Environmental taxation beyond carbon – an ATI workshop series
Next week, the Addis Tax Initiative (ATI) is launching a new five-part virtual workshop series focusing on environmental taxation beyond carbon, running from October 2024 to March 2025. This initiative aims to foster peer-to-peer learning, exchange, and capacity building among ATI partner countries, bringing together experts and practitioners to explore effective tax measures that address pressing environmental issues. The first session is taking place on 30 October.
A response to global environmental needs
The workshop series emerged from discussions during the 2024 ATI General Assembly, where members highlighted their interest to increase their efforts in environmental tax policies, particularly beyond carbon taxes. This focus aligns with the VIII partnership principle of the ATI Declaration 2025:
Addressing climate change and protecting the environment. We aim to place protecting environmental resources, promoting environmental sustainability, and addressing climate change at the heart of our partnership.
As ATI partner countries face diverse environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, waste management, air and water pollution etc., taxation is seen as a crucial tool to mitigate these impacts. While carbon pricing remains vital, the ATI workshop series broadens the scope to consider other environmental tax measures, acknowledging that many of these options receive less attention internationally.
Interactive and tailored learning
The workshops are tailored to ATI partner countries’ needs, and aim at providing a closed, interactive space where officials from ministries of finance and revenue authorities from ATI partner countries can share their experiences and gain practical insights. Featuring a combination of international expertise and peer contributions, the sessions will offer group work, discussions, and problem-solving exercises tailored to the unique contexts of ATI members.
Each session will also address specific challenges identified by ATI members, such as the lack of environmental data, the social impacts of environmental tax reforms and how to mitigate those, as well as the need for policy coherence, such as in relation to fossil fuel subsidies.
Lasting impact
Beyond individual learning, the series will support ATI members in fulfilling the commitments of the ATI Declaration 2025. It will help them implement environmental taxes that are practical and aligned with their broader developmental and environmental goals.
Supporting organisations and development partners of the ATI can benefit from this initiative by collaborating and developing capacities in environmental taxation — an increasingly important tool in the global fight against environmental degradation.