{"id":909,"date":"2009-09-08T12:02:53","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T09:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/?p=909"},"modified":"2020-05-20T10:23:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T09:23:03","slug":"maldives-to-introduce-green-tax-on-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/maldives-to-introduce-green-tax-on-tourists\/","title":{"rendered":"Maldives to introduce green tax on tourists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Maldives<\/a>The Maldives archipelago, threatened by rising sea levels blamed on climate change, said on Monday it would introduce a new environment tax on all tourists who use its resorts and provide its economic lifeline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Famed mostly for high-end luxury resorts and white-sand atolls, the Maldives has made a name for itself as an advocate for mitigating climate change because rising sea levels are forecast to submerge most of its islands by 2100.<\/p>\n

The Maldives’ $850 million economy gets more than a quarter of its gross domestic product from tourists, but has not yet taxed them to help it fight climate change.<\/p>\n

President Mohammed Nasheed, who in March outlined plans to make the Maldives the world’s first carbon-neutral nation within a decade, said an environment tax was soon to be levied on all tourists.<\/p>\n

“We have introduced a green tax. It’s in the pipeline. It’s a matter of parliament approving it and I hope parliament will approve it — $3 per each tourist a day,” Nasheed told reporters in Male, the capital of the Indian Ocean archipelago.<\/p>\n

Based on an annual average of 700,000 tourists who spend an average of three days on the islands, that translates to about $6.3 million annually.<\/p>\n

In March, Nasheed launched a $1.1 billion initiative to convert the islands solely to renewable energy from fossil fuels, and buy and destroy EU carbon credits to offset emissions from tourists flying to visit its resorts.<\/p>\n

The government has acknowledged it needs outside investment to fund those plans, and Nasheed’s trip to U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December.<\/p>\n

Last month, his office said he would not attend the talks because of a budget crisis that forced the country to seek a $60 million International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan.<\/p>\n

Nasheed said he still had no plans to attend “unless someone very generously helps us. I hope someone will assist us.”<\/p>\n

He said the Maldives had little leverage in the outcome of the Copenhagen talks, which are to create a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, but a huge stake.<\/p>\n

“There is no point in Maldives entering the agreement. It is a small country. It is India, China, Brazil, the United States that have to join in,” he said. “No one is going to come out as a winner without an agreement.”<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Maldives archipelago, threatened by rising sea levels blamed on climate change, said on Monday it would introduce a new environment tax on all tourists who use its resorts and provide its economic lifeline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[7880],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sectoral","tag-maldives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8641,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/8641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}