Climate, Sustainable Development and Nature Scored Wins at the G7 Summit
The Group of Seven (G7) recently held its annual summit in Hiroshima. The G7 forum for intergovernmental collaboration emerged 50 years ago, and is organized around shared values of pluralism, liberal democracy and representative government. While the group is convened as an informal gathering without the weight of a formal treaty or secretariat, it has significant international influence.
The G7 members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. The EU is a non-enumerated member. They are all major advanced economies (IMF) and collectively account for more than half of global wealth as well as 30-44% of GDP, per widely reported statistics.
The purpose of the annual summit is to discuss coordinating solutions to critical global issues. Trade, economics, security, non-proliferation, health, climate and energy policy have been making the list in recent years. The G7 Hiroshima Leaders’ Communiqué outlined top-line commitments made at this year’s summit. The environmental and social priority policy issues include:
Staying steadfast in commitment to the Paris agreement, including keeping a limit of 1.5°C global temperature rise within reach through scaled up action in this critical decade;
Halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030;
Accelerating achievement of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, recognizing that reducing poverty and tackling the climate and nature crisis go hand in hand;
Development of Global Sustainable Disclosure Standards;
Preserving the planet by accelerating the decarbonization of the energy sector and the deployment of renewables, ending plastic pollution and protecting the oceans; and,
Deepening cooperation through Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs), the Climate Club and new Country Packages for Forest, Nature and Climate.
The G7 support for the development of Global Sustainable Disclosure Standards is critically important and took the lion’s share of the slim press coverage. The traction on ESG issues – let alone the agreement reached – by these seven powerhouse nations has the potential to move the needle. A review of the Communiqué – and even just its chapeau – provides the specific commitments made on climate, SDGs, forests and oceans.
In the language of international law, the chapeau is the introductory text that appears in a treaty or agreement that broadly defines principles and objectives, and often background. I recall first hearing the term chapeau in this context back in the ‘90s from my favorite professor at Georgetown Law, Dr. Edith Brown Weiss. I took every course I could with Professor Weiss, who was an early force in international environmental law, including at the World Bank and UNEP. That meant saving my vacation time while a Presidential Management Fellow so I could take her International Environmental Law and EU Law seminars in Heidelberg. Those two weeks of summer study also enabled me to earn the added credits to graduate law school early, even if it did mean completing my law review write-on assignment on A4 paper in the University of Heidelberg’s computer lab over the weekend while my fellow classmates went to see the Rolling Stones outside of Paris. But I digress, and lucky for then-studious me, those same friends took me to see the Stones play when they toured in DC the next year, which was amazing.