G7 leaders urged to show solidarity on climate change and COVID-19

Green  groups,  development  agencies  and  international policy experts said those gestures  would  be  effective  in  building  trust  ahead  of  November’s  COP26  climate  talks  in  Glasgow,  seen  as  crucial  to  putting  the  2015 Paris climate accord into practice.

But  persuading  G7  leaders  to  dig  deeper  has  been  further  complicated  by  Britain’s  decision to temporarily cut its overseas aid budget  due  to  COVID-19  economic  woes,  even  while  doubling  its  climate  finance  in  the next five years.

Pete  Betts,  a  former  EU  lead  climate  negotiator,   said   the   UK   aid   decision   had   caused  disappointment  in  the  developing  world and prompted senior officials in other   rich   countries   to   question   why   they   should raise their climate finance pledges.

“I fear it is eroding and undermining the UK’s credibility to push others to do more,” the  former  UK  bureaucrat,  now  an  associate  fellow  at  think-tank  Chatham  House,  said  during  an  online  press  briefing  on  Monday.

British   Prime   Minister   Boris   Johnson  told  a  high-level  dialogue  hosted  by  Germany  in  May  he  hoped  to  secure  a  “substantial pile of cash” at June’s G7 meeting, so that rich nations would fulfill an unmet  promise  to  channel  $100  billion  a  year  in  climate  finance  to  vulnerable  countries  from 2020.

Rachel Kyte, dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University, said G7 leaders should make  a  clear  commitment  to  honour  that  pledge - first made in 2009 - before COP26.They should also flesh out a new climate finance  target  for  2025  and  increase  development  aid  through  international  institutions, she said. All G7 nations should “come with more” climate finance while loosening conditions attached to it, she said.