British ‘Green’ Air Tax Imperils Environment?
Caribbean organisations have said that the environmental tax that the British Government is planning to impose on all flights will cause immense damage to the Caribbean economy. The tax is expected to be in the region of £100 pounds per passenger and will be levied on departure from British airports.
The Caribbean Tourism Organisation has written to many organisations and individuals ranging from the BBC to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, pointing out that the system used to define the tax level is unfair to the Caribbean. Because it works on a distance basis, measured between the British capital and the capital of the destination country, the Caribbean (defined in this case as Kingston Jamaica) ends up in a more expensive levy band that the USA. The chair of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, speaking for many of the small islands, said, ‘Our countries’ economies are hugely dependent on tourism. But the British government plans to place us in a more expensive tax category compared to the whole of the USA. This puts us at a considerable disadvantage. To suggest this is a green tax and that the environmental impact of flying to California or Hawaii is less then flying to the Caribbean is patently untrue. Our holidaymakers and the overseas friends and relatives of Caribbean nationals who live in Britain are being heavily penalised and our countries call on Britain to do the right thing and change this injustice.’
New Zealand has also formally protested about the planned increase in departure tax. Britain is the second largest contributor to the New Zealand tourism economy, with nearly 300,000 tourists a year flying from the UK and the tourist industry, already struggling with a sharp decline in visitor numbers as a result of global financial crisis, fears that this extra tax will harm New Zealand even further.
While it may seem that countries should just ‘take the hit’ on such internationally effective taxes, the real risk is that the loss of tourism, with its relatively green profile (especially to countries like New Zealand which have focused on their ‘green’ credentials to become a tourism centre) will mean that other income sources become more appealing. These could include extractive industries like mining or oil exploration, intensive industries like swift-rotation monoculture farming, or exploitative industries like logging.
And in a surprise move, on 2 July, Schiphol Airport in Holland removed the departure taxes it had imposed in 2008—the charges were low: Euro 11.25 to fly to European destinations and Euro 45 for long-haul—but Dutch passengers simply drove to Germany and caught flights there to avoid the taxes.
New Zealand air flight courtesy of PhillipC at Flickr under a creative commons licence
