This paper discusses the role of, and provides practical country-level guidance on, fiscal policies for implementing climate strategies using a unique and transparent tool laying out trade-offs among policy options.

This report provides actionable advice on how to design and implement fiscal policies for both development and climate action. Building on more than two decades of research in development and environmental economics, it argues that well-designed environmental tax reforms are especially valuable in developing countries, where they can reduce emissions, increase domestic revenues, and generate positive welfare effects such as cleaner water, safer roads, and improvements in human health. Moreover, these reforms need not harm competitiveness. New empirical evidence from Indonesia and Mexico suggests that under certain conditions, raising fuel prices can actually increase firm productivity. Finally, the report discusses the role of fiscal policy in strengthening resilience to climate change. It provides evidence that preventive public investments and measures to build fiscal buffers can help safeguard stability and growth in the face of rising climate risks. In this way, environmental tax reforms and climate risk-management strategies can lay the much-needed fiscal foundation for development and climate action.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century. Mitigation requires a large-scale transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper provides an overview of the rapidly growing literature on the role of macroeconomic and financial policy tools in enabling this transition. The literature provides a menu of policy tools for mitigation. A key conclusion is that fiscal tools are first in line and central, but can and may need to be complemented by financial and monetary policy instruments. Some tools and policies raise unanswered questions about policy tool assignment and mandates, which we describe. The literature is scarce, however, on the most effective policy mix and the role of mitigation tools and goals in the overall policy framework.

Public financial management (PFM) consists of all the government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. In response to the growing urgency to fight climate change, “green PFM” aims at adapting existing PFM practices to support climate-sensitive policies. With the cross-cutting nature of climate change and wider environmental concerns, green PFM can be a key enabler of an integrated government strategy to combat climate change. This note outlines a framework for green PFM, emphasizing the need for an approach combining various entry points within, across, and beyond the budget cycle. This includes components such as fiscal transparency and external oversight, and coordination with state-owned enterprises and subnational governments. The note also identifies principles for effective implementation of a green PFM strategy, among which the need for a strong stewardship located within the ministry of finance is paramount.

Taxation can play a fundamental role in climate change mitigation. While all countries have different approaches, they can act together and must do so urgently by prioritizing environmental objectives. In this respect, this is the first time that a book has brought together the climate fiscal policies of 30 countries, including Bhutan, which is currently the only country to be carbon neutral. Bhutan is implementing fiscal policies to maintain its carbon neutrality, while other countries are trying to implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The large number of rapporteurs also reveals the interest in and topicality of the subject for all of the countries in the world, and the emergence of a new subject for some of them. The analysis of this data reveals the difficulty of current fiscal policies to meet the requirements of climate change mitigation set by international and European agreements. There is a great deal of diversity, due to the difficulty of reconciling two distinct objectives - environmental protection and budget preservation - and implementing economic environmental responsibility. Each country is thus setting up a variety of instruments that respond to two different types of logic: compel and/or incentivise. This situation reveals certain weaknesses. These fiscal policies are not coherent and are based on a choice to use revenue for specific purposes, in addition to producing insufficient effects. In order to overcome this situation, it is necessary to reconsider these green tax policies by overcoming a variety of obstacles - political, legal, economic and social - in order to reinvent the existing system through national or global reforms. In this context, some proposals are made to rethink tomorrow's climate fiscal policies. An Open Access chapter is available for this title. Open Access chapters can be found in the list of chapters below, under the book description Marilyne Sadowsky has a PhD in international and European taxation (Sorbonne Law School, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), and achieved an honourable mention for the Mitchell B. Carroll Prize, International Fiscal Association. She is Associate Professor at the Sorbonne Law School, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and Codirector of two Masters courses in tax law. She is a member for France of the Academic Committee at EATLP (European Association of Tax Law Professors). For the ILA (International Law Association), she is Coordinator of the White Paper on taxation for the ILA's 150th anniversary in 2023. She was visiting Professor at the Boston College of Law, 2017, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute, Munich, 2023.

This report emphasizes the environmental, fiscal, economic, and administrative case for using carbon taxes, or similar pricing schemes such as emission trading systems, to implement climate mitigation strategies. It provides a quantitative framework for understanding their effects and trade-offs with other instruments and applies it to the largest advanced and emerging economies. Alternative approaches, like “feebates” to impose fees on high polluters and give rebates to cleaner energy users, can play an important role when higher energy prices are difficult politically. At the international level, the report calls for a carbon price floor arrangement among large emitters, designed flexibly to accommodate equity considerations and constraints on national policies. The report estimates the consequences of carbon pricing and redistribution of its revenues for inequality across households. Strategies for enhancing the political acceptability of carbon pricing are discussed, along with supporting measures to promote clean technology investments.