the Middle East to tax breaks on beef production in the world’s largest tropical rainforest, governments are spending at least $1.8 trillion (£1.3 trillion), equivalent to 2 per cent of global GDP, on subsidies which harm the environment. The research shows that they are financing deforestation, water pollution and land subsidence with state money, thereby directly working against the goals set out under the Paris Accord, as well as draft targets aimed at reversing loss of biodiversity.
According to experts, a significant portion of these trillions of dollars of funds can be redirected towards supporting policies which are seeking to protect the environment and aid the transition to net zero carbon emissions. Hence, the report calls on governments to commit to abolish subsidies which are harmful to nature by the end of this decade, at the upcoming UN Conference of the Parties on biodiversity (COP15), which will be held in Kunming, China, later this year, where experts hope for the signing of a ‘Paris agreement for nature’.
Commenting on the findings of the study, Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who was the chief of the UN climate change convention when the Paris Accord was signed, noted that the subsidies were not only a huge risk to the environment, but also to the businesses receiving them. “Nature is declining at an alarming rate, and we have never lived on a planet with so little biodiversity,” she said. “Harmful subsidies must be redirected towards protecting the climate and nature, rather than financing our own extinction.”
