REUTERS- The Group of Seven rich nations promised to get more Covid-19 jabs to poor countries and keep up their economic stimulus programmes at their first summit since Joe Biden became U.S. president.
Following is a summary of the main points agreed by the leaders of the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada at their three-day meeting at a beachside hotel in southwest England which ended yesterday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters the doses would come both directly and through COVAX, the U.N.-backed program delivering vaccines to low- and middle-income countries.
“We will promote our values, including by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” the G-7 said in a communique issued at the end of the summit.
G7 leaders also agreed to raise their contributions to meet an overdue spending pledge of $100 billion a year by rich countries to help poorer countries cut carbon emissions and cope with global warming, but only two nations offered firm promises of more cash.
Alongside plans billed as helping speed infrastructure funding in developing countries and a shift to renewable and sustainable technology, the world’s seven largest advanced economies again pledged to meet the climate finance target.
But climate groups said the promise made in the summit’s final communique lacked detail and the developed nations should be more ambitious in their financial commitments.
The seven nations reaffirmed their commitment to “jointly mobilise $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025”.
“Towards this end, we commit to each increase and improve our overall international public climate finance contributions for this period and call on other developed countries to join and enhance their contributions to this effort.”
