The Institute for Development Policy (INDEP) has presented the research “Carbon Taxation Policies – Importance, Challenges and Opportunities for Kosovo”, reports Ekonomia Online.
It was requested that in every country in the world, in Kosovo, carbon taxation be started, in order to protect the environment. Through a carbon tax, the Government was asked to set a price to be paid by polluters for each ton of gas emissions.
Dardan Abazi, director of the Sustainable Development Program at INDEP, said the adoption and implementation of the carbon tax in Kosovo’s policy framework is a complex process that requires gathering all stakeholders and reviewing how it works.
“Carbon tax is one of the policies that the government of Kosovo in a way will be forced to apply in Kosovo, to impose a tax that those who cause it would have to pay and will enable the decarbonization of our system energy and our lives ”.
“We are in the first steps where the debate on the carbon tax has probably not started yet while it is knocking on our doors, whether in the long-term decarbonisation strategy or in other ways, and in general in the legislative framework and public policies,” he said. ai.
During the roundtable was presented the INDEP research of the same name. The presentation of the paper was made by Fiona Bakija, research assistant at INDEP.
“I have been working on the processing of the paper for the last few months. We as INDEP have no need to do such a work as there was no language in Albanian that citizens, policymakers and businesses were informed about such a tax. “Kosovo has signed the declaration of the Sofia summit and is committed to full decarbonisation by 2050,” she said.
“The methodology we have used is qualitative, we have analyzed various reports, legislation in force and we have compared it with foreigners with that of Europe and the Western Balkans as it is more comparable with the state of Kosovo. During the drafting of the publication, we conducted three interviews with actors that we do not care if the carbon tax is imposed in Kosovo “.
“During the research we compared the case of Kosovo with Albania, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden because we thought that Kosovo with these countries is more comparable, maybe not with Sweden but we got the beginnings when Sweden has implemented carbon taxes.” she said.
The Climate Change Officer at the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Infrastructure, Abdullah Pirce, said that given the conditions that Kosovo has, it is too early to make such a decision, but that it considers it necessary.
“It’s known that recently there has been a global discussion on climate change and how to fight and stop climate change. For our conditions, it is a bit like before to take this action, but the obligation is an obligation because we have an obligation. “We are also equal members in the treatment of the community and we must respond to the demands that arise from being treated,” he said.
If we can increase production from renewable sources, I think that this way we can achieve some. It remains to be seen how it will happen. The Ministry of Environment can not cope with all this, it does not depend on us, implementation depends on the Ministry of Economy which is responsible for the energy sector, it depends on transport, it also depends on the Ministry of Agriculture how much it will achieve with afforestation “they reforest from Kosovo customs”, he said.
