister Trevor Manuel said last week.
Putting a price on carbon emissions would provide one of the sources of finance for the Green Climate Fund which signatories to the Copenhagen Accord on climate change have committed themselves to setting up.
It is envisaged that the fund will raise $100bn a year from 2020 to assist poor countries to deal with climate change and to introduce low- carbon technologies.
Addressing a media briefing on Friday, Mr Manuel stressed that carbon emissions needed a uniform price and polluters should be required to pay for their emissions. "The fact that you can pollute the atmosphere and not have to pay for that pollution, it has to be one of the most manifest market failures."
The Treasury is making a move in this direction with its proposal to introduce a carbon tax.
Mr Manuel’s voice on climate change issues is to become more prominent as he has been elected one of the three co-chairmen of the transitional committee for the design of the Green Climate Fund.
He was appointed in his absence as a co-chairman of the 40-member committee last week at their first meeting in Mexico City, along with Mexican Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero Arroyo and Kjetil Lund, the Norwegian state secretary in the ministry of finance.
The transitional committee has been tasked with designing the governance arrangements for the Green Climate Fund, mobilising its resources and setting up the framework for expenditure. The committee will present its work to the United Nations conference on climate change in Durban in November.
SA has said it will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020, compared with a business-as- usual scenario, and 42% by 2025.
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