While Trevor Manuel's budget speech to Parliament on Wednesday included almost nothing on environmental issues, there are quite a number of tax proposals related to energy and the environment in the Treasury's budget for 2009, as pointed out by Urban Sprout. Both carrots and sticks have been thrown into the pot.
An interesting one is that "Certifed Emission Reductions (CERs) sold by local companies in deals facilitated by the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism may be tax-exempt or subject to capital gains tax instead of normal income tax". This sounds to me like a throw-away sop to environmentalists, since there have been virtually no CDM projects in South Africa to date. Of course, if the UN's climate conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year produces a meaningful change of pace under Kyoto, that may change - but the negotiations are mainly about what happens post-2012, when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends, so the effects of this tax exemption will still be insignificant for the next few years. Still, it's a step in the direction of encouraging change, and government is gradually putting things in place.
There is also a report on Engineering News highlighting the climate change and energy aspects of the budget.
To take these measures to the next stage is next month's national climate summit and science conference in South Africa that was announced last May, which will "translate cabinet's climate change policy decisions and directives into fiscal, regulatory and legislative packages as well as sectoral implementation plans."
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