GCET25 Conference

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25th Global Conference on Environmental Taxation

18 – 20 September 2024

Stellenbosch, South Africa

The Global Conference on Environmental Taxation (GCET) has been held every year since 2000 and is the leading global forum for interdisciplinary exchanges on the principles and practices of environmental taxation and other market-based instruments for addressing climate change, protecting the environment and promoting a just energy transition.

 

The annual conferences provide an international and interdisciplinary setting to explore issues concerning the design and implementation of environmental taxes and opportunities for creating networks to explore various theoretical and practical issues. The conferences are not intended to advance any particular environmental agenda, but rather to advance knowledge and foster international collaboration. We welcome individuals from the global North and South to exchange ideas and share their expertise on the environmental issues faced in their respective countries, including:

 

  • Academics and early-career researchers from universities and institutions of higher education in the fields of law, economics, taxation, accounting, public administration, environmental studies, political economy, and more.
  • Government officials from all levels of administration, including provincial, state, and territorial levels from ministries and departments of finance, taxation, transport, urban design, energy, water, environment, and natural resources; and
  • Representatives of international and non-governmental organizations (such as the World Bank, OECD and the UN), tax and accounting professionals, private sector executives, and other experts.

Previous GCET conferences were held in Cleveland, Ohio USA (2000), Vancouver, Canada (2001), Woodstock, Vermont USA (2002), Sydney, Australia (2003), Pavia, Italy (2004), Leuven, Belgium (2005), Ottawa, Canada (2006), Munich, Germany (2007), Singapore (2008), Lisbon, Portugal (2009), Bangkok, Thailand (2010), Madrid, Spain (2011), Vancouver, Canada (2012), Kyoto, Japan (2013), Copenhagen, Denmark (2014), Sydney, Australia (2015), Groningen, The Netherlands (2016), Tucson, USA (2017), Madrid, Spain (2018), Limassol, Cyprus (2019), South Royalton, USA (2020), Groningen, the Netherlands (2021), Parma, Italy (2022) and Paris, France (2023).

Presenters at GCET25 will have the opportunity to submit their papers for possible publication in the peer-reviewed edited volume “Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation”.

This book forms part of the prestigious series published annually by Edward Elgar publishers.

The Call for Papers will be sent shortly after the end of the conference. Publication of a volume each year depends on receiving a sufficient number of quality papers that are recommended for publication following peer review.

The Kreiser Award is an honour granted annually to a person who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of environmental taxation and other economic instruments in research or policy.

 

The award is named in recognition of Professor Larry Kreiser, Professor Emeritus of Accounting and former Chairperson of the Department of Accounting at Cleveland State University, Ohio, USA. Professor Kreiser had the inspiration and energy to begin gathering experts from key disciplines together to create an international forum for exchanging the latest research and experience on the use of environmental taxation.

 

This initial idea and the First Global Conference on Environmental Taxation in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2000 planted the seeds that led to this successful series of annual conferences on environmental taxation.

One of the key objectives of GCET is the promotion of junior contributions and the fostering of state-of-the art scientific research.

Accordingly, any student or researcher younger than age 35 (as at 1 April 2024) can be a candidate for the “GCET25 Young Researcher Award” if their abstract is accepted.

Saliem Fakir is an expert in the fields of climate and energy, finance and economics. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the African Climate Foundation, the first strategic grant-making foundation on the African continent with a focus on delivering impact through support to interventions at the climate-development nexus. He currently also holds the position of honorary lecturer at the Mandela School of Governance (UCT). Saliem serves on the Board of GreenCape and the Atlantic Special Economic Zone. Prior to establishing the African Climate Foundation, Saliem served as the Head of the Policy & Futures Unit of WWF South Africa for 11 years. He worked at Lereko Energy Investments. He served as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Public Administration and Planning and an Associate Director for the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy at Stellenbosch University. Prior to that he served as Director of the World Conservation Union, South Africa (IUCN-SA) for eight years. He has served on several other Boards and is a prolific writer who contributes regularly to leading South African publications like Engineering News, Business Day and the Daily Maverick.
Stephanus van Zyl is a professor in Tax Law in the department of Mercantile Law at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is a research fellow at the African Tax Institute at the University of Pretoria and a visiting professor at Gujarat National Law University, India. He lectures on income tax law and value added tax law. He is a well-respected researcher of tax law. He has published widely, locally, and internationally, on e-commerce, value added tax, tax administration, environmental taxes, and income tax. He was instrumental to the e-commerce amendments to the VAT legislation in South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana. He has advised the Davis tax commission on the impact of e-commerce on the collection of value added tax. He serves on the Indirect Tax Technical Committee of the African Tax Administration Forum. He serves on the African Tax Research Network advisory board as the chair of research and ethics. He advises the South African National Treasury, the Mauritius Revenue Authority, and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (Nigeria) regularly. He is a Master Tax Practitioner and an academic member of the South African Institute for Tax Practitioners.
Keith Engel is the CEO of the South African Institute of Taxation (SAIT), a prominent professional body for tax practitioners. As part of his core duties managing the Institute, he is actively engaged in tax at a policy, legislative and interpretative level (e.g., with National Treasury, Parliament, SARS, the Davis Tax Committee, and the private sector). His role also includes presentations and participation in a wide range of South African tax and regional African tax issues for technical audiences and is repeatedly engaging with the media. Outside of the Institute, he regularly teaches at the Wits University as an adjunct professor and provides lectures at other universities. Keith is well known for his leading roles in the formulation of tax legislation at the National Treasury from 2000 to 2013.
Ian Parry is the Principal Environmental Fiscal Policy Expert in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. Previously he held the Allen Kneese Chair in Environmental Economics at Resources for the Future. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993. Parry’s research focuses on country-level analysis of carbon pricing and other policies to implement mitigation strategies and their broader fiscal and economic impacts. Parry also quantifies the broader environmental (e.g., local air pollution) costs of fossil fuel use at the country level and efficient levels of fuel prices needed to reflect supply and environmental costs.
Nthabiseng Moleko is a development economist and a senior lecturer in Managerial Economics and Statistics at Stellenbosch Business School. She is the CEO and Founder of Ngezandla Advisory, an interdisciplinary research and advisory firm that specialises in providing unique solutions to business, governments, and the philanthropic sector to navigate the complexities of today’s challenging terrain. She has worked in the macroeconomic, development finance, public finance, economic development, and econometrics fields for 18 years. In 2018 she was appointed to the Board of Trustees for the National Empowerment Fund, where she Chaired the Board’s Investment Committee. In 2021 she was appointed as the Chairperson of the National Empowerment Fund and has recently been appointed to the Presidential B-BBEE Advisory Council. She also serves in the strategic advisory committee of the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s Infrastructure Fund.
Ashfaq Ahmad is a high ranking Pakistani civil servant (an IRS officer), who was until last year, Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue, Pakistan. He holds a PhD in Political Economy and is a visiting faculty at about half a dozen national and international universities. He has now over 40 international publications to his credit on international financial architecture, international taxes, political economy, revenue system reforms, Pakistan’s economy, and of course environmental taxation. During his career he has won several fellowships that bear the seal of excellence such as World Bank Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship, and Charles Wallace Fellowship. Of late, he has his interest continually growing in international environmental justice, carbon taxation, carbon border adjustments and the international environmental diplomacy and relations – particularly from a Global South’s lens. He is currently Member of the United Nations Tax Committee, where he strongly raises his voice for developing countries’ fiscal rights. He also co-chairs the United Nations Committee on Environmental Taxation.
Shameela Soobramoney is the CEO of the South African National Business Initiative (NBI), an independent coalition of local and multinational businesses focusing on taking action to achieve social and environmental sustainability, underpinned by good governance. Shameela, formerly the Chief Sustainability Officer at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), led the JSE's Sustainability and Climate Change Disclosure Guidance initiative, which won the 2022 award for Thought Leadership in Sustainable Investing: Africa from Environmental Finance. Her notable contributions include advancing the JSE's exploration of climate change, carbon credit trading, and sustainable finance frameworks. She has served as chair of the World Federation of Exchange’s (global) Sustainability Working Group, a member of the Strategy Group of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance (GISD), and chair of the Sustainable Finance Working Group of the National Treasury of South Africa. Shameela holds a Master's in Sustainability Leadership from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). She is an alum of the Chevening and Mansion House scholarships.
Susanne Aakerfeldt is a Senior Adviser at the World Bank, Fiscal and Sustainable Growth Unit, seconded by the Swedish Government since April 2024, focusing on climate aspects of fiscal policy. During 30 years at the Swedish Ministry of Finance, she has been instrumental in fine-tuning the Swedish carbon tax as well as pursuing green tax reforms and aiming for the EU legislation to reflect the Polluter Pays Principle. From January 2021 until August 2022, she was part of the CBAM team at the EU Commission, being the lead legal drafter of the proposal. Returning to the Ministry, she took part in the CBAM negotiations in Council and contributed to its national implementation. Until March 2024 she served as Head of the Swedish Delegation to the EU CBAM Committee. She is since many years extensively engaged in global climate policy within the framework of the UN (as Co-Coordinator of UN Subcommittee on Environmental Taxation and contributor to the 2021 UN Handbook on Carbon Taxation for Developing Countries), as well as within the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action. Susanne has a Master of Laws degree from Uppsala University and received the Kreiser Award in 2020.
Karen Bosman is Head of Advocacy and Advisory at Wesgro, the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape. Karen is educated in international economic law and policy. Her focus at Wesgro includes the competitiveness of the Western Cape economy in a changing international economic context, with a particular focus on international trade, investment and tourism. Karen previously spent time working in Washington D.C. where her research focussed on international trade and investment law, regional integration, and enabling legal frameworks in Africa. She has also worked as a legislative advisor in the South African Parliament, and at a commercial law firm in Cape Town. She holds degrees in law (LLB) and in political science, philosophy and economics (B.A. PPE) from Stellenbosch University and a master in international economic law (LLM) from Georgetown University in the United States.
Chris Morgan’s background is in international tax and EU tax. Chris became Head of Tax Policy for KPMG UK in 2011 and in 2014 spearheaded KPMG UK’s Responsible Tax Programme. Chris’ role is now Head of Global Responsible Tax Programme which brings all stakeholders into a constructive debate about how to make tax systems work for all. The project has actively included input from organisations such as the UN, IMF, World Bank and OECD as well as from a wide range of Civil Society organisations. One of the areas of focus of the Programme is tax and the environment. Since 2021 Chris has run roundtables and global seminars looking at border carbon adjustments, compliance with WTO rules, the difference between incentives and tax, and the impact of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) on developing countries. Chris has also authored a number of papers looking at how tax could facilitate investment into decarbonisation especially in developing countries, the circular economy and a Carbon Added Tax. Chris is a member of the UN Sub-committee on Environmental Taxes and collaborated in producing the UN Handbook on Carbon Taxation. He is the lead drafter of a paper on the impact of border carbon adjustment mechanisms on developing countries.
Abel Sakhau is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Sanlam, the largest non-banking financial services group on the African continent, with a leading niche presence in Asia. Abel is a qualified environmental scientist from the University of Witwatersrand and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership and an MBA from Stellenbosch University. His expertise includes sustainability strategy development, managing professional and specialised business units in climate change, environmental management, and sustainability.