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CLIMATE CRISIS

France, Kenya rallying support for new climate tax within two years

France and Kenya will launch a coalition of countries in favour of creating an international tax within two years that would raise billions of dollars for developing countries most exposed to climate change.

Published: 2 December 2023 09:21 CET

France, Kenya rallying support for new climate tax within two years

France's President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the Tripling Nuclear Energy by 2050 session at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. Photo: Ludovic MARIN/AFP.

French President Emmanuel Macron told the COP28 climate conference in Dubai that his country, Kenya, Barbados and “several others” were starting an “international taskforce” which will deliver its conclusions at next year’s G20 summit in Rio.

They plan to enact the tax at the COP30 to be held in Brazil in 2025, Macron added.

“It’s a necessity if we want a real result because we need to raise more money to finance our fight against inequalities and for the climate,” the French president said.

A press conference is planned for Saturday to present details of the initiative, which has been floated at previous international gatherings this year, including September’s Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi.

The coalition would need to devise an innovative tax covering air and sea transport, as well as financial transactions. A group of volunteer countries would have to apply it on their own if a global tax is not agreed, Friederike Roeder from the NGO Global Citizen told AFP.

She said such a tax could be “revolutionary” and raise hundreds of billions of dollars. The money could support the loss and damage fund, adaptation efforts and
key development priorities for poorer nations who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, added Roeder.

The initiative is part of a wider debate about reforming the global financial architecture to meet the challenges of climate change and weaning the world off planet-heating fossil fuels.

Suggestions include reforming the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, developing innovative taxes and mobilising private capital.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.