India protests carbon tax on Europe flights

Come January, your airfare to London will cost €6 (Rs 380) more, thanks to a new carbon tax the European Union has decided to levy on the aviation sector. This tax will cost India $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) a year and with China and the United States, will help Europe make a neat $10 billion a year. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 30, 2011, 11:12:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Come January, your airfare to London will cost €6 (Rs 380) more, thanks to a new carbon tax the European Union (EU) has decided to levy on the aviation sector.

This tax will cost India $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) a year and with China and the United States, will help Europe make a neat $10 billion a year.

It's not the money but the intention of rich nations behind the tax that has irked emerging economies like India and China, which see it as the beginning of a regressive regime for imposing taxes on developing nations to fight climate change, instead of paying for it themselves.

The UN convention on climate change says rich countries have to pay for any action to reduce carbon emissions in the developing world but so far, they have failed to meet their commitment.

"We believe the European carbon tax is just the start of a new global tax regime to adversely hit businesses of emerging economies such as India and China… We will have no option other than to approach the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if it isn't withdrawn," a senior government functionary said.

Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan lodged a formal protest with the EU this week, terming the decision an "unfair" trade practice.

She urged Europe to withdraw it till consensus is built on the issue at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a body of 194 nations.

The EU has introduced the tax under its Emission Trade Scheme, which imposes a penalty for failing to maintain annual carbon emissions within 10,000 tonnes a year. This means a Boeing 747 flying from Delhi to London would exhaust this quota within a month and thereafter, passengers would have to pay the environmental degradation tax for landing in European airports. The decision was taken after the EU found in February that the aviation sector was spewing 20% more carbon dioxide into the environment than previously known.

The EU has proposed a similar tax regime for high carbon-emitting fuels from outside the continent, which is the world's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide after the US and China. It plans to implement this from 2013-14.

Government officials told HT the carbon tax was discussed at a meeting called by cabinet secretary Ajit Kumar Seth on Friday, where officials from the ministries of civil aviation, commerce and environment participated. "We are seeking legal opinion on how we can approach the WTO," the functionary said.

The matter also came up at a recent UNFCCC meeting in Germany, where India joined China, the US and the biggest group there, the G-77, in opposing it. "By levying carbon tax, developing countries would be paying to rich nations," a government official said.

Environment ministry officials said India will also raise the issue at the next meeting of Basic countries — comprising India, China, Brazil and South Africa — in August to garner more support against it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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