As climate change impacts worsen and aid budgets fall, leaders gathered in Spain for a UN conference on funding sustainable development this week threw their weight behind innovative tools such as taxes on extreme wealth, levies on polluting transport and debt swaps to raise more money to tackle the climate crisis.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres told journalists in the southern of city of Seville – sweltering in a heatwave with temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius – that countries must now put their minds to implementing new ways to mobilise money, including carbon taxes and levies on flying and shipping.
“It’s time to seriously think about innovative forms of financing – to put a tax on carbon, to create levies in relation to several areas of activity, namely the impacts of maritime transportation in relation to climate change,” Guterres said. “There are many ways to multiply the resources available if we have the political will for that.”
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Eight countries – including France, Spain and Kenya – came together on the sidelines of the conference to push for taxation of premium plane tickets and private jet travel to pay for climate action.
The members of the new coalition said that, ahead of the COP30 climate summit in November, they would work to persuade more governments to apply flight ticket levies to support fair energy transitions and climate resilience both at home and in other countries.
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Spain and Brazil, meanwhile, launched a separate coalition to advance work on taxing the super-rich, joined by South Africa and building on a G20 agreement in 2024.
According to a joint statement, the initiative aims to incentivise other countries and civil society to sign up and address policy, administrative and data deficiencies preventing high-net-worth individuals from being taxed more efficiently in line with their wealth. The statement also signalled growing support for international tax negotiations at the UN and promised to evaluate legislative initiatives on taxing the ultra-rich.
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These announcements came as 192 governments at the conference adopted a 42-page document entitled the “Sevilla Commitment”. In it, they warned that time is running out to address the climate crisis, and noted that the world is “falling short in tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification”.
They stressed the urgency of increasing ambition for climate action through the UN’s climate process (the UNFCCC) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to a warming climate, and provide finance to developing countries to help them put their climate plans into practice.
The United States participated in the months-long negotiations on the development financing document but withdrew in the final stages and said it would not attend the conference in Spain. Under President Donald Trump, the US has ended the majority of its aid and climate spending for the Global South.
Here are some of the key measures endorsed by UN member states in the Seville declaration that would help to increase climate finance for the Global South:
Using national budgets
Countries agreed to take the environment, nature, climate and food security into account when planning national budgets, in line with their own unique needs and development priorities. Some of the recommended fiscal tools include green budgeting – which entails putting environmental protection at the heart of government revenue-raising and spending plans – and levying taxes on natural resource exploitation, environmental contamination and pollution.
Climate insurance
The declaration recommends tapping capital markets to fund climate action, including the issuance of green bonds as well as using insurance markets to protect smallholder farmers, cooperatives and small businesses against the adverse effects of global warming and price volatility, among other risks.
Pre-arranged disaster aid
In the face of rising climate shocks and stresses, there is support for more pre-arranged financing that is released before a disaster hits, based on warnings. It includes insurance and other forms of emergency support that can reach households and communities more quickly to reduce aid costs and accelerate recovery. The UK said it would launch a global coalition to scale up the use of this pre-planned finance ten-fold and work with the insurance industry to help deliver it.
“It is unacceptable that only 2% of crisis finance is pre-arranged when 35% of shocks are modellable,” UK development minister Jenny Chapman told the finance conference in Seville.
Debt pauses and debt swaps for climate
Leaders agreed in the document that there is a need to increase grants as part of official development assistance, as well as offering more low-interest loans – especially to countries most at risk from disasters and climate threats such as floods, storms and rising seas. This would help small island developing states who have been asking for fairer treatment in accessing finance to reduce their debt burden.
Governments promised to promote a system that pauses debt repayments when countries are hit by a climate disaster to allow them to free up money for recovery and supporting affected communities.
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The Seville commitment also proposes that international efforts to help highly indebted poor countries service their debt burdens could be centralised at the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Among other things, this new facility could support the scaling up of debt swaps – which restructure debt to free up money for sustainable development, including for climate and nature programmes – by simplifying their design and reducing transaction costs.
Rich-country climate finance obligations
The Seville declaration identifies the need to make it easier for developing countries to access money from international climate funds, as they have long called for. It adds that richer countries must lead in providing this money, in line with the Paris Agreement rule of fairness based on the greater responsibility they bear to help poor countries deal with climate change.
Leaders called for mobilisation of the “means of implementation” – which means funding and technical help – to meet the new climate finance goal agreed at COP29, the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and the Adaptation Fund among others, as well as supporting the implementation of national plans to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
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As part of a broader effort to boost funding, governments said they encourage multilateral development banks (MDBs) to increase and optimise their annual lending capacity “with a view to potentially tripling it” – although no time frame is specified.
MDBs said jointly at COP29 they expected that by 2030, their annual collective climate financing for low- and middle-income countries would reach $120 billion (including $42 billion for adaptation), up from nearly $75 billion in 2023.
Finance for ocean and nature protection
The Seville declaration calls for more resources to be channelled from all sources to address growing desertification, halt biodiversity loss, and advance ocean protection and the sustainable use of marine resources in developing countries.
Governments committed to establishing a new financial mechanism as envisioned under the Convention on Biological Diversity, whose main aim is to provide financial resources to developing countries to advance conservation.
Adding value to critical minerals extraction
Highlighting international trade as an engine for development, leaders highlighted the growing threats it faces including restrictions and tariffs. The document calls for concrete measures to improve poor countries’ abilities to trade in goods and services, and generate more foreign currency, as well as boosting jobs and tax revenue by turning raw materials into useful products within the countries where they are extracted.
To increase local processing of minerals that are critical to the clean energy transition, governments committed to strengthening the capacity of industries in developing countries to participate in regional and global value chains.
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This is in line with growing efforts in African nations like Nigeria and Zambia to set up processing plants for raw materials like lithium and copper – used in clean technology such as batteries and electric vehicles – to capture more of their value and boost their economies.
