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Flipping the switch: making use of carbon price dollars for health and education
While health systems, clean water and education are a plain given in many parts of the world, millions of people still do not have sufficient access to these basic public goods. In fact, carbon prices could make substantial financial resources available for succeeding with the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations, a team of scientists now finds. At the same time, carbon pricing could be a central contribution to meet global climate targets and limit global warming to well below 2°C until the end of the century.
“Currently we have a twofold problem,” explains lead author Max Franks from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK): “There is a huge underprovision of basic necessary public goods such as public health systems, access to schools and clean water. On the other hand greenhouse gas emissions are still rising and there is an overuse of the atmosphere, a global common good, as a disposal space for these emissions”. So far, the two problems have mostly been dealt with separately. “But if you look at both climate and sustainable development policies at the same time, it turns out that carbon pricing could indeed address both problems simultaneously and effectively,” Franks says.