The G7 nations meet in Cornwall this weekend (11-13 June), for the first face-to-face meeting during the UK’s G7 Presidency. In the lead-up to the event, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly said he wants to use the opportunity to ‘unite leading democracies to help the world fight, and then build back better from coronavirus and create a greener, more prosperous future.’
The seven members (UK, USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy, plus the EU) will also be joined by leaders from the invited guest countries Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa. They face a formidable agenda of pressing global challenges, from pandemic recovery to climate change, trade and taxation, and the foremost issue in the battle against Covid-19 – vaccine equity. Below is analysis and commentary from IDS researchers and centres on how G7 leaders should address these issues.
Global vaccine distribution
The recent letter from the Wellcome Trust and UNICEF UK to the UK Prime Minister on Covid-19 vaccines sets out that COVAX, the international vaccine equity initiative is 190 million doses short of where it needs to be. This equity in supply is an urgent issue to be addressed, but in parallel to that the G7 also needs to be committed to investing in effective vaccine roll-out through health systems and building vaccine confidence.
Social science research on vaccine deployment in low and middle-income countries demonstrates how essential it is to not only ensure the arrival of vaccine doses but also to build the confidence among the population locally to take it up.
Research by the Social Science for Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) shows that evidence suggests the public health benefits of approved COVID-19 vaccines will be undermined by vaccine hesitancy, particularly in the era of online misinformation. However, SSHAP researchers warn against assuming vaccine hesitancy is driven solely by anti-vaccine misinformation and is ‘more complex and context-specific, and often reflects diverse, everyday anxieties.’
Building vaccine confidence and working in local context specific ways therefore is a Covid-19 issue G7 leaders must take seriously for effective recovery, along with increasing global vaccine production capabilities and strengthening health systems for the long term.
Climate change and biodiversity
Each of the G7 nations has signed up to a global initiative to protect or conserve at a minimum 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean territory by the year 2030. The initiative known as 30×30 has received widespread global support and is designed to ‘bend the curve of biodiversity loss by 2030’. However, many also believe that it is a ‘top-down initiative that amounts to ‘green grabbing’ and risks depriving indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, foragers and fishing communities of their livelihoods and lands in the name of environmental ‘restoration’.
On this issue, Dr Amber Huff, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, comments: “The international conservation industry has a long history of failing to recognize or act on the problems it can cause, particularly in the area of ‘green grabbing’. Our global biodiversity and climate crisis requires action, but the action must address the root drivers of crises and accept the fact that people can and do live sustainably with nature, while making use of it for their livelihoods and wellbeing.
“Plans like the blanket 30×30 initiative will rob indigenous peoples and rural farmers, foragers and fishing communities around the world of their lands and livelihoods in the name of environmental ‘restoration’. This will deepen inequalities and devastate people who may already be vulnerable due to insecure land rights, and who struggle against socio-political and economic marginalisation. They are suffering the most from biodiversity loss and climate change but have done the least to create it.
“We need new conservation approaches that put environmental justice and the realities and knowledge of people living in the planet’s most precious and vulnerable places at the heart of decision making.”
Global taxation
UK newspapers were awash with headlines about the G7 Finance Ministers’ ‘historic global tax deal’ reached the week before the G7 leaders’ summit, but analysis by the IDS-based International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) reveals this ‘deal’ is not within the gift of the G7 alone to make.
The two main bodies who have been central to the ongoing international tax negotiations are instead the G20 and the OECD, via its Inclusive Framework. As ICTD Research Associate Rasmus Corlin Christensen states, “negotiations fall under the auspices of the “Inclusive Framework”, a forum established in 2016 under the OECD, at the behest of the G20. It has a vastly expanded membership, now gathering 139 countries and jurisdictions, all formally on an “equal footing” to decide the direction of the international tax system.”
So, rather than the G7 ‘tax deal’ being a task complete, the steps G7 leaders now need to take are accepting that this is only a starting point, working with the G20 – including the crucial global players China, India and Brazil – and recognising that lower income countries also have an equal voice in achieving an agreed way forward for international taxation.
International trade negotiations
As India attends the G7 as a guest country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi does so against a backdrop of ongoing trade negotiations between India and the UK and India and the EU. Particularly in light of the trade trip to India that Boris Johnson had to cancel in April due to Covid-19, both countries will be keen to use the opportunity to make progress on trade.
On the UK-India bilateral relationship for trade, Dr Amrita Saha, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, comments that: “A distinct combination of characteristics sets apart UK-India negotiations from the usual trade talks. This includes rising trade and the promise for quick wins, likelihood to revive bilateral goods trade, huge potential in services and strong business-to-business links. There are also critically important geo-political factors, and the potential for development gains – all set against the trailing legacy of British colonial rule.”
“Indian businesses are keen to further partnership with the UK, and both sides could stand to gain. Business-to-business and business-to-government relations have been facilitated over the years by extensive policy and advocacy efforts across sectors, backed by a huge Indian diaspora in the UK, and through strategic advisory businesses and non-profit organisations. But the road ahead is not straightforward, and there are several complexities to be navigated on both ends.”
Promoting and defending open societies
Rising authoritarianism around the world is diminishing civic and digital rights and closing down civil space – online and offline spaces where people organise, voice different political opinions, and participate in governance. Recent IDS research on the shrinking of digital rights in ten African countries, and evidence of governments using the Covid-19 pandemic as cover to suppress human rights and dissent in Nigeria, Mozambique and Pakistan, demonstrates the urgency of this issue, and how it is eroding democracy and open societies.
As civil society organisations, activists and journalists are finding new online ways to mobilise and communicate, repressive national governments are finding new ways to clamp down on them. IDS research shows that this is being carried out through measures including arrests and abductions of outspoken critics, digital surveillance, disinformation campaigns and internet shutdowns. The UK has listed open societies as one of its priorities for the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and defending civil space – and essential component of democracy, governance and open and inclusive societies – is a challenge that requires co-ordinated commitment from all G7 nations.
Foreign aid cuts
In the UK, all of these issues will be reported over the weeknd in the context of the controversial decision by the UK government to reduce foreign aid spending from 0.7 percent of national income to 0.5 percent – instantly wiping £4bn from the budget. A group of UK MPs from the Prime Minister’s own party have used the week leading up to the G7 to increase the pressure on the Government to pledge to return to 0.7 and reinstate support for those hardest hit by Covid-19, and the UK contribution to fighting global poverty and disease.
Professor Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies, comments: “At the time the UK hosts the G7 this weekend and COP26 later in the year, the lack of ambition for the UK’s role in international development set out in the Integrated Review and demonstrated by the damning cuts to the aid budget and funding for international research is seriously disappointing.
“These cuts are dramatically reducing the UK’s ability to deliver high-quality, interdisciplinary research essential to improving the lives of people around the world. It is also a major loss for the country’s longstanding role as a development superpower, and the soft power and global influence it creates. To restore the vital contribution to research and development to tackle the most pressing global challenges that affect us all, the Government needs to urgently restore the commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on Official Development Assistance as soon as possible.”
For more on the topics being discussed at the G7 and on related IDS research follow @IDS_UK on twitter.
Key contacts
