Britain is using its G7 summit to mobilise allies ahead of the COP26 conference in November in Glasgow amid pressure from environmental groups to make the meeting count.
The climate emergency, with the Covid-19 pandemic, is high on the agenda at the summit for wealthy nations in bucolic Cornwall in southwest England this weekend.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson restated his aim of a "green industrial revolution" to meet environmental challenges and create jobs after the global health crisis.
Both the optics of the summit as well as its politics are important for Britain, which hosts the UN climate change conference in Scotland in November.
"The UK has a serious moral responsibility to lead the way on climate and nature both as a big historical emitter of carbon but also as the host of those big conferences," Greenpeace UK's head of politics Rebecca Newsom told AFP.
"We need to see proper action, otherwise our world leaders are failing us," she said.
Greenpeace released a striking video for the occasion, deploying 300 drones to form animal shapes in the sky and urge action on biodiversity as well as the climate.
– Halving carbon emissions –
The summit also played host to a series of demonstrations with protesters vying for attention.
Oxfam activists wore masks showing the faces of the summit's leaders while others, urging Japan to stop burning coal, dressed as giant Pokemon character Pikachu.
Overwhelmingly, strict security measures kept the demonstrators away from the leaders' meetings in the seaside resort of Carbis Bay.
Only Extinction Rebellion protesters briefly breached one police cordon.
"We're hopeful that (US) President Biden has changed the dynamic on climate change and that we will see the ambitious targets that we need from the G7," said Oxfam campaigner Max Lawson.
Johnson is pushing for G7 countries to halve their carbon emissions by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The commitment was one of the major advances made by the United States at a US climate conference in April.
G7 environment ministers subsequently committed to end public support for coal-fired power stations this year.
In Cornwall, the leaders might also adopt a common position on new polluting cars, following Britain's example, which has pledged to ban the sale of conventional petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
However, they are not expected to make any high-profile announcements on fossil fuels, despite calls by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to halt extraction projects.
Britain has continued to allow new drilling in the North Sea.
Johnson has been criticised for sending mixed signals on climate change, even though the country has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050.
– 'Climate justice' –
Johnson flew to Cornwall from London in less than an hour instead of taking a four-hour train ride, to the ire of environmentalists.
"What impression does flying from London to Cornwall give at the outset of climate talks?" Friends of the Earth asked on Twitter, urging the prime minister to take the issues seriously.
Johnson is also looking to push the G7 for progress on biodiversity, and a commitment to protect at least 30 percent of the globe's land and oceans.
Ali Tabriz, director of the hit Netflix documentary "Seaspiracy", said action was needed to tackle the impact of industrial fishing.
"The oceans, for many years, have been the neglected environmental issue, and this is why the plundering has been allowed to continue," he said.
"We've lost 90 percent of the large fish in our oceans in just the last several decades, and many species are on the brink of extinction."
For climate activists, financing to encourage developing countries to act on the environment is a key issue that must be resolved if the Paris climate agreements are to be met.
French NGO Réseau Action Climat (Climate Action Network) wants major countries to meet commitments to provide $100 billion a year in aid for the energy transition, saying the G7 could commit to "green" infrastructure funding.
"Without an announcement of increased funding, the chances of success for the climate negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow in November are diminishing," Network member Aurore Mathieu warned, adding that action was "about climate justice".
G7 to agree climate, conservation targets as summit ends
Carbis Bay, United Kingdom (AFP) June 13, 2021 –
G7 leaders on Sunday will back new conservation and emission targets to curb climate change, and finalise collective action on several other fronts, as they wrap up a three-day summit aimed at showcasing revived Western unity.
The group of leading economies, holding their first in-person gathering in nearly two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, will agree to protect at least 30 percent of both land and ocean globally by the end of the decade.
The "Nature Compact" struck to try to halt and reverse biodiversity loss is also set to see them commit to nearly halve their carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 2010.
It includes mandating the use of only so-called clean coal for power "as soon as possible", ending most government support for the fossil fuel sector overseas and phasing out petrol and diesel cars.
Hailing the pact, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who is hosting the beachside summit in Cornwall, southwest England — said the G7 wanted to "drive a global Green Industrial Revolution to transform the way we live".
"There is a direct relationship between reducing emissions, restoring nature, creating jobs and ensuring long-term economic growth," he added, in remarks released ahead of the summit's conclusion.
Climate change was a key G7 priority for his government, as it tries to lay the groundwork for hosting the UN COP26 environment summit in Glasgow in November.
But before the pledges had even been formally adopted, environmental campaigners blasted them as lacking enforcement and the necessary scope.
"Despite the green soundbites, Boris Johnson has simply reheated old promises and peppered his plan with hypocrisy, rather than taking real action to tackle the climate and nature emergency," said Greenpeace UK's executive director John Sauven.
He also noted wealthy nations had a "dismal track record" over the last decade honouring international climate finance commitments.
– Ties renewed –
The G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United States — were eager to hold their first physical summit since August 2019 to renew ties after the discord of Donald Trump's four years in power.
Joe Biden has sought to turn the page on his predecessor's international isolationism, seeking to open a new chapter in the Western alliance after Trump alienated and exasperated it at every turn.
The UK government turned to its royals to add a dash of grandeur to the G7 detente, with Queen Elizabeth II and her son Prince Charles hosting a Friday night reception with G7 leaders and European Union chiefs also attending.
Joined Saturday by counterparts from Australia, South Africa and South Korea — with India also taking part remotely — they then enjoyed an evening beach barbecue around fire pits, featuring a sea shanty band and toasted marshmallows.
Despite the lighter moments, the summit was largely consumed with the tough task of forging a more comprehensive response to the pandemic.
Leaders agreed a declaration to help prevent future pandemics and are expected to commit to donate one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to poor countries.
However, there they also faced pushback, with critics arguing it provides just a fraction of what is needed to inoculate the world against the virus, which has claimed nearly four million lives globally and is still spawning new variants.
– Tea with the queen –
The allies also unveiled US-led plans to counter China in infrastructure funding for poorer nations, promising to "collectively catalyse" hundreds of billions of investment.
The "Build Back Better World" (B3W) project is aimed squarely at competing with Beijing's trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which has been widely criticised for saddling small countries with unmanageable debt.
The leaders will publish further details on the B3W in the traditional end-of-summit communique, alongside issuing the Carbis Bay Declaration on health policy.
G7 leaders were set to return to discussions on other shared foreign policy challenges, on promoting "open societies".
Washington is pushing for a stronger stance on China's alleged forced labour practices against its Muslim Uyghur minority.
Current tense relations with Moscow, in particular over its cyber activity, are also expected to feature.
Most of those present will reconvene Monday in Brussels for a NATO meeting, before Biden heads on to his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, vowing to deliver a blunt message about Russian behaviour.
Before that, the US president will visit the queen at Windsor Castle late Sunday, where he and First Lady Jill Biden will take tea with Britain's longest-serving monarch.
