The wealthy Group of Seven democracies failed to make significant new progress on climate at a summit in Italy, instead reiterating previous commitments, experts and activists said Friday.
“The G7 leaders could have stayed home. No new commitments have been made,” said Friederike Roeder, vice president at Global Citizen.
Leaders meeting in Puglia, Italy, in April reaffirmed a commitment by their environment ministers to phase out existing, unabated coal-fired power generation in our energy systems by the first half of 2030.
But they left some wiggle room: countries can instead commit to gradually phasing out “within a timeline consistent with keeping a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase within reach, in line with countries experiencing a net strive for zero,” the final statement said.
“To stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the G7’s plan to phase out coal is simply too little too late, and gas is neither cheap nor a bridge fuel to a safe climate,” said expert Tracy Carty in the field of Greenpeace’s climate policy.
Together, the G7 make up about 38% of the global economy and were responsible for 21% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to the policy institute Climate Analytics.
The group, responsible for almost 30% of fossil fuel production, “left the door open for continued public investment in gas,” said Nicola Flamigni of climate-oriented communications company GSCC.
Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States also reiterated the need to agree on a new post-2025 climate finance target, with them as key contributors – but again, this was not new.
Dozens of climate protesters staged a sit-in outside the G7 media center in Bari, wearing T-shirts depicting an olive tree in flames emerging from a scorching Mediterranean Sea.
Europe is the fastest warming continent and the Mediterranean is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events caused by climate change, from droughts to floods.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right government voted against the European Green Deal, said at a summit session that climate change must be tackled “without ideological approaches”.
But activists claimed the presence of the CEO of Italian oil and gas giant ENI at a roundtable on Africa, energy and climate showed how closely Rome’s political interests and those of fossil fuels are intertwined.
“There is no evidence that gas in Africa meets the needs of the population better and cheaper than clean energy and electrification more broadly,” said Luca Bergamaschi, co-founder of the ECCO think tank.
“On the contrary, gas investments in Africa have a negative impact on the government budget and are a key factor in driving a worsening debt crisis,” he said.
Experts also pointed to the G7’s lack of commitment to continue making leading contributions to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), which helps African countries fight climate change.
The G7 announced a new Energy for Growth in Africa initiative, launched with several countries from Ivory Coast to Ethiopia and Kenya, but did not say what, if any, funding was tied to it.
The Apulia Food Systems Initiative – the G7’s fourth major food security initiative in fifteen years – was also unveiled as part of a G7 effort to tackle the root causes of unwanted migration.
Nga Celestin, permanent secretary of the Regional Platform of Farmer Organizations in Central Africa (PROPAC), said it was a “half-baked” initiative that would not work without the involvement of family farmers.
According to the UN, small-scale farmers in Africa produce up to 70% of the continent’s food. Experts say the failure to involve them has thwarted previous G7 initiatives.
The One Campaign denounced the ‘pointless platitudes of the G7 in Puglia’, with executive director David McNair saying that ‘this year’s summit has seriously missed the mark’.
