environmentally harmful subsidies

Governments split on ditching nature-harming subsidies in Montreal

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.

UN biodiversity talks aim to strike deal protecting third of planet

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.

COP15: UN pushes end to $1.8tn in subsidies linked with harm to nature

The UN development chief has warned against “illogical” and “perverse” subsidies to industries estimated at $1.8tn that harm the planet, as the body pushes for a global deal to reverse the widespread destruction of nature...

Speaking to the Financial Times from Montreal, Achim Steiner, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said government subsidies were contributing to biodiversity loss by encouraging unsustainable farming and fishing practices.

Fossil subsidies take the bulk of finance needed for an inclusive renewable energy sector

The world is spending at least $1.8-trillion every year, equivalent to 2% of GDP, on subsidies that are destroying nature, new research released on Thursday has found. 

The study, titled Protecting Nature by Reforming Environmentally Harmful Subsidies: The Role of Business, was co-funded by The B Team and Business for Nature, and is the first estimate in 10 years of the total value of environmentally harmful subsidies (EHS) across key sectors including energy, agriculture, transport and forestry.

El mundo financia su propia extinción: se gastan billones en subsidios que impulsan el calentamiento global

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.

Global nature pact urged to reform harmful subsidies of $1.8 trln a year

Subsidies that are harming ecosystems, wildlife and the climate amount to nearly $2 trillion a year, researchers said on Thursday, calling for the subsidies to be reformed under talks on a global nature pact due to be agreed in the coming months.

The researchers found that annually the fossil fuel industry receives $640 billion in support and environmentally harmful agricultural activities get $520 billion, while $350 billion flows to unsustainable freshwater use and the management of water and wastewater infrastructure.

Identifying and assessing subsidies and other incentives harmful to biodiversity: A comparative review of existing national-level assessments and insights for good practice

Despite calls for the reform of incentives, including subsidies, harmful to biodiversity, including under the Convention on Biological Diversity and its 2011-2020 Aichi Targets, very few countries to date have undertaken what is considered the first step in this process, namely, to identify and assess the types and magnitudes of any incentives in place at the national level which are harmful for biodiversity or the environment more broadly.

Fossil fuel and agriculture handouts climb to $1.8tn a year, study says

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. 

World spends $1.8tn a year on subsidies that harm environment, study finds

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.

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