The finance ministers of Brazil and France pushed this week for a tax on US-dollar billionaires of at least 2% of their wealth each year, with the $250 billion it could raise going to tackle poverty, hunger and climate change.
Brazil’s Fernando Haddad and France’s Bruno Le Maire promoted their proposal at the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, alongside IMF head Kristalina Georgieva and Kenyan finance minister Njuguna Ndung’u.
“In a world where economic activities are increasingly transnational, we have to find new and creative ways to tax these activities [and] thus direct the revenues to common global endeavours such as ending hunger and poverty and fighting climate change,” said Haddad.
He called on world leaders to show “political courage”, embrace “innovative solutions based on evidence” and give their people “hope”. “Without courage, there’s no good politics that can be done,” he said.
Speaking next at a briefing in Washington, Le Maire said overhauling the taxation system was “a matter of efficiency and a matter of justice”, and that a levy on the super-rich should follow already-agreed measures for a digital tax and global minimum corporation tax. “Everybody has to pay his fair share of taxation,” he added.
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French economist Gabriel Zucman is drawing up a proposal for a billionaires tax that will be presented to G20 finance ministers and central bankers when they meet in the Brazilian city of Rio De Janeiro in July.
Haddad, whose government will host that meeting as G20 chair, said he wanted the Group of 20 big economies to issue a statement of support. Le Maire said he hoped the wealth tax would be in place by 2027, ten years after reform of the international taxation system began.
But at a separate press conference in Washington this week, Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner rejected the proposal. “We do not think it is suitable,” he said. “We have an appropriate taxation of income.” Lindner is from the free-market Free Democratic Party, part of Germany’s governing coalition with the centre-left and Greens.
Who will spend it?
Zucman said not all countries needed to agree to a measure for it to be implemented. If some countries don’t tax billionaires, others can tax them more to make up for it, he said, adding that is how the global minimum corporation tax rate of 15% – which went into effect this year – works.
While Haddad spoke of tackling hunger and climate change, it is not yet clear who would be in charge of spending the money raised from billionaires or what it would be spent on.
Esther Duflo in 2009 (Photos: PopTech)
Esther Duflo, another French economist who addressed G20 ministers this week, told journalists the money should be given to developing countries to deal with climate change.
The best use, she said, is for the money to go to poor people before a climate shock like a heatwave hits, for their communities to protect them through measures like air-conditioned public spaces, and to governments for reinsurance against climate disasters.
From academia to politics
A billionaires tax has long been pushed by progressive economists like Zucman and Joseph Stiglitz. But it has been taken from academia onto the political agenda by the G20 presidency of Brazil’s left-wing government led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Haddad.
Zucman presented the proposal at a G20 finance ministers meeting in Sao Paulo in February. It was the “first time these issues of inequality, progressive taxation [and] extreme wealth concentration were discussed in such a forum”, he said, adding that the “vast majority praised Brazil for putting those issues on the agenda”.
The main barrier, he said, is that billionaires will fight back against it. “They have a particular hatred for any kind of tax based on wealth. Why? Because that’s the one tax that really works for them,” he said.
Gabriel Zucman speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year (Photos: World Economic Forum)
But E3G analyst Sima Kammourieh, a former economic adviser to the French government, was more pessimistic about the prospect of a billionaires tax being implemented. She “wouldn’t completely rule it out, but it’s something which could take many many years to come to fruition”, she said.
Although Zucman insisted the tax could go ahead without the US on board, Kammourieh warned that a Donald Trump victory in the US elections in November would be damaging. Joe Biden has called for higher taxes on billionaires, while Trump is one of the world’s nearly 3,000 billionaires.
Elsewhere at the Spring Meetings in Washington this week, France, Kenya and Barbados launched a taskforce to examine how to fill the gap in climate finance for developing and vulnerable countries – excluding China – which will need investment of $2.4 trillion per year by 2030, according to economists Vera Songwe and Nicholas Stern.
The taskforce will consider taxes on wealthy people, plane tickets, financial transactions, shipping fuel, fossil fuel production and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits. It will also mull redirecting state fossil fuel subsidies to a new global loss and damage fund and windfall taxes on fossil fuel producers when prices are exceptionally high.
The plan is for one or more proposals to be presented to governments with the aim of securing international agreement at the COP30 UN climate summit in Brazil in late 2025.
(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Global billionaires tax to fight climate change, hunger rises up political agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.
Global billionaires tax to fight climate change, hunger rises up political agenda
Climate Change
Bowen urged to lead with vision and ambition to accelerate fossil fuel phase out at Bonn climate meeting, as global energy crisis bites
Bonn, Germany, Monday 8 June 2026 — As the UN climate negotiations in Bonn commence, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to lead with vision and ambition to advance multilateral climate cooperation, and use his unique position to drive concrete progress at COP31 and ensure a meaningful partnership with the Pacific.
In the context of a global energy crisis and turbulent geopolitics, the Bonn Climate Change Conference will be a critical moment to sustain emerging political momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels. The midway point on the road to COP31 in Türkiye in November, Bonn will be the first time Minister Bowen has attended a major UN conference in his role as COP31 President of Negotiations.
The start of the Bonn meetings also marks 100 days since the illegal US-Israel war on Iran sparked a global energy shock and after 57 countries including Australia met in Santa Marta, Colombia in April for the world’s first conference on the transition away from fossil fuels — a landmark moment signalling political winds of change in the face of threats to multilateralism.
Speaking from Bonn, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Amidst a global energy crisis, accelerating climate disasters and a looming super El Niño, the urgency to accelerate climate action and break free from fossil fuel dependence has never been clearer.
“Minister Bowen has been telling Australia and the world that we are in a global ‘fossil fuel crisis’, and that unhooking from fossil fuels is fundamental both to tackling the climate crisis and to ensuring secure and affordable energy. It’s time to match that message with a clear vision and agenda for COP31 — one that has the transition away from fossil fuels at its heart.
“As COP31 President of Negotiations, Australia has both the opportunity and responsibility to build on the momentum of COP30 in Belém and the recent landmark conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels. This includes leading by example at home, with an immediate halt to new fossil fuel projects — including the mammoth proposed Browse gas project — and committing to develop a national roadmap away from fossil fuel production.”
“Few countries have as much skin the game as Australia: we are a country highly vulnerable to extreme heat, fires, floods and other impacts of climate change, we are suffering the consequences of fossil fuel dependency in terms of our energy security and affordability, but we have some of the world’s best renewable energy opportunities.
“Bonn is a key moment for the incoming Presidency to start shaping the vision, building the necessary trust, and actively setting priorities and expectations for the COP. We therefore hope and expect our Minister to be much more vocal and active in Bonn.
“Australia, in partnership with the Pacific, is taking the reins of global climate cooperation at a critical moment in the world’s transition away from fossil fuels. There is no more time to lose.”
Also in Bonn, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Multilateral cooperation is the antidote to climate and geopolitical chaos. At Bonn, Pacific nations’ legacy of leadership from the frontlines of the climate crisis can be our guiding star as we build a more peaceful and secure world for all.
“We must build on the progress at Santa Marta and break the hold fossil fuels have on our global security and economies. Pacific nations are already facing the brunt of a global climate crisis, but now facing the compounding injustice of an energy crisis brought on by fossil fuel dependence. We did not create either of these crises, but are among the most exposed to both.
“The International Court of Justice made clear that responsibility to address the climate crisis extends beyond borders and that continuing to expand fossil fuel production, including for export, could constitute an internationally wrongful act — a ruling that has now been overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Continuing down the fossil fuel path, and failing to align efforts with limiting warming to 1.5C, is a breach of our international legal obligations.
“We must not lose sight of what’s needed — by elevating the voices of Pacific leaders, backing Pacific-led solutions, and maximising the opportunity of the Pacific pre-COP, we can ensure the 1.5°C imperative and the transition away from fossil fuels are central to the agenda at COP31, and that communities are granted the finance they need to build a strong, resilient future beyond fossil fuels.”
Ahead of SB64, Greenpeace International has produced a policy briefing outlining the core elements of a just transition away from fossil fuels and the urgent, priority actions needed from national governments and through global co-operation to make it a reality.[1]
ENDS
[1] A Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Policy Briefing
Photos in the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal) or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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