The latest G-7 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, G-7 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.
Mr. President Joe Biden sides with U.S. following Putin meeting, unlike Trump after Helsinki summit
— Melani Taylor🌊😷💪🥂 (@Melanitaylor88) June 17, 2021
To this day I still have never heard a Republican voter or politician explain why Trump sided with Putin over our own intelligence officials
Even Putin.... pic.twitter.com/ndQME6EN7C
There was absolutely nothing at the G-7 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 normalise international discussions.
If #G7 wants to remain relevant in today's world, it must face up to root cause of many of the crises we face
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) June 10, 2021
This should be the summit when G7 becomes the W7, pledging to shift economies from endless growth to focus on #wellbeing
Me for @Independent 👇https://t.co/tChHWTL737
But why should those discussions occur within the G-7, which has been superseded by the G-20? When the G-7 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 per cent of world GDP (measured at international prices), whereas the developing countries of Asia accounted for just 8.8 per cent. In 2021, the G-7 countries produce a mere 31 per cent of world GDP, while the same Asian countries produce 32.9 per cent.
He is as relevant to the G7 as an electric vehicle is to Angus Taylor pic.twitter.com/aHCwRZVxMa
— Damian_Daymon🚒 (@DamianDaymon) June 12, 2021
The G-20, by including China, India, Indonesia, and other large developing countries, represents around 81 per cent 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 G-20 offers a fruitful format for discussing global topics covering most of the world economy. The annual EU-US Summit can accomplish much that the G-7 originally aimed to cover.
What are 7 the most important #Climate Facts about the #G7? Check it out👇: https://t.co/wZxPUt7nqe pic.twitter.com/TDwQYZXPcY
— Climate Transparency (@ClimateT_G20) June 11, 2021
The G-7 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.
Joe Biden wants the G7 countries to gang up on China because the US cannot compete with them. Isn't the G7 and G20 all about cooperation.
— Sayit Straight 🇨🇦🏳️🌈⚛️💢🇺🇸🌊🌊🌊 (@PissedOffGenius) June 13, 2021
Senile Joe goes there with his belief that only the US matters and that everyone should do what he says.
Well Joe, those days are long gone. pic.twitter.com/ahDS1tKOce
Consider COVID-19 vaccines. The G7 leaders set the goal of vaccinating at least 60 per cent of the global population. They also pledged to share 870 million doses directly over the next year, presumably meaning enough for 435 million fully immunised individuals (with two doses per person). But 60 per cent of the global population comes to 4.7 billion people, or roughly ten times that number.
So impressed by #MountRecyclemore commissioned by @MusicMagpie to coincide with #G7Summit in Cornwall. Its not quite as big as it looks in media but still v impressive! Recycling & repairability SO important & the consumer electronics industry is still not doing enough yet. pic.twitter.com/huGQVDsgB6
— Ben Wood (@benwood) June 10, 2021
The G-7 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.
“With all due respect, just coming and doing a staged visit is not enough. They have to understand.”
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) June 11, 2021
Democratic Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar called on the Biden administration to do more to secure the border. https://t.co/4LSFFjbkb9
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 G-7 governments let the vaccine manufacturers negotiate privately and secretly, rather than as part of a global plan. Perhaps a third reason is that the G-7 looked at global targets without thinking hard enough about the needs of each recipient country.
'Russia can't afford a cold war with US with growing and rising China at its border' - Biden to Putin. pic.twitter.com/BKQUwFuQUb
— Rohitashw Trivedi (@RohitashwT) June 16, 2021
Yet. another example of the G-7’s false promises is climate change. At the latest summit, G-7 leaders rightly embraced the goal of global decarbonisation 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 mobilise $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025 in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation”.
Biden said the queen asked him about world leaders, including Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping. She also asked what life in the White House was like. https://t.co/6PahtVBAC7
— NPR (@NPR) June 14, 2021
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 per cent of rich countries’ annual GDP. And the promised $100 billion is itself a small fraction of what developing countries need for de-carbonisation and climate adaptation.
The disconnect between the G-7’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.
Why resist G7?!
— Resist G7 (@resistg7) April 29, 2021
The G7 exists in a setting of global capitalism, where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. These meetings serve to maintain the capitalist system by exploiting poorer nations, and in turn, supporting the wealth of the G7 countries.
Join us and #ResistG7! pic.twitter.com/Ag2kwcnHh6
So, what does the G-7 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 mobilising low-interest financing from multilateral development banks — but the G-7 leaders didn’t propose such solutions.
"The US has the lowest minimum wage of all G7 nations, in terms of purchasing power, and the third-highest poverty rate in the OECD"
— Penni Whistle (@Penni_Lanterne) February 26, 2021
...and the @DNC, rather than fighting poverty, continues to fight the poor. https://t.co/JZD4Fi9kfJ
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 G-7 summit would perhaps have a role to play. Yet, we have urgent global needs to meet: Ending a pandemic, decarbonising 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 G-20 (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.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor at Columbia University, is director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary General António Guterres. His books include “The End of Poverty”, “Common Wealth”, “The Age of Sustainable Development”, “Building the New American Economy”, “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism”, and, most recently, “The Ages of Globalisation”. ©Project Syndicate, 2021.