We don’t need the G7

We don’t need the G7

Jeffrey D. Sachs, June 17, 2021

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General. His article is enlightening as follows.

The latest G7 summit was a waste of resources. If it had to be held at all, it should have been conducted online, saving time, logistical costs, and airplane emissions. But, more fundamentally, G7 summits are an anachronism. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them.

There was absolutely nothing at the G7 summit that could not have been accomplished much more cheaply, easily, and routinely by Zoom. The most useful diplomatic meeting this year was President Joe Biden’s online meeting with 40 world leaders in April to discuss climate change. Routine online international meetings by politicians, parliamentarians, scientists, and activists are important. They normalize international discussions.

But why should those discussions occur within the G7, which has been superseded by the G20? When the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) began their annual summit meetings in the 1970s, they still dominated the world economy. In 1980, they constituted 51% of world GDP (measured at international prices), whereas the developing countries of Asia accounted for just 8.8%. In 2021, the G7 countries produce a mere 31% of world GDP, while the same Asian countries produce 32.9%.

The G20, by including China, India, Indonesia, and other large developing countries, represents around 81% of world output, and balances the interests of its high-income and developing economies. It is not perfect, as it leaves out smaller and poorer countries and should add the African Union (AU) as a member, but at least the G20 offers a fruitful format for discussing global topics covering most of the world economy. The annual EU-US Summit can accomplish much that the G7 originally aimed to cover.

The G7 is particularly irrelevant because its leaders don’t deliver on their promises. They like making symbolic statements, not solving problems. Worse, they give the appearance of solving global problems, while really leaving them to fester. This year’s summit was no different.

Consider COVID-19 vaccines. The G7 leaders set the goal of vaccinating at least 60% of the global population. They also pledged to share 870 million doses directly over the next year, presumably meaning enough for 435 million fully immunized individuals (with two doses per person). But 60% of the global population comes to 4.7 billion people, or roughly ten times that number.

The G7 leaders offered no plan for achieving their stated aim of global coverage, and in fact, have not developed one, even though it would not be hard to do. Estimating the monthly production of every COVID-19 vaccine is straightforward, and allocating those doses fairly and efficiently to all countries is entirely feasible.

One reason such a plan has not yet been developed is that the US government so far refuses to sit down with Russian and Chinese leaders to devise such a global allocation. Another reason is that the G7 governments let the vaccine manufacturers negotiate privately and secretly, rather than as part of a global plan. Perhaps a third reason is that the G7 looked at global targets without thinking hard enough about the needs of each recipient country.

Yet another example of the G7’s false promises is climate change. At the latest summit, G7 leaders rightly embraced the goal of global decarbonization by 2050, and called on developing countries to do so as well. Yet, rather than laying out a financing plan to enable developing countries to achieve that target, they reiterated a financial pledge first made in 2009 and never fulfilled. “We reaffirm the collective developed country goal,” they averred, “to jointly mobilize $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025 in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.”

It is hard to overstate the cynicism of this oft-repeated pledge. The rich countries missed their own deadline of 2020 for providing the long-promised $100 billion per year – a mere 0.2% of rich countries’ annual GDP. And the promised $100 billion is itself a small fraction of what developing countries need for decarbonization and climate adaptation.

The disconnect between the G7’s soaring aims and meager means is apparent on education as well. Hundreds of millions of children in poor countries lack access to primary and secondary education because their governments don’t have the financial means to provide teachers, classrooms, and supplies. In 2020, UNESCO estimated that the low- and lower-middle-income countries need around $504 billion per year up to 2030 to ensure that all kids complete a secondary education, but have only around $356 billion of their own domestic resources, leaving a financing gap of around $148 billion per year.

So, what does the G7 propose in this year’s communiqué? The leaders propose “a target to get 40 million more girls into education and with at least $2.75 billion for the Global Partnership for Education.” These are not serious numbers. They are pulled out of thin air and would leave hundreds of millions of children out of school, despite the world’s firm commitment (enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal 4) to universal secondary education. Large-scale solutions are available – such as mobilizing low-interest financing from multilateral development banks – but the G7 leaders didn’t propose such solutions.

The world’s problems are far too urgent to leave to empty posturing and to measures that are a mere token of what is needed to achieve stated ends. If politics were a mere spectator sport, to be judged by which politicians mugged best the cameras, the G7 summit would perhaps have a role to play. Yet we have urgent global needs to meet: ending a pandemic, decarbonizing the energy system, getting kids in school, and achieving the SDGs.

My recommendations: fewer face-to-face meetings, more serious homework to link means and ends, more routine Zoom meetings to discuss what really needs to be done, and greater reliance on the G20 (plus the AU) as the group that can actually follow through. We need Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the table for any true global problem solving.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

There is a paragraph in Chinese:"對於這一經常重複的承諾之蔑視和懷疑，是難以用言語去表達的。富裕國家錯過了它們自己定下的2020年的最後期限，未能提供承諾已久的每年1000億美元，這僅佔富裕國家年GDP的0.2%。而且，這承諾的1000億美元本身，只是發展中國家脫碳和適應氣候變化所需資金的一小部分。七國集團的眼高手低在教育方面也盡顯無遺。.... " The Professor listed exactly the crucial facts  showing clearly that we don't need the G7.

S. L. LI  Engineer
HKFDP

香港建設專業聯會

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

法新社日前報道，法國總統馬克龍、德國總理默克爾今天將與中國國家主席習近平通過視頻召開會議。該報道稱，中國國家主席習近平，法國總統馬克龍以及德國總理默克爾在今年4月曾召開視頻會議，就氣候和健康問題討論。在對跨國公司徵稅的議題上，上述3國領導人會談或會涉及。默克爾和馬克龍敦促中國對歐洲人放寬旅行限制，三人還同意存在恢復伊朗核協議的機會窗口。

習近平主席指出，當前，全球疫情形勢依然嚴峻，經濟復甦前景不明。世界比以往任何時候都更需要相互尊重、精誠合作，而不是猜忌對立、零和博弈。希望中歐擴大共識和合作，為妥善應對全球性挑戰發揮重要作用。

三個月內，歐洲的主要國家德國法國與中國三個領導人兩次舉行視頻會議，這本身說明了中歐合作意愿非常強。中歐沒有地緣政治衝突，他們知道中國沒有軍事侵略任何其他國家的意圖，合作有巨大的戰略好處～如經貿關係為雙方帶來巨大利益，中歐雖有競爭，但不會損害這樣的合作。

而美國前總統特朗普除了拉攏日本、以色列，以及出了一個偏激總理的澳洲外，實際上是打壓包括歐洲在內的全世界。拜登總統雖則努力修補關係，但歐盟已經學到教訓，依靠美國朝令夕改的所謂堅定承諾非常危險。因此，德法領袖大致順著拜登之意，語言上附和，但也緩和之，發表公開對中聲明後，轉身又跟習近平主席視訊。更別說，歐盟頭號戰略對手是俄國，並非中國，美國又企圖討好俄國，等於背棄歐洲盟友，如此又給了中國在歐洲出牌的機會。歐洲致力於戰略自主，對華關係是塑造這種戰略自主的主要部分。

中歐意識形態是有分歧，但美國企圖將這種分歧戰略化，希望讓這種分歧主導中歐關係， 從而服務於美國打壓中國的 戰略企圖，這太瘋狂了，歐洲人沒有那麼蠢。讓歐洲為美國霸權作出重大自我利益犧牲，加上美國不能給予歐洲任何補償，這樣的地緣政治基礎已經不復存在。所以美國在歐洲勉強得到了一些口頭上的聲援之後 ，它會很快發現，要想在實質上拖著歐洲去反中真的是舉步維艱。 損人利己的行為終將得不到支持，這是美國失道寡助的根本原因.

正如習近平主席所講，中國人只是想幹好自己的事情，並非上取代什麼其他人。 中國和平發展，與所有國家進行合作共贏的關係。這是中國戰勝美國的打壓及圍堵的最佳策略。 中國會繼續以自身的發展為重心，耐心地跟美國再打十年八載的太極拳。而耐心，剛好是美國最欠缺的，美國也很難有長久規劃。希望美國的當權者醒悟，認識到合作才可共贏，唯我獨尊的霸權主義不得人心。

張偉強工程師 黎志豪武漢大學香港學生
香港建設專業聯會理事