Fairer flying: an international air travel levy for adaptation

For the world’s poorest countries and communities, adaptation to climate change is urgently needed, but costly: estimates run into tens of billions of dollars a year. Given the shortfall in current international adaptation funding, how can resources for the developing world be raised? An adaptation levy on international air travel could help fill the gap. A small per-trip payment by passengers could contribute US$8 billion to US$10 billion a year towards adaptation. Similar schemes in France and elsewhere show that this kind of ethical solidarity and ‘polluter pays’ approach would be simple to implement in practical and institutional terms.