‘Boris Johnson went into this weekend’s G7 summit promising to “vaccinate the world”. But by Sunday night it was clear that even the much anticipated– and completely insufficient– pledge to donate one billion covid-19 vaccine doses by the middle of next year would not be met. Neither was there any radical announcement on climate change or on cancelling Southern debt. In the words of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the summit would “go down as an unforgivable moral failure”. … While G7 nations are vaccinating their citizens at a rate of 4.6 million people a day, low-income countries can only manage 63,000. The G7 will have vaccinated almost all of its citizens by the end of the year while, at current rates, low-income countries would be waiting 57 years.’ – Excerpt from the article ‘The change we need will never come from the G7’ by Nick Dearden
It has been many months since South Africa and India had put forward a request at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for removing intellectual property rights (IPRs) on covid-18 vaccines, but the G7 continue to remain divided on throwing their weight at the WTO and seeing this happen, at least till the time the pandemic ended. What the meetings of the G7 at Cornwall, England, did announce, was making available one billion doses of vaccines, about which Dearden in his same article pointed out ‘On Friday, one billion doses were put on the table. This would only have been sufficient to immunise about 10 percent of the globally unvaccinated population. By Sunday, this number had fallen to 870 million, of which only about 600 million were genuinely “new”, most of which would not be offered until next year, and some of which seem closer to exports (they will need to be paid for) rather than donations. When we bear in mind that a single factory in Bangladesh could produce between 600 and 800 million doses a year if patents were waived, it becomes clear that this G7 pledge does not even function as a fig leaf.’
Criticising the falling short of the one-billion vaccine commitment by G7 than anywhere near required, a Financial Times (FT) article ‘G7’s vaccine pledge for poor nations branded inadequate by campaigners’ pointed out ‘The G7 commitment was too small a part of the estimated 2.5bn excess shots the group’s governments had already acquired beyond their domestic needs, said Professor Suerie Moon, co-director of the global health centre at the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. “While a 1bn-dose donation shows that leaders have finally stopped dithering, its less than half of what these countries could and should commit today,” said Moon, who also pointed to the “poor record for follow-up” on G7 summit deals.’
In this regard, an article ‘Lack of patent waivers would add over $70 billion to cost of vaccinating world: Oxfam’ by Jon Queally pointed out ‘“If the best G7 leaders can manage is to donate 1 billion vaccine doses then this summit will have been a failure,” said Oxfam’s health policy manager Anna Marriott in statement on Friday. With an estimated 11 billion doses needed to end the pandemic, Marriott said the G7 plan—as nice as it might sound to some on paper—is not going to cut it.’
The strange thing is that the costs of vaccinating are far less than the output lost, not to mention the primary goal of saving human lives. In this regard, an article ‘The west is passing the opportunity of the century’ in The Economist indicated ‘To get roughly 70 percent of the planet’s population inoculated by April, the imf calculates, would cost just $50 billion. The cumulative economic benefit by 2025, in terms of increased global output, would be $9 trillion, to say nothing of the many lives that would be saved. The cost amounts to just 0.13 percent of the G7’s GDP– a fifth of the amount its members have pledged to spend each year helping other countries. If a group formed to wrestle with big international threats cannot resolve to make such a no-brainer of an investment on humanity’s behalf, what can it do?’
The third important issue that the G7 did not reportedly address adequately was with regard to supporting developing countries in terms of debt moratorium/relief; since many developing countries are facing difficult external debt situations, especially after the amounts they needed to spend on providing Covid-19 vaccines, and providing stimulus to their countries, not to mentions on their balance of payments (BOP) situations due to very high food prices internationally, high level of oil prices, and low overall demand for exports due to pandemic-caused-recession globally.
The other thing of utmost importance in the shape of battling the climate change crisis head-on was also left hanging more on words than action. A detailed action plan on reducing fossil-fuel usage, and coming good on the commitment of providing $100 billion a year to low-income countries as climate finance, remained missing during the G7 Summit. In a Guardian published article ‘G7 affirmed goals but failed to provide funds needed to reach them, experts say’ Fiona Harvey pointed out in this regard ‘The G7 summit ended with rich nations reaffirming their goal to limit global heating to 1.5°C, and agreeing to protect and restore 30 percent of the natural world by the end of this decade, but failing to provide the funds experts say will be needed to reach such goals.’
Moreover, she pointed out that ‘The communiqué promised only: “We welcome the commitments already made by some of the G7 to increase climate finance and look forward to new commitments from others well ahead of Cop26.” Malik Amin Aslam, climate minister of Pakistan, said: “The G7 announcement on climate finance is really peanuts in the face of an existential catastrophe. It really comes as a huge disappointment for impacted and vulnerable countries like Pakistan– already compelled to ramp up their climate expenditures to cope with forced adaptation needs.” Aslam warned of the impact on the Cop26 talks: “At the least, countries responsible for this inescapable crisis need to live up to their stated commitments, otherwise the upcoming climate negotiations could well become an exercise in futility.” Despite committing to an end to financing coal overseas, and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, the G7 stopped short of calling a halt to the exploitation of new fossil fuel resources.’
In another Guardian published article, ‘Rich countries urged to come up with detailed plans to cut emissions’ by Fiona Harvey, she pointed out ‘The UK row about overseas aid spending– which Johnson is cutting from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%, with the loss of £4bn to the developing world– also put him in a poor position to browbeat his fellow leaders into stumping up more cash for climate finance. Poor nations were promised $100 billion a year from the rich world to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of climate breakdown, but that longstanding pledge has fallen short by about $20 billion.’
The third important issue that the G7 did not reportedly address adequately was with regard to supporting developing countries in terms of debt moratorium/relief; since many developing countries are facing difficult external debt situations, especially after the amounts they needed to spend on providing Covid-19 vaccines, and providing stimulus to their countries, not to mentions on their balance of payments (BOP) situations due to very high food prices internationally, high level of oil prices, and low overall demand for exports due to pandemic-caused-recession globally. Moreover, there was reportedly no indication of efforts made by the G7 during the Summit, towards quickening of the pace of the release of SDR 500 billion by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide much-needed BOP, and external debt repayments-related support to developing countries.
Nick Dearden in his article pointed out ‘Beyond vaccines, the pandemic has triggered a debt crisis in many countries, which could heighten poverty and inequality for a generation. Yet the G7 offered nothing new to change this situation, in particular taking no action against the banks and hedge funds which continue to drain billions of dollars a year from countries that should be spending on healthcare and economic protection. And on the major issue of our times, halting climate change, the summit merely reaffirmed a decade-old target to give developing countries $100bn a year to adapt to climate change– a promise which they have already failed to honour in practice– and made a commitment to phasing out coal, but with no real details.’
