The Sri Lankan President proposed a 10 percent levy on the annual profits of global tax evasion assets deposited in tax havens be charged to help fund climate change.
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday came down heavily on the Global North for not walking the talk on climate change.
Addressing heads of governments gathered at the World Water Forum in Bali, Indonesia, he castigated the Global North’s unwillingness to fund measures to avoid death and destruction caused by climate change.
He juxtaposed this to the funding of the war in Ukraine to which international funds have been directed since it began over two years ago.
“The Global North is willing to fund death and destruction in the Ukraine, but there is an unwillingness to fund measures to avoid death and destruction caused by climate change,” the Sri Lankan President said, according to a statement released by his office on Monday.
As a solution, President Ranil Wickremesinghe proposed a 10 percent levy on the annual profits of global tax evasion assets deposited in tax havens be charged to help fund climate change. The annual profits from deposits in tax havens are estimated at 1.4 trillion dollars per annum.
The President said this in the light of the long-awaited funding from the Conference of Parties held in Glasgow in 2021.
Earlier this month, the President had told a forum in Colombo that Sri Lanka will sit out of the international climate summit, Conference of Parties, in future if there continues to be a lack of cohesion in solutions to tackle climate change among world leaders.
“The global community has still not been able to come together on an agreement of how we are to deal with the challenges. From COP meeting to COP meeting we have gone there, and there is a lot of talk. But unfortunately, there has been no agreement,” Wickremesinghe had said while addressing the Code Red climate summit organized by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t think we can go on and on meeting like this. In the next two meetings either we must come to some agreement or give this up. That’s what Sri Lanka plans to tell the COP.”
Sri Lanka has consistently been placed among the top ten countries at risk of extreme weather events by the Global Climate Risk Index.
