With one of the weakest carbon taxes globally, the region’s largest economy risks becoming the world's leading enabler of carbon leakage, where emissions aren't reduced, just outsourced to nations with weaker policies.
The financing gap is huge, but time is short. Given the inadequacy of a promised new climate finance goal, Southeast Asia should look beyond UN-led conferences to crowd in other sources of capital to tackle the climate crisis.
While shipping is essential to the global economy, so is reducing the associated pollution. Requiring shipping companies to pay for their vessels’ greenhouse-gas emissions would go a long way toward advancing this objective, while generating much-needed revenues for climate-vulnerable developing countries.
House Bill 7705, the low carbon economy bill, could help the climate-vulnerable nation seize the economic opportunities that come with decarbonisation.