NEW YORK —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.
But why should those discussions occur within the G-7, which has been superseded by the G-20? When the G-7 countries began their annual summit meetings in the 1970s, they still dominated the world economy. In 1980, they constituted 51% of world output , whereas the developing countries of Asia accounted for just 8.8%. In 2021, the G-7 countries produce a mere 31% of world GDP, while the same Asian countries produce 32.9%.
“ 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. ” One reason such a plan has not yet been developed is that the U.S. 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.
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 to universal secondary education.