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Kenya, Barbados, Benin, Somalia also back plan

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Announced at major UN development conference

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Aim is to 'foster international solidarity', Spanish PM

says

By David Latona and Simon Jessop

SEVILLE, Spain June 30 (Reuters) - A group of countries

including France, Kenya, Spain and Barbados pledged on Monday to

tax premium-class flying and private jets in a bid to raise

funds for climate action and sustainable development.

As many richer nations scale back official development aid

for countries even as extreme weather events increase in

frequency and severity, some are looking to find new sources of

finance, including by taxing polluting industries.

The announcement on the opening day of a U.N. development

summit in Seville, Spain, was one of the first to emerge from

the "Sevilla Platform for Action" that aims to deliver on the

renewed global financing framework agreed ahead of the event.

"The aim is to help improve green taxation and foster

international solidarity by promoting more progressive and

harmonised tax systems," the office of Spanish Prime Minister

Pedro Sanchez said in a statement.

The initiative, which was co-signed by Sierra Leone, Benin

and Somalia, will get technical support from the European

Commission, it added.

All are members of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force,

launched in November 2023 to explore new forms of taxation that

could help support developing countries' efforts to decarbonise

and protect themselves against the impacts of climate change.

As well as an aviation tax, which could raise billions of

dollars, the task force said in a recent report that other

sectors that could potentially be taxed more include shipping,

oil and gas, cryptocurrencies and the super-rich.

Rebecca Newsom of environmentalist group Greenpeace called

the move "an important step towards ensuring that the binge

users of this undertaxed sector are made to pay their fair

share".

She added that the "obvious" next step was to hold oil and

gas corporations to account.