Weekly Blog - 15 May 2023 - The G7
The G7 agenda
This week the leaders of the G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US) will meet in Hiroshima, Japan, from 19 – 21 May for their annual summit. The G7 formally comprises the world’s seven traditionally most powerful western nations. In recent years, as power in the international community has evolved, leaders from major emerging nations have also been invited, such as this year Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Korea amongst others.[1] The G7 has no formal infrastructure to implement its conclusions. However, the summits do send very clear signals about the shared priorities and agendas of the world’s most powerful nations, that they then implement through other international institutions like the UN, World Bank or European Union, and in their own domestic and foreign policies. This week Arise’s weekly blog takes a look at what is on the G7 agenda, and what actions the G7 should be taking in each area.
Climate change
High on the G7 agenda is the threat from global climate change. The G7 is meeting in the same week that the World Meteorological Organization issued a stark warning that there is a 66% chance that in the next five years global average temperature will rise above 1.5 degrees of warming, the critical level scientists say we must stay below to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.[2] In recent years the impacts of climate change have included heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, wildfires, landslides, massive polar melting, the melting of the world’s glaciers, sea-level rise, the devastation of coral systems, mass food and fresh water shortages, ill health, huge negative economic impacts, conflicts over scarce resources, the creation of huge numbers of climate refugees, and much more. In the past 6 months alone, we have seen a massive and tragic food crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, record temperatures in the UK and Europe, and devastating floods in Pakistan, New Zealand, Rwanda and DR Congo, all as a result of global climate change.
As Christians we know we are called both to care for God’s amazing creation, and to love our neighbours, especially the most vulnerable. We read in Genesis how humanity was instructed both to work God’s creation and to “take care of it” (Gen 2: 15). Later the book of Proverbs tells us “The righteous care about justice for the poor” (Prov 29: 7). We therefore need to meet immediate urgent needs for those whose lives have already been devastated by climate change. And we also need to tackle the long-term underlying causes, and urgently get out of fossil fuels which are driving global climate change, and instead shift to 100% clean renewable energy, which does not lead to climate change, and is cheaper as well.
Arise’s 4 Shifts Campaign calls for a rewiring of our global economy to be green and fair, so it still creates the jobs and wealth that lift people out of poverty, but does so without relying on fossil fuels and overconsumption which is wrecking our planet. As part of that campaign we need to shift as rapidly as possible to 100% clean renewable energy, and ban the use of fossil fuels by 2030. Implementing that in every nation and sector (energy, transport, buildings, industry etc.), whilst also supporting countries like DR Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Pakistan who are already feeling the impacts of climate change. The G7 nations should all commit to and drive as rapid as possible a shift to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, whilst also providing generous climate finance to support developing countries being impacted by climate change right now.
The global economy/inflation
Another major issue for the G7 is inflation and the state of the global economy. Global inflation reached 8.75% in 2022, the highest level since 1996.[3] It has declined slightly since then, but remains very high. Inflation has had profound impacts on the entire global economy, driving up the cost of living around the world, which is hitting the very poorest, hardest. Food prices, and those of other basic essentials, have rocketed. Fuel and energy prices have been reaching incredible levels. Wages cannot keep up, and we are therefore seeing a new wave of strikes from workers who desperately need pay increases to help them manage the soaring cost of living.
Galloping inflation is being driven by dramatic rises in the price of gas and other forms of fossil fuels. There has been a massive increase in global demand over the last couple of years as economies have opened up after Covid-19. On top of that, the war in Ukraine has driven energy prices even higher. Rapidly rising energy prices make it more expensive to produce and transport food and goods, to drive our cars, and to use heat and electricity in our homes, driving up prices everywhere. Fifty years ago, runaway inflation also drove the infamous financial crisis of the 1970s, when many western countries suffered mass unemployment, strikes, energy shortages and economic misery. Then, as now, inflation was driven by dramatic increases in the price of fossil fuels, when the major Middle Eastern oil exporting countries placed embargos on western countries which were seen to support Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Fifty years on, despite the overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels are causing global climate change and despite the progress made through international climate negotiations, the world is still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels. We are all paying the price in the destruction of our natural environment and the economic impacts of fossil fuel driven inflation on everyone’s standard of living.
In the current crisis, G7 governments need to address both the short-term urgent need, and the long-term underlying causes. In the short-term, this means support for people desperately needing help with soaring prices and a relative fall in wages. In the long-term, just as with global climate change – the solution to global inflation and economic instability comes down to the same thing – shifting out of our dependence on polluting and expensive fossil fuels, and into clean renewable energy like solar, wind or tidal energy, which does not cause climate change, creates jobs and is massively cheaper as well. So once again, in order to reduce inflation, the G7 nations should be at the forefront of driving as rapid as possible a shift to 100% clean renewable energy, and banning the use of fossil fuels by 2030.
Ukraine
Another crucial issue for the G7 agenda will of course be the war in Ukraine. After more than a year of brutality and misery, this tragic war continues to drag on with no end in sight. The UN estimates that almost 9,000 civilians have been killed, and many more injured. Some 8 million Ukrainians have fled as refugees across Europe, and another 5.4 million are internally displaced within the country.[4] Amongst the combatants, estimates suggest around 354,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed,[5] though all numbers are of course hard to verify. Over 15% of the country has been occupied.[6]
As Christians, we know that God loves every Ukrainian and Russian, is heartbroken by this tragic war and wants to see lasting peace. As we read in Isaiah, we long for the day when “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” (Isa: 2: 4) One of the areas that Arise’s report, The Arise Manifesto, looks at in detail is what else the Bible has to say, and what history and the world’s leading academic experts have to teach us, about reducing and ending wars and maintaining peaceful international relations.
The vast majority of deaths and suffering caused in conflicts, do not result from the many small wars that plague the world, as tragic as these are, but from the occasional large wars that involve multiple nations (Arise Manifesto, pg 96 – 99). Therefore, the response of the G7 and the international community to the invasion of Ukraine appears to have been about right. This has been to avoid becoming directly engaged militarily themselves, and thus escalating the conflict all the way up to potentially nuclear levels, and to instead express condemnation and work together to support Ukraine and apply tough diplomatic and economic sanctions to contain the threat and force the withdrawal over a longer timeframe. Such a response is likely to cause less suffering in the long-term. Ultimately, there can be no peace through military means, and Russia and Ukraine must find some sort of negotiated peace in order to live together, without compromising democratic freedoms. Therefore, every effort should be made by the G7 nations to keep talking to the Russian government, no matter how brutally they wage war, in order to find this solution (Arise Manifesto, pg 88 – 89, 124 – 129).
Longer-term the world desperately needs to see Russia transition away from the brutal and aggressive dictatorship it has undoubtedly become, and back into a peaceful democratic nation, with a rich, noble and proud tradition, resuming its full place as part of the international community. History has shown us over and over again that it is both wrong and impossible to impose democracy from outside. Neither is an armed revolution desirable. Such an approach causes much suffering, and often replaces one brutal regime with another, which quickly adopts the same repressive approach. Instead it is a peaceful bottom-up civil society reform movement of ordinary Russians demanding change, of the kind that Arise supports around the world, which provides the most likely route to success. This is the only route that has ever truly and sustainably worked for growing democracy, freedom and human rights around the world (Arise Manifesto, pg 86 – 88, 108 – 119). Of course in Russia’s current intolerant domestic environment, such a movement requires enormous courage, wisdom, skill and perseverance from its members. However, the actions of the current Russian regime are far from universally supported, and do not represent the true heart of the Russian people. In particular, Christians and churches should play a key role at the core of such a movement, as they have in so many movements against other regimes in countries all over the world. The G7 should do all they can to support brave protestors, reformers and dissenting voices in Russia. This should be only in ways that those domestic reformers want and request, that will help rather than hinder their efforts.
China tensions
The G7 will also be considering tensions with China (especially with the US), after several years of toughening rhetoric, China’s tacit support for Russia in Ukraine, and increasingly threatening moves from China towards Taiwan. As we have already observed, God loves everyone, and does not want to see any tensions, conflicts or wars between nations. In the current extremely fragile international context more tension and conflict would be extremely dangerous, and the G7 should therefore do all they can to calm tensions and move towards more positive relationships with China. There are a number of key ways they can do this (Arise Manifesto, pg 124 – 129). Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, they should pursue regular and cordial diplomatic communication, relations, dialogue and meetings (including at the highest levels). No matter how difficult situations may become, it is critical that nations keep talking. It is hard to overemphasise the importance of this point.
Secondly, the G7 should work with China and other powerful nations to continually build a broad consensus around shared values on good governance, peaceful co-existence, democracy and human rights. The lessons from history indicate that the world has greater stability when the most powerful nations hold a broadly similar common set of values. Of course there is much that the G7 nations and China disagree over, particularly in these last two areas of human rights and democracy. The G7 should not in any way compromise in raising issues and concerns over democracy and human rights vigorously with China. Neither should China compromise on raising its own concerns. Nevertheless, there are many areas where the G7 and China can work together. Both want to see a stable and peaceful, rules-based, world order, and a healthy and flourishing global economy. They also have a shared common interest in addressing global challenges like climate change and Covid.
Thirdly, the G7 and China can further foster stability by proactively supporting and constructively engaging with international institutions such as the UN and regional institutions like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organisation. Such institutions are critical international stabilisation mechanisms. Finally, the G7 should avoid acting in an arrogant, high-handed or triumphalist fashion, and should avoid putting China or any other country in a position where they feel humiliated. Such actions are likely to inflame resentment and tensions. The G7 should watch out for significant tensions that are emerging between nations (especially powerful ones) and work proactively through peaceful and diplomatic means to de-escalate them before they become full-blown conflicts, as a matter of high priority. This often means finding the ‘off ramp’, a way that allows both sides to claim a win and de-escalate tensions, without either side losing face or appearing to have backed down.
Alongside these policies for greater dialogue and engagement, the G7 nations should continue to maintain and strengthen their own professional, well-trained, equipped, and controlled armies. This is not in order to create more tension and conflict, but precisely the opposite, in order to reduce and prevent it. Such forces deter aggression from other nations, stand ready to protect their citizens if necessary, can participate in UN peacekeeping operations, are able to intervene if needed in contexts of extreme oppression and genocide, and can be deployed to help with humanitarian needs and emergencies both at home and around the world.
As difficult and hard as it may be, and as much as there continue to be serious differences over fundamental issues, the G7 nations should do all they can to re-establish good communications with China, to keep talking, calm tensions and improve relationships. Ultimately, as with Russia, real change in China will come not from external pressure, but from domestic reform. And again the G7 should do all they can to support brave protestors, reformers and dissenting voices in China when they emerge, in ways that those domestic reformers want (Arise Manifesto, pg 86 – 88, 108 – 119).
Artificial Intelligence
Another issue on the G7 agenda is navigating the risks and opportunities from the rapidly growing field of Artificial Intelligence. The risks from AI are numerous. A huge range of jobs in many different industries could be lost as AI is able to produce better and faster answers to multiple complex questions, tasks and even creative output. The access to online data that AI requires also raises important questions about data security. The underlying algorithms used by AI means it can learn and get smarter and smarter, very rapidly over time. They also lead to the increasing likelihood that relatively simple underlying instructions give rise to more complex, perverse and unwanted behaviour from AI as it learns and interprets those instructions in unpredictable ways. And ultimately, beyond all of that lies the risk of genuine consciousness emerging.
On the other hand, there are also many potential opportunities presented by AI. Many jobs that are boring and repetitive may be replaced, releasing people for more interesting, rewarding and higher paid work. Aspects of many other roles can be done better by AI, which is in many cases already more knowledgeable than any human, more accurate, able to make better decisions, and produce better results. Beyond this, new economic opportunities and business models will open up, and overall knowledge will rise to a higher level, along with other benefits for humanity.
Whenever new technologies like AI emerge, some jobs in old industries based around old technologies will come to an end. However, at the same time those new technologies will be opening up new jobs and industries. Research conducted by Arise would indicate that a key role the G7 nations should be playing is to ease the pain of this transition, so that those whose jobs are lost, are quickly retrained to find new employment in the new industries that are opening up. The G7 nations, and indeed all governments, should also provide a social safety net of basic services to support communities through this process of transition (Arise Manifesto, pg 186).
Another key learning from the Arise Manifesto is that as new science and technology evolves this cannot just be left to happen in a lawless Wild West fashion, and society left to pick up the damage. Rather there should be some public debate, investment into research and development in technology that advances society in socially positive directions, and legislation which prohibits scientific and technological research in directions that are dangerous or bad for society (Arise Manifesto, pg 260 – 261).
In this context, a temporary pause on the further development of AI (as has been proposed by many leading experts from the AI industry themselves) to enable this debate and scrutiny to happen, and legislation put in place to mitigate and avoid the risks, would be a sensible idea. The G7 nations should agree a temporary pause, and should reach out to encourage other countries to also sign up to this. Quick but detailed discussions could take place, and guidelines, agreements and legislation drawn up to enable things to move forward more safely. Even if a universal agreement can’t be reached, an agreement between at least the democratic members of the international community, or the OECD members, should be possible. The world has taken this kind of rapid internationally coordinated action in similar moments of risk in our recent past. Covid-19 in 2020, and the G20 coming together to quickly prevent the unravelling of the global financial system during the financial crisis in 2008 – 9 are recent examples. There are precedents. Global problems that impact on every country, require nations to come together and reach global solutions to deal with them (Arise Manifesto, pg 272 – 274). The G7 is absolutely the right kind of forum to quickly reach such agreements, and this should be a priority for them when they meet.
Nuclear non-proliferation
Finally, a major agenda item for the G7 is the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. This is more relevant than ever with current international tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, Chinese threats to Taiwan, North Korea’s missile tests and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The G7 should do all it can to prevent the further development, and contain the spread, of nuclear, biological, chemical or other weapons of mass destruction. That means working to ensure all nations sign and ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions. It also means redoubling diplomatic efforts with other key nuclear nations like China, Russia, India, Pakistan and North Korea towards safely reducing existing stockpiles through negotiated agreements with independent verification. In a world where such horrors cannot be uninvented, unilateral disarmament by one side may not be the safest course. However, working together to safely reduce existing stockpiles through negotiated agreements with independent verification has proved to be very effective in the past. As the academics Adam Roberts and Philip Towle point out, “advocacy of more modest measures of arms limitation gained much ground, especially from about 1960 onwards” with the passing and successful implementation of the “main international arms limitation agreements”, and in the final years of the Cold War and the decades that immediately followed “the USA and Russia worked together to demobilize many of their nuclear weapons and to prevent them from spreading to other countries.” [7] (Arise Manifesto, pg 125 – 126)
Conclusion
The G7 faces a packed and daunting agenda of issues. But, they are not without the knowledge and resources to address them. They are after all the leaders of the most powerful nations in the world. There are clear and positive ways forward in each of these areas, as set out above (drawing on the lessons from the Bible and from history as pulled together in the Arise Manifesto). Let us pray they have the courage and vision to do the right thing and lead in each of these areas. May they be reminded that perhaps, like Esther in the Bible, they have been placed in those roles “for such a time as this” (Esther 4: 14).
Find out more
Find out more about how God is at work in the world, and the role we all have to play in that work, in the Arise Manifesto. This report is Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world. It looks at what the Bible says, and what we can learn from the best data and the world’s leading experts on the five major areas of evangelism, discipleship, social justice, development and the environment. It then draws these lessons together into a practical road map for the changes we need to see in our world, which the Arise movement campaigns to achieve.
Find out more about why the world needs 4 Shifts to transition to a fair and green global economy in Arise’s 4 Shifts Report.
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[1] G7 Hiroshima Summit 2023, Reuters, (10 May 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/g7-hiroshima-summit-2023-when-is-it-who-will-attend-whats-agenda-2023-05-10/#:~:text=FROM%20RUSSIA%2C%20CHINA%20TO%20NUCLEAR,impact%20of%20the%20Ukraine%20war
[2] ‘Sounding the alarm’: World on track to breach a critical warming threshold in the next five years, CNN, (17 May 2023), https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/17/world/global-warming-breach-wmo-climate-intl/index.html#:~:text=In%20its%20annual%20climate%20update,for%20at%20least%20one%20year
[3] Global inflation rate from 2000 – 2022, Statista, (10 May 2023), https://www.statista.com/statistics/256598/global-inflation-rate-compared-to-previous-year/#:~:text=A%20series%20of%20compounding%20issues,increase%20in%20inflation%20since%201996
[4] Ukraine Data Explorer, UN OCHA, (15 May 2023), https://data.humdata.org/visualization/ukraine-humanitarian-operations/
[5] Ukraine war, already with up to 354,000 casualties, likely to last past 2023 – US documents, Reuters, (12 Apr 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-already-with-up-354000-casualties-likely-drag-us-documents-2023-04-12/
[6] Nine months of war in Ukraine in one map, Le Monde, (28 Nov 2022), https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/11/25/nine-months-of-war-in-ukraine-in-one-map-how-much-territory-did-russia-invade-and-then-cede_6005655_8.html
[7] Roberts, A., Against War and Towle, P., Cold War, in Townshend, C. (Ed.), The Oxford History of Modern War, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 329, 164