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Combining environmental with employment objectives, ecological tax reform (ETR) envisages a double dividend. While research has mainly focused on the socio-economic and environmental impacts of ETR, there is less literature on the social responses. This paper gives an overview and history of German ETR as well as investigating the understanding of perceptions and attitudes towards ETR of those being "subject to tax". The research is based on qualitative social research methods. As with the other PETRAS papers, interviews were conducted with policy-makers and business leaders and focus groups were formed with lay persons. The results show that responses of policy-makers and business leaders are modest. Although some criticisms about the specific design of the German ETR remain, complaints towards ETR are settled. Attitudes appear influenced by more fundamental convictions such as economic interest or altruistic views. In contrast, ETR appears to politicise common people. Attitudes are influenced by the overall comprehension of the ETR concept, the expected impacts, perceived information deficits, as well as a general distrust in politics. Our data show that the linking of environmental and employment objectives is not understood and not welcomed. In order to increase social acceptance, the paper discusses refocusing ETR on environmental objectives, modestly increasing the share of ETR revenue spent for environmental purposes, removing inconsistencies in the ETR design, and improving information policy.
This paper introduces the special issue on the Policies for Ecological Tax Reform: Assessment of Social Responses (PETRAS) project about responses to ecological tax reform (ETR) in Europe. Although ETR is widely accepted to be a policy with desirable effects, its implementation has been limited by problems of political acceptability. The project aimed to address the question of how to make such a policy more acceptable. It is the first study to examine in depth the thinking of members of the general public about the ETR policies and is also the first international comparative study of the thinking of ordinary business people about ETR policies. The PETRAS project methodology was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to ETR policies and the development of improved designs for them. A number of issues emerged relating to awareness, trust, understanding of the purpose, visibility, incentives, regressivity, levels of taxation, terminology, communication about ETR and the use of alternative instruments. Together with these similarities, a pattern of differences between the countries can also be seen. The final section of this paper introduces the national studies described in the following papers.
Towards an effective and equitable climate change agreement : a Wuppertal proposal for Copenhagen
(2009)
This paper presents comprehensive proposals for the post-2012 climate regime: the scale of the challenge, emission targets for industrialised countries, increased actions by Southern countries, financing, technology, adaptation and deforestation. The proposals are based on ongoing research by the Wuppertal Institute.
As part of the discussion on a new international climate agreement, which is supposed to be concluded by 2015, the European Commission conducted a stakeholder consultation, to which the Wuppertal Institute contributed. The Wuppertal Institute suggests that Parties should revisit the widely shared assumption that there is a trade-off between climate protection and economic well-being. The problem is not so much the macro-economic outlook. The problem is that climate policy causes substantial distributional impacts and thus naturally leads to resistance. The Wuppertal Institute recommends to reconsider the political wisdom of the quantity-based approach that climate policy has so far been based on. As long as emissions are seen as inextricably linked to economic well-being, framing commitments in terms of emission reductions directly triggers the perspective of seeing climate protection as an economic loss. Commitments should ideally be multi-dimensional. Possible types of commitments to consider may include scaling up certain climate-friendly technologies, improving energy efficiency, limiting fossil fuel use and fossil fuel extraction, or emission price commitments. The strongest mobilisation of political support might perhaps be achieved by framing commitments as a joint international undertaking to provide universal access to sustainable energy services by a specific date.