Abstract
The study examined the impact of fuel subsidy removal and carbon Taxation in developing countries taking Lagos State, Nigeria as a case study. Lagos state was chosen because it is the commercial heartbeat of the nation having a teeming population of about 9 million people according to the 2006 census.
The research is in tandem with the Conference of Parties Agreement on Climate Change and Global warming, MDG and SDG goals. The major stakeholders which include the CEO’S of SME’s, Civil servants, Environmentalists, Town planners, law Makers, commuters, Road transport Workers, traders and residents were interviewed and data collected with aid of well-structured questionnaires.
The study used multistage random sampling procedure to select respondents from the 20 Local Government Areas in the state. ArcGIS 10 was used to map the geospatial attributes. Descriptive and inferential analysis were done using SPSS 21 software. Results revealed that the removal of fuel subsidy has negatively impacted the nations GDP with challenges such as increment in transportation cost, increased poverty rate, decrease in consumer purchasing power and inflation, also the introduction of carbon taxation will further worsen the situation as alternatives to cushion these effects are not properly running in the country presently.
Keywords: Fuel Subsidy, Carbon Taxation, Climate change, Economic Development, Developing Countries.