Nigeria will benefit from the leaders’ commitment to fight climate change, and more, writes Catriona Laing
The G7 has long been a forum for decisive international action on the greatest challenges of our time. Last weekend, leaders from G7 Members countries, were joined by South Africa, Australia, India and the Republic of Korea at a summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in the south west of Britain. Outcomes from the summit on global health, COVID-19, climate change and biodiversity, and global trade will be of direct benefit to the people of Nigeria.
The Carbis Bay Declaration on health showed G7 countries’ determination to ensure the global devastation caused by coronavirus is never repeated. G7 leaders reaffirmed their support to end the pandemic in 2022 and agreed to send one billion more COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing countries. The UK will contribute 100 million of these, including five million in the coming weeks.
This contribution is an extension of the UKs longstanding commitment to get as many safe vaccines to as many people as possible as fast as possible. It adds to the £548 million support the UK has given to COVAX and to the UK’s funding of the research that developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. This vaccine is now responsible for 66 million of the 67 million COVAX vaccines provided to developing countries and makes up one in three of globally administered vaccines so far. Nigeria has received 3.94 million of these and I was pleased to hear from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency on Tuesday that Nigeria will get a further 3.92m doses of the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine before mid-August.
The summit was an important milestone in protecting our planet for future generations. Ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November (COP26), G7 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to fight climate change, halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, and tackle deforestation, marine litter and the illegal wildlife trade. As one of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries, Nigeria will directly benefit from these developments. It will also benefit from the £500m global Blue Planet Fund launched by the UK during the summit which will help protect marine biodiversity around Nigeria’s coastal regions.
Nigeria will also benefit from the agreement by G7 leaders to increase international climate finance with a new partnership on infrastructure investment that will help propel global green economic growth. The UK joined the US and Germany with a £120 million donation to scale-up protection for the world’s most vulnerable communities against the impacts of climate change.
G7 leaders also committed to reinvigorate the global economy and champion freer, fairer trade within a reformed trading system, a more resilient global economy, and a fairer global tax system. And for the first time ever the G7 Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and multilateral partners came together to commit to invest over $80 billion in the private sector in Africa over the next five years.
Investing in girls’ education is one of the smartest investments we can make to accelerate growth in Nigeria’s economy and workforce. Ahead of the Global Education Summit that the UK is co-hosting with Kenya in London on 28 and 29 July 2021, G7 leaders increased support to get the world’s most vulnerable children, particularly girls, into school and agreed to give at least $2¾ billion to the Global Partnership for Education. This will include a £430m contribution from the UK.
At the heart of last weekend’s G7 outcomes lies a commitment to strengthen values of cooperation, openness and equality between nations to help solve our shared global challenges. As we look forward to partnering with Nigeria to build back better from the pandemic, I’d like to encourage everyone from Nigeria to continue to uphold these values, which are encapsulated in the spirit of last weekend’s Democracy Day.
Laing is British High Commissioner to Nigeria