Group of Nations: G7 Summit UK Global Briefing Report

SPECIAL G7 SUMMIT RAPPORTEUR

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G 7 PARTNERS TO MODERNISE WORLD TRADE G 7 CARBIS BAY HEALTH DECLARATION ROAD TO COP 26

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W CONTENTS

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SUMMIT CONTENTS

G7 AGENDA

F E AT U R E D

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THE G 7 COMMUNIQUÉ

G7 AGENDA

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Remarks by HRH The Prince of Wales at the G7 Summit CEO and Leaders Meeting, Cornwall

88 Fighting Poverty with Entrepreneurship

90 The India-UK Partnership: A Force for Global Good

38 Liz Truss Calls on G7 Partners to Modernise World Trade

94 What Prime Minister Modi Says on Climate Change and Combatting COVID Matters for the World

40 G7 Carbis Bay Health Declaration

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2021 Open Societies Statement

Turning Around Our Health Through Dietary Change

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Sparking Solutions to Global Challenges

G7 Research Compact

52 Build Back Better and Smarter

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Bridging Generations to Address Global Challenges

The Road to Cop 26

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Is the G20 Meeting Expectations?

Illicit Trade is a Global Risk the World Can’t Afford to Ignore

Branded Stories

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50 Liechtenstein Bankers Association 64 Issuu 68 CPA Canada 96 Birmingham Care Group 108 Myanmar

G7: Successes and Failures

78 Building a Prosperous Future in Africa

Guided Career Pathway

86 Remembering Tulsa in 1921 while Celebrating Excellence in 2021

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PUBLISHER/CEO & FOUNDER Chris Atkins

GLOBAL BRIEFING REPORT REVIEW CARBIS BAY_CORNWALL_UNITED KINGDOM_JUNE 2021

25 CELEBRATING YEARS

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Christian Gilliham christian@cgcreate.co.uk (+44) 7951 722265

OF G7 PUBLISHING

THE G 7 COMMUNIQUÉ PAGE 12

G 7 PARTNERS TO MODERNISE WORLD TRADE G 7 CARBIS BAY HEALTH DECLARATION ROAD TO COP 26

SPONSORED BY

Institute of

Global Affairs

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EVP OPERATIONS Jennifer Latchman-Atkins

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Artisan Group Uscore Unify Shigeru GmbH Shidai Akzonobel

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EXECUTIVES James Regis Richard Reale Phil Cook Anthony Leigh Jones Jennifer Latchman-Atkins

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Akzonobel Middle East Institute Gardp Globus Relief Soneva Fushi LSE CGcreate Saudi German Hospitals Issuu

71 CPA Canada 75 Tracit.org 80 NBF 100 Diplomatic Courier 103 Northwestern University

115 Kansai Airports 126 Turtle Islands 128 Inc.

Copyright 2021 the CAT Company All rights reserved. The G7/G20/B20 Publication is a product of CAT Company.

No part of this publication can be reproduced without written consent of the publisher Chris Atkins and the CAT Company. All trademarks that appear in this publication are the property of the respective owners. Any and all companies featured in this publication are contacted by CAT Company to provide advertising and/or services. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication, however, CAT Company makes no warranties, express or implied in regards to the information, and disclaim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions.

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W EDITORIAL

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PUBLISHER’S LETTER

Chris Atkins PUBLISHER, CEO & FOUNDER CAT COMPANY, INC.

Dear Readers, First and foremost, as we continue to manage the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, I hope you and yours are keeping safe and healthy.

The past 18 months have been a great challenge in every front for leaders and citizens alike. The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging on with new variants and vaccine hesitancy, the contentious U.S. presidential elections of 2020 have created lingering effects. For the first time in 24 years there was no G7 Summit. A virtual G20 Summit in 2020 marked a new era for virtual diplomacy but didn’t quite measure up to the in-person leadership gatherings we have reported on in the past decade. Indeed, it was a year we will all remember.

In our own world—the world of publishing—everything has also been upside down. We have had to make some exciting changes to our normal coverage of this year’s anniversary edition, and we hope you like the new direction.

This year marks an auspicious milestone for The CAT Company and myself. The 25th anniversary of publishing the G7 Summit publication has now evolved to the Group of Nations brand and Global Briefing Report Review. The G7 Summit UK Cornwall edition comes for the first time as a post-summit review, reporting on the outcomes of this year’s leadership gathering and becoming a connecting point to the G20 Summit later in the year as well as next year’s G7. We are constantly pioneering new ways for

our audiences to engage with global leaders and this post-summit report is just one of the ways.

Our company’s mission has been and continues to be to educate the global community on the most vital topics affecting our society and the agenda and leaders at the G7, G20, and all related summits.

With our award-winning Group of Nations Global Briefing Report, we have created an unprecedented opportunity for private sector leaders and civil society to have a voice at these summits even when they don’t have a physical seat at the table.

I want to thank all our Knowledge Partners for their help in making these publications an excellent resource for the G20 and G7 global community to better understand the vital work that needs to be accomplished to make the world a better place for us now and for future generations.

We look forward to the G20 Summit to be held by Italy, and the APEC Summit held virtually this year by New Zealand.

We are also adding another exciting initiative by working with NEPAD Business Foundation. The NEPAD Business Foundation Global Briefing Report is the first of its kind and will showcase Africa’s and its tremendous and vitally important contributions to the G7 and G20 Summits.

Our team is excited and already strategizing on next year’s publications.

Do reach out to us with your ideas and questions and we will be happy to work with you.

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Celebrating 25 years of Publishing the Authoritative G20, B20 and G7 Global Briefing Reports

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W EDITORIAL

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PM STATEMENT_JUNE 11TH

Boris Johnson PRIME MINISTER UNITED KINGDOM

Can I begin by welcoming you all here to Carbis Bay. It’s genuinely wonderful to see everybody in person, I can’t say what a difference it makes.

You’ve all been going through the most wretched pandemic the world has faced for at least our lifetimes.

I actually think that this is a meeting that genuinely needs to happen because we need to make sure we learn lessons from the pandemic. We need to make sure we don’t repeat some of the errors that we have made in the course of the last 18 months or so and we put in place what is needed to allow our economies to recover. They have the potential to bounce back very strongly and we have all sorts of reasons to be optimistic, but it is vital that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the last great crisis, the last big economic recession of 2008 when the recovery was not uniform across all part of society.

What’s gone wrong with this pandemic, what risks being a lasting scar, is the inequalities that have been

entrenched. We need to make sure that as we recover, we level up across our societies - we need to build back better.

I actually think that we have a huge opportunity to do that, because as a G7 we are united in our vision for a cleaner, greener world. A solution to the problems of climate change in all those ideas, in those technologies, that we’re all addressing. Together I think there is a potential to generate many, many millions of high wage, high skilled jobs and I think that is what the people of our countries now want us to focus on.

They want to be sure that we’re beating the pandemic together and discussing how to never have a repeat of what we’ve seen. But also that we’re building back better together. And building back greener. And building back fairer. And building back more equal. Maybe in a more gender neutral, a more feminine, way. So those are ome of the objectives we have before us today. Thank you all very, very much. ◆

Together I think there is a potential to generate many, many millions of high wage, high skilled jobs and I think that is what the people of our countries now want us to focus on.

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To our lives.

Many die because reseach for new antibiotics is underfunded.

Very few know.

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W H R H T H E P R I N C E O F WA L E S

Remarks by HRH The Prince of Wales at the G7 Summit CEO and Leaders Meeting, Cornwall

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Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I can only applaud your determination during this G7 Summit to create a greener and more prosperous future in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The global health emergency has shown us what a truly borderless crisis looks like. Of course, we did not fully see Covid coming. Yet climate change and bio-diversity loss represent a borderless crisis, the solutions to which have been argued about and postponed for far too long. The fight against this terrible pandemic provides, if ever one was needed, a crystal-clear example of the scale, and sheer speed, at which the global community can tackle crises when we combine political will with business ingenuity and public mobilization. Ladies and gentlemen, we are doing it for the pandemic. So if you don’t mind me saying so, we must also do it for the planet.

This is why I am particularly grateful to the Prime Minister for making time in this very packed G7 programme to bring the vital ingredients of political will and business ingenuity together in the same space. Because to ‘build back better’ we need, above all, a truly effective partnership between government and business in order to mobilize finance and innovation, and to deliver a just transition for developed and developing economies alike.

With this urgency in mind, my Sustainable Markets Initiative has brought together over 300 global CEOs, forming a ‘coalition of the willing’.

They have over $60 trillion in assets under management and, crucially, a determination to direct tens of trillions of dollars towards sustainable investment by 2030. With invaluable support from the world’s four largest accountancy firms, we are identifying the roadblocks to sustainable growth and the practical solutions which would shift them out of the way.

If you could bear it, let me give one practical example of how the government/business partnership model delivers success. Back in 2014, offshore wind was described as the most expensive way of delivering the most marginal impact on climate change.

The technology existed, but it was a risky venture. Yet today, offshore

While, of course, the scale of the challenge is clearly immense – and the window of opportunity to tackle it is closing extremely fast – business leaders, working through my Sustainable Markets Initiative over the past sixteen months, have helped us develop the “Terra Carta” - a Road Map, if you like, offering practical steps on where we need to go and, crucially, how to get there

Speach Source: princeofwalees.gov.uk

wind is an essential part of our energy mix. The transformation happened because Government sent clear market signals through its climate change commitments and regulations. Finance therefore had the confidence to invest.

This allowed business innovation to improve the turbines and respond to demand. Meanwhile, consumers benefit from green energy and falling prices.

Only through this sort of government and business coalition can we, once again, literally put the wind in our ails and win the battle against climate change across all sectors: from agriculture to aviation; from fossil fuels to fashion.

While, of course, the scale of the challenge is clearly immense – and the window of opportunity to tackle it is closing extremely fast – business leaders, working through my Sustainable Markets Initiative over the past sixteen months, have helped us develop the “Terra Carta” - a Road Map, if you like, offering practical steps on where we need to go and, crucially, how to get there.

In all our work, three powerful messages from business stand out:First, industry and finance need clear market signals, standards and

regulation in order to provide the essential conditions to enable them more rapidly to re-orientate their operations and make the required transition; Second, international financial institutions need better ways to leverage public funding, to catalyze private finance and mitigate risk; and third, a transformative outcome will require a pipeline of fully developed and genuinely sustainable projects, at sufficient scale and ready for investment. For example, in Roundtable meetings I have convened with Commonwealth Leaders from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Pacific, we have identified large financing gaps for green energy, water, sanitation, transport and other transition infrastructure.

So thank you, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, for giving up your precious time for this short meeting. I can only hope it will be possible to work together towards the G20 and COP26, and to match trillions of dollars with sustainable investments to deliver the target 1.5 degree – or, better still – less than that. ◆ 11

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THE G7 COMMUNIQUÉ Our Shared Agenda for Global Action to Build Back Better

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We, the leaders of the Group of Seven, met in Cornwall on 11-13 June 2021 determined to beat COVID-19 and build back better. We remembered everyone who has been lost to the pandemic and paid tribute to those still striving to overcome it. Inspired by their example of collaboration and determination, we gathered united by the principle that brought us together originally, that shared beliefs and shared responsibilities are the bedrock

of leadership and prosperity. Guided by this, our enduring ideals as free open societies and democracies, and by our commitment to multilateralism, we have agreed a shared G7 agenda for global action to: End the pandemic and prepare for the future by driving an intensified international effort, starting immediately, to vaccinate the world by getting as many safe vaccines to as many people as

possible as fast as possible. Total G7 commitments since the start of the pandemic provide for a total of over two billion vaccine doses, with the commitments since we last met in February 2021, including here in Carbis Bay, providing for one billion doses over the next year. At the same time we will create the appropriate frameworks to strengthen our collective defences against threats to global health by: increasing and coordinating on global →

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→ manufacturing capacity on all continents; improving early warning systems; and support science in a mission to shorten the cycle for the development of safe and effective vaccines, treatments and tests from 300 to 100 days.

Reinvigorate our economies by advancing recovery plans that build on the $12 trillion of support we have put in place during the pandemic. We will continue to support our economies for as long as is necessary, shifting the focus of our support from crisis response to promoting growth into the future, with plans that create jobs, invest in infrastructure, drive innovation, support people, and level up so that no place or person, irrespective of age, ethnicity or gender is left behind. This has not been the case with past global crises, and we are determined that this time it will be different.

Secure our future prosperity by championing freer, fairer trade within a reformed trading system, a more resilient global economy, and a fairer global tax system that reverses the race to the bottom. We will collaborate to ensure future frontiers of the global economy and society, from cyber space to outer space, increase the prosperity and wellbeing of all people while upholding our values as open societies.

We are convinced of the potential of technological transformation for the common good in accordance with our shared values.

Protect our planet by supporting a green revolution that creates jobs, cuts emissions and seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. We commit to net zero no later than 2050, halving our collective emissions over the two decades to 2030, increasing and improving climate finance to 2025; and to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of our land and oceans by 2030. We acknowledge our duty to safeguard the planet for future generations.

Strengthen our partnerships with others around the world. We will develop a new partnership to build back better for the world, through a step change in our approach to investment for GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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infrastructure, including through an initiative for clean and green growth.

We are resolved to deepen our current partnership to a new deal with Africa, including by magnifying support from the International Monetary Fund for countries most in need to support our aim to reach a total global ambition of $100 billion.

Embrace our values as an enduring foundation for success in an ever changing world. We will harness the power of democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights to answer the biggest questions and overcome the greatest challenges.

We will do this in a way that values the individual and promotes equality, especially gender equality, including by supporting a target to get 40 million more girls into education and with at least $2¾ billion for the Global Partnership for Education.

We shall seek to advance this open agenda in collaboration with other countries and within the multilateral rules-based system. In particular, we look forward to working alongside our G20 partners and with all relevant International Organisations to secure a cleaner, greener, freer, fairer and safer future for our people and planet.

Inspired by their example of collaboration and determination, we gathered united by the principle that brought us together originally, thatshared beliefs and shared responsibilities are the bedrock of leadership and prosperity.

INTRODUCTION 1. We, the Leaders of the Group of Seven, met together in Cornwall, United Kingdom on 11-13 June 2021 at a critical juncture for our people and planet.

2. We acknowledge the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 in our own societies and around the world, and that those impacts have not been felt evenly.

We remember all those who have died as aresult of the pandemic and pay tribute to all those continuing to work to overcome the virus.

3. United as open societies and economies and guided by our shared values of democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, we commit to beating COVID-19 everywhere and building back better for all. We are firmly convinced that these values remain the best foundation for the social and economic advancement of all humanity. We affirm that by investing in our people, tackling inequalities, including gender inequality, promoting dignity and championing freedoms, we will release innovation capable of tackling the great challenges of our time.

4. Our agenda for global action is built on our commitment to international cooperation, multilateralism and an open, resilient, rules-based world order.

As democratic societies we support global institutions in their efforts to protect human rights, respect the rule of law, advance gender equality, manage tensions between states,

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address conflict, instability and climate change, and share prosperity through trade and investment. That open and resilientinternational order is in turn the best guarantor of security and prosperity for our own citizens.

5. We were joined in Cornwall by the Leaders of Australia, India, the Republic of Korea and South Africa, with whom we have agreed a shared statement on the value and role of open societies.

We will continue to work together with these and all our partners in tackling global challenges. We reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and to working with the G20, UN and wider multilateral system to deliver a strong, sustainable, resilient and inclusive recovery.

HEALTH 6. Our immediate focus is beating COVID-19 and we set a collective goal of ending the pandemic in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic is not under control anywhere until it is under control everywhere. In an interconnected world global health and health security threats respect no borders. We therefore commit both to strengthen global action now to fight COVID-19, and to take further tangible steps to improve our collective defences against future threats and to bolster global health and health security. This includes strengthening the World Health Organization (WHO) and supporting it in its leading and coordinating role in the global health system.

7. We recognise that the pandemic has left no one untouched, impacting not only physical health but also mental health and social wellbeing. We pay tribute to the extraordinary efforts of first responders, health workers, paid and unpaid care workers, scientists, and manufacturers who have developed and deployed COVID-19 medical tools at a pace few thought possible, opening up a path out of the pandemic. At the same time, we recognise that we have a long way to go to achieve global equitable access to these medical tools, and to manage the risks from new COVID-19 variants which have the potential to reverse our progress.

8. Recognising that ending the pandemic in 2022 will require vaccinating at least 60 per cent of the global population, we will intensify our action to save lives. Our international priority is to accelerate the rollout of safe and effective, accessible and affordable vaccines for the poorest countries, noting the role of extensive immunisation as a global public good. We reiterate our endorsement of the G20 Rome Declaration and the statement agreed by our Foreign and Development Ministers on equitable access. We will work together and with others, leveraging the full spectrum of the capability and capacity we can each deploy to support the global vaccination effort, through finance for and sharing of doses, science, ensuring accessibility through voluntary licensing, manufacturing and ensuring availability through exports, opening supply chains, and supporting final mile delivery.

9. We reaffirm our support for the ACT-A and its COVAX Facility as the primary route for providing vaccines to the poorest countries. Since the start of the pandemic, we have committed $8.6 billion to the vaccines pillar of ACT-A to finance the procurement of vaccines, including $1.9 billion since we last met in February. This provides for the equivalent of over one billion doses. We welcome the recent successful COVAX Summit co-hosted by Japan and Gavi which mobilised financing pledges exceeding the COVAX AMC target. Recognising the urgent need to speed up delivery of doses, we are committing to share at least 870 million doses directly over the next year. → 15

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→ We will make these doses available as soon as possible and aim to deliver at least half by the end of 2021 primarily channelled through COVAX towards those in greatest need. Taken together, the dose equivalent of our financial contributions and our direct dose sharing mean that the G7’s commitments since the start of the pandemic provide for a total of over two billion vaccine doses. The commitments since we last met in February 2021 including here in Carbis Bay provide for one billion doses over the next year. We will work together with the private sector, the G20 and other countries to increase this contribution over the months to come.

10. These commitments build on our wider contributions to the global vaccination effort. These include exports from domestic production, with at least 700 million doses exported or to be exported this year, of which almost half have gone or will go to non-G7 countries, with a commitment to continue exporting in significant proportions; and the promotion of voluntary licensing and not-for-profit global production, which has so far accounted for over 95 per cent of the COVAX supply.

11. We reaffirm our support for all pillars of the ACT-A across, treatments, tests and strengthening public health systems as well as vaccines. As the G7, since our meeting in February, we have committed over $2 billion in total to the ACT-Accelerator (including vaccines), taking our collective commitment since the start of the pandemic to over $10 billion. We support discussions regarding the extension of the ACT-A mandate into 2022, noting the planned comprehensive review to optimise its effectiveness and accountability. Efforts on this scale require close monitoring of progress made by ACT-A with reliable, transparent, up-to-date and clear

information on procurement and delivery to both donor and recipient countries in close partnership with regional organisations. Progress should be reported to the G20 in Rome.

12. In support of achieving our goal, we commit to an end-to-end approach to boost supply of COVID-19 tools, including vaccines, raw materials, tests, therapeutics, and personal protective equipment (PPE), through more production in more places to sustain a global supply network for this pandemic and the next. This will be based on the principles of open trade and transparency, including through terminating unnecessary trade restrictive measures and supporting open, diversified, secure and resilient supply chains. It will be backed up by a practical and pragmatic approach to breaking down bottlenecks that are holding back the efficient use of current production capacity, as well as promoting partnerships to increase capacity further. To this end, we will support the ACT-A Facilitation Council Working Group together with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, UNICEF and other partners such as the Medicines Patent Pool and the private sector, to coordinate a global vaccine supply network to optimise manufacturing capacities for safe and effective vaccines and other pandemic tools, and to share information about supply chains.

Emphasising the need for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, we will support manufacturing in low income countries and, noting the importance of intellectual property in this regard, we will engage constructively with discussions at the WTO on the role of intellectual property, including by working consistently within the

We support efforts to accelerate manufacturing capacities of COVID-19tools on all continents, encouraging new partnerships based on voluntary licensing andtechnology transfer on mutually agreed terms and in particular will strive to support African efforts to establish regional manufacturing hubs.

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TRIPS agreement and the 2001 Doha Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and Public Health. We note the positive impact that voluntary licensing and technology transfer on mutually agreed terms have already made to increasing global supply. We note the positive impact that voluntary licensing and technology transfer on mutually agreed terms have already made to increasing global supply. We will explore all options to ensure affordable and accessible COVID-19 tools for the poorest countries, including non-profit production, tiered and transparent pricing, and sharing by manufacturers of a proportion of production with COVAX, noting the previous precedent of the 10 per cent target in relation to influenza. We support efforts to accelerate manufacturing capacities of COVID-19 tools on all continents, encouraging new partnerships based on voluntary licensing and technology transfer on mutually agreed terms and in particular will strive to support African efforts to establish regional manufacturing hubs. We will continue to work with partners, regional organisations and recipient countries, including through COVAX, to boost country-readiness, and will maintain our efforts to support vaccine confidence.

13. To get and stay ahead of the virus, we commit to continue our investment in cutting edge research and innovation, seeking to ensure that global vaccines remain effective against variants of concern, and that effective tests and treatments are available.

To this end, we will boost global surveillance and genomic sequencing and swift information sharing needed to enable the rapid detection to combat the virus and its emerging variants.

G7 countries should extend every effort to achieve, wherever possible, a level of genomic sequencing of at least 10 per cent of all new positive COVID-19 samples during the pandemic phase and share genomic sequencing information with existing global databases.

14. Alongside the above, we will continue and enhance our commitments to support fragile countries in dealing with the pandemic and other health challenges. This includes supporting ACT-A partners such as The Global

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Fund and Unitaid which have played a crucial role in delivering lifesaving medical and other supplies, including oxygen, tests, therapeutics and PPE, and assisting countries together with WHO to strengthen their health systems, build capacity, manage outbreaks and prevent disease spread.

We call on the World Bank Group and the other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to increase the speed of their financial support, and will continue to support ACT-A in this regard.

15. Alongside responding to the current pandemic, we must act now to strengthen the global health and health security system to be better prepared for future pandemics and to tackle long standing global health threats, including Antimicrobial Resistance. We welcome the Rome Declaration, the measures set out within the Strengthening WHO preparedness for and response to health emergencies’ Resolution as adopted at the 74th World Health Assembly, acknowledge the bold recommendations of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR), and the work of the International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHR Review Committee) and Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee (IOAC). We look forward to continuing to work with the G20, UN, WHO, WTO and other relevant international organisations, in accordance with their mandates and rules for decision making, to make progress in the swift implementation of recommendations, and to seek the necessary multilateral action, including exploring the potential value of a treaty. We look forward to the special session on pandemic preparedness in the Autumn, as agreed at the World Health Assembly.

16. As G7 countries, we acknowledge our particular role and responsibilities in international efforts to strengthen the global health system, and commit to harnessing our unique strengths to support this. We endorse the G7 Carbis Bay Health Declaration and the G7 Health Ministers’ Communique, and the concrete actions outlined to ensure all countries are better equipped toprevent, detect, respond to and recover from health crises including in alignment with the International → 17

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→ Health Regulations (IHR).

We place particular emphasis on: • Improving integration, by strengthening a “One Health” approach across all aspects of pandemic prevention and preparedness, recognising the critical links between human and animal health and the environment.

• Strengthening transparency and accountability, including reiterating our commitment to the full implementation of, and improved compliance with, the International Health Regulations 2005. This includes investigating, reporting and responding to outbreaks of unknown origin. We also call for a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened Phase 2 COVID-19 Origins study including, asrecommended by the experts’ report, in China.

• Improving the speed of response by developing global protocols which trigger collective action in the event of a future pandemic.

• Ensuring fairness, inclusion and equity, including the empowerment and leadership of women and minorities in the health and care sectors, and addressing the links between health crises and wider

social determinants of health such as poverty and structural inequalities, and leaving no one behind by advancing the achievement of Universal Health Coverage.

• Increasing the resilience of global health systems to deal with outbreaks of emerging and enduring pathogens, including by investing in the health and care workforce worldwide to build capacity and keep health care workers safe.

• Strengthening financing models to support longer-term preparedness, sustainable global health and health security, in particular but not limited to the WHO. We will explore options for building consensus this year, around sustainable global health and health security financing, supported by robust financial reporting, increased and defined accountability, and oversight. We ask our Finance Ministers to work with others, the G20 and its High Level Independent Panel (HLIP) to make progress in this regard. We will explore options to strengthen global accountability, tracking and allocation of global health security financing, including the IPPPR recommendation toward a Global Health Threats Council.

17. The G7 has a leading role to play in deploying our collective scientific capabilities as part of an enhanced global health response. Data can play a transformative role in supporting effective early warning and rapid response to health crises. We therefore need to improve the quality and coverage of international, regional and national pathogen surveillance to enable us to gather, share and analyse data to identify new variants in our fight against the current pandemic, and to detect and monitor future pathogens with pandemic potential. We support the establishment of the international pathogen surveillance network - a global pandemic radar - and welcome the WHO’s commitment to work with experts and countries to help achieve this, based on a common framework, including standards and rules for sharing data, that builds on existing detection systems such as the influenza and polio programmes but with greater capacity for genomic sequencing and broader in coverage. We note the report to the Presidency on pathogen surveillance by Sir Jeremy Farrar.

To this end we welcome the WHO’s Global Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, as well as additional centres as part of this network. This will also need to be supported by capability building at the regional level, thereby increasing global sequencing and pathogen surveillance capacities across the world. We ask that the WHO reports back to Leaders on the progress of the network by the end of this year as part of the G20 process.

18. It is essential that we maintain and build upon the extraordinary innovation, scientific power, and collaboration that we have seen in the response to this pandemic, including the development of COVID-19 vaccines in just over 300 days. As G7 members we have a particular role to play in seeking to

Alongside responding to the current pandemic, we must act now to strengthen the global health and health security system to be better prepared for future pandemics and to tackle long standing global health threats, including Antimicrobial Resistance.

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make safe and effective diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines even more quickly available in the future.

Recognising the unpredictable nature of future health emergencies, in the event of a future pandemic we will seek to create an adequate framework to have safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics available within 100 days, consistent with our core principles around trade and transparency of equitable access, and high regulatory standards. We thank the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser and his G7 counterparts, the international organisations, industry representatives and expert advisers involved in the partnership on pandemic preparedness convened by the UK Presidency and note their practical proposals. We welcome the 100 Days Mission, and recognise that this will require continued, concerted collaboration between the public and private sectors, and the leadership of international health organisations, to make what has been exceptional during this crisis become routine in the future. We invite G7 Chief Scientific Advisers or equivalents to review progress and report to Leaders before the end of the year.

ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND JOBS 19. Our plans for the recovery from COVID-19 need to put us on a path to strong, sustainable, balanced, inclusive and resilient growth by not only addressing the immediate challenges arising from the pandemic, but also the long-term shifts in the global economy and society, including demographic, technological, and environmental trends, and inequalities between and within countries, many of which have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognising the interconnected nature of these global challenges, we are taking an integrated approach to our shared commitments.

20. To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, we have provided unprecedented support to citizens and businesses, including to retain jobs and support incomes and keep businesses afloat, totalling over $12 trillion including fiscal support and liquidity measures. We will continue

to support our economies for as long as is necessary, shifting the focus of our support from crisis response to promoting strong, resilient, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth into the future. Once the recovery is firmly established, we need to ensure the long-term sustainability of public finances to enable us to respond to future crises and address longer-term structural challenges, including for the benefit of future generations.

21. We share key priorities including protecting, supporting and creating decent jobs, and investing in quality infrastructure, innovation, training and skills and addressing inequalities.

Wewill continue to exchange ideas and share best practices to ensure we learn from each other and update our approaches through different phases of the recovery. We thank Lord Nick Stern for his paper on “G7 leadership for sustainable, resilient and inclusive economic recovery and growth” as commissioned by the UK G7 Presidency.

At the heart of our agenda for economic growth and recovery is a green and digital transformation that will increase productivity, create new decent and quality jobs, cut greenhouse gas emissions, improve our resilience, and protect people and the planet as we aim for net zero by 2050.

22. We need a tax system that is fair across the world. We endorse the historic commitment made by the G7 on 5 June. We will now continue the discussion to reach consensus on a global agreement on an equitable solution on the allocation of taxing rights and an ambitious global minimum tax of at least 15 per cent on a country-by-country basis, through the G20/OECD inclusive framework and look forward to reaching an agreement at the July meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

With this, we have taken a significant step towards creating a fairer tax system fit for the 21st century, and reversing a 40-year race to the bottom.

Our collaboration will create a stronger level playing field, and it will help raise more tax revenue to support investment and it will crack down on tax avoidance.

23. We recognise the importance to the global economy of safely restarting international travel, by land, air and

sea, and multilateral efforts to achieve this, including new public health guidance on international travel by the WHO, International Civil Aviation Organisation and International Maritime Organisation. We recognise that this will need a set of common standards f or travel including interoperability and mutual recognition of digital applications, testing requirements, recognition of vaccination status including exemptions and comparable criteria for when responsive measures may be required.

We welcome G7 Transport and Health Ministers’ ongoing discussions and ask them to deepen cooperation to support a safe reopening.

24. As leaders accountable to all our citizens, we are determined to ensure our plans for recovery build back better for all including by strengthening education and upskilling, and facilitating labour market participation and transitions to ‘level up’ our economies so that no geographic region or person, irrespective of their gender, age, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation or economic status, is left behind. We recognise this has not always been the case with recoveries from previous global crises, and are together united in our resolve that this time our response should continue to be different.

25. While our support during the pandemic has helped to keep millions of people in employment, the crisis has meant that many have still lost their jobs, and the impact has not felt equally, including with respect to young people, women and disadvantaged groups, as well as atypical and low-skilled workers. The crisis has also shown the importance of social protection systems and the critical role and incredible contribution of caregivers in our societies, often unpaid and often disproportionately women, and the importance of improving decent working conditions for these caregivers as part of our recovery plans. At the same time, technological change is profoundly changing our labour markets. We welcome the contributions of the G7 Employment Taskforce on building back better, greener and more inclusively, including their discussions with social partners and G7 Engagement Groups, including Labour 7, Youth 7, Women 7 and Business 7 → 19

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→ covering how we can prepare our labour markets for the future. One of the highest priorities for our ongoing cooperation will be ensuring our labour markets continue to evolve to respond to these changes and deliver decent jobs and equal opportunities for everyone, while fully respecting the ILO Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and taking into account relevant international labour standards.

26. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the risk to economic resilience posed by global crises and shocks. These can manifest from acute shocks, for example as a result of pandemics, and chronically, from challenges such as market imbalances and distortions. Our recoveries must ensure we build back more resilient. As we recover, these risks need addressing in a more coordinated way. We will collaborate more strongly between us and with allies on a new approach to economic resilience. We recognise climate change and growing inequalities as key risks for the global economy. We will consider mechanisms and share best practices to address risks to the resilience of the critical global supply chains, in areas such as critical minerals and semiconductors, reflecting on models used elsewhere such as stress-testing. We will also enhance our cooperation on investment security within our G7 Investment Screening Expert Group, to ensure we are resilient in our openness to all, able to tackle risks in keeping with ourshared principles of open markets, transparency and competition. Our solutions will be built on our shared principles of openness, sustainability, inclusion, innovation and competition will help retain and reinforce the benefits of open markets; without them, we risk a future of normalised volatility and fragmentation in the global economy. To this end we appreciate the work by the G7 Panel on Economic Resilience, and thank the OECD for its work in support, and we will continue to work on the issues highlighted by the Panel.

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FREE AND FAIR TRADE 27. We stand united in our commitment to free and fair trade as foundational principles and objectives of the rulesbased multilateral system. We agree on the need for the world’s leading democratic nations to unite behind a shared vision to ensure the multilateral trading system is reformed, with a modernised rulebook and a reformed World Trade Organization (WTO) at its centre, to be free and fair for all, more sustainable, resilient and responsive to the needs of global citizens. We will maintain a particular focus on ensuring

that the prosperity trade can bring is felt in all parts of our countries and by all peoples across the globe, especially the poor.

28. We support multilateral and plurilateral agendas to address issues in the global trading system itself and shared global challenges. We support G7 Trade Ministers’ efforts in this regard, and look forward to further work in the G20. Looking ahead to the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12) in November, we will work with other WTO members to make progress on immediate issues

We endorse the conclusions of G7 Trade Ministers on promoting the transition to sustainable supply chains, and acknowledge the risk of carbon leakage, and will work collaboratively to address this risk and to align our trading practices with our commitments under the Paris agreement.

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including reaching a meaningful conclusion to the multilateral negotiation on fisheries subsidies and advancing negotiations on e-commerce.

We also welcome the work undertaken towards the conclusion of the negotiations under the Joint Statement Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation by its participants.

We support G7 Trade Ministers’ commitments to review our trade policy to ensure it supports women’s economic empowerment, andrecognise the importance of developing a strong evidence base of gender-disaggregated data and analysis. We invite Trade Ministers to support he wider WTO membership to deliver an ambitious outcome at MC12 to bolster women’s participation in trade and economic empowerment. We endorse the conclusions of G7 Trade Ministers on promoting the transition to sustainable supply chains, and acknowledge the risk of carbon leakage, and will work collaboratively to address this risk and to align our trading practices with our commitments under the Paris agreement. We also welcome G7 Trade Ministers’ call to work in the WTO to formulate pragmatic, effective and holistic solutions to support trade in health, as well as their support for open, diversified, secure, and resilient supply chains in the manufacture of COVID-19 critical goods and vaccines and their components.

29. We are concerned by the use of all forms of forced labour in global supply chains, including state-sponsored forced labour of vulnerable groups and minorities, including in the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors. We agree on the importance of upholding human rights and of international labour standards, including those deriving from International Labour Organisation membership, throughout global supply chains and tackling instances of forced labour. We commit to continue to work together including through our own available domestic means and multilateral institutions to protect individuals from forced labour and to ensure that global supply chains are free from the use of forced labour. We therefore task G7 Trade Ministers to

identify areas for strengthened cooperation and collective efforts towards eradicating the use of all forms of forced labour in global supply chains, ahead of the G7 Trade Ministers’ meeting in October 2021.

30. We will provide the sustained effort and momentum necessary to ensure progress is made in the modernisation of the WTO to promote fair competition and help secure shared prosperity for all. We will work together at the WTO and with the wider WTO membership ahead of MC12 to advance the following points: •m odernisation of the global trade rulebook so that it both better reflects, with new rules, the transformations underway in the global economy, such as digitalisation and the green transition; and strengthens rules to protect against unfair practices, such as forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, lowering of labour and environmental standards to gain competitive advantage, market-distorting actions of state owned enterprises, and harmful industrial subsidies, including those that lead to excess capacity; • s tronger adherence to the existing and modernised rulebook, including through greater respect for and compliance with transparency obligations, and a strengthened WTO monitoring and deliberating function; •a fairer approach to countries’ different responsibilities under the rulebook, including through addressing the arrangements for special and differential treatment so they reflect developments in the global economy but continue to account for the special needs of the least developed and low-income developing countries; •p roper functioning of the WTO’s negotiating function and dispute settlement system, requiring addressing long-standing issues; and, • s upport for the interests of the least developed and low-income developing countries, including in the full implementation of WTO rules to integrate into the world trading system, so that any modernisation of the global trading system supports the social and economic growth and development of these countries.

FUTURE FRONTIERS 31. Future frontiers of the global economy and society - from cyber space to outer space - will determine the future prosperity and wellbeing of people all over the world in the decadesahead. As we are witnessing an increasing divergence of models, this transformation raises important questions about the interaction between economic opportunity, security, ethics, and human rights, and the balance between the role of the state, businesses and individuals.

32. We will work together as part of an ongoing agenda towards a trusted, values-driven digital ecosystem for the common good that enhances prosperity in a way that is sustainable, inclusive, transparent and human-centric. In doing so we will make it a sustained strategic priority to update our regulatory frameworks and work together with other relevant stakeholders, including young people, to ensure digital ecosystems evolve in a way that reflects our shared values.

Wecommit to preserve an open, interoperable, reliable and secure internet, one that is unfragmented, supports freedom, innovation and trust which empowers people. If used properly, technologies can help us strengthen health capacities, tackle environmental threats, widen access to education and open new economic opportunities. We will leverage these technologies to advance tech for the common good and promote digital literacy worldwide. We will strengthen coordination on and support for the implementation and development of global norms and standards to ensure that the use and evolution of new technologies reflects our shared democratic values and commitment to open and competitive markets, strong safeguards including for human rights and fundamental freedoms. We also affirm our opposition to measures which may undermine these democratic values, such as government-imposed internet shutdowns and network restrictions. We support the development of harmonised principles of data collection which encourage public and private organisations to act to address bias in their own systems, noting new forms of decision-making → 21

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→ have surfaced examples where algorithms have entrenched or amplified historic biases, or even created new forms of bias or unfairness.

33. We call on the private sector to join us in our efforts and reaffirm our support for industry-led inclusive multi-stakeholder approaches to standard setting, in line with our values and principles which underpin these standards. As such, we welcome the Presidency’s initiative of a ‘Future Tech Forum’ in September 2021 with the support of the OECD. The Forum will convene like-minded democratic partners to discuss the role of technology in supporting open societies and tackling global challenges. The Forum will support efforts to mitigate the risk of regulatory fragmentation and to facilitate coherency of our emerging technology ecosystems, and it will invite proposals for Leaders to consider in appropriate global fora. We support the aim to facilitate dialogue between governments, industry, academia, civil society and other key stakeholders.

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Government Partnership. Building on the work of the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) advanced by the Canadian and French G7 Presidencies in 2018 and 2019, we will aim to rally all partners around our open and human centric approach to artificial intelligence looking forward to the GPAI Summit in Paris in November 2021. To support effective standard-setting that reflects our core values and principles, we will strengthen our coordination, including by consulting with industry, with regards to engagement with and appointments to Standard Developing Organisations, where appropriate. We commit to better sharing of information and best practice, including between our national standards bodies, enhanced capacity building and support for multi-stakeholder participation in standard-setting. To this end, we endorse the Framework for G7 Collaboration on Digital Technical Standards.

34. We will support cooperation on specific areas in relation to the evolution of future frontiers. Based on the work of our Digital and Technology

Ministers, we agree the focus of our cooperation for this year will be a structured dialogue around specific areas: • Championing data free flow with trust, to better leverage the potential f valuable data-driven technologies while continuing to address challenges related to data protection.

To that end we endorse our Digital Ministers’ Roadmap for Cooperation on Data Free Flow with Trust.

• Enabling businesses to use electronic transferable records in order to generate efficiencies and economic savings to support the global economic recovery. In support of this aim we endorse the Framework for G7 Collaboration on Electronic Transferable Records.

• Taking further steps to improve internet safety and counter hate speech, while protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, including free expression. We will protect our citizens online and offline, including children and vulnerable at-risk groups, and especially women and girls. We therefore endorse our Digital Ministers’ Internet Safety Principles which aim to set out common approaches to improving online safety.

We invite Interior Ministers to work on a G7 agreement on sharing of information and best practice on tackling existing and emerging online forms of gender-based violence, including forms of online abuse. We affirm our support of the Christchurch Call, emphasising the need for respecting freedoms of speech and peoples’ reasonable expectation of privacy and further invite G7 Interior Ministers to continue work on preventing and countering Violent Extremist and Terrorist Use of the Internet begun in Ischia in 2017 and continued in Toronto in 2018 and Paris in 2019. We commit to work together to further a common understanding of how existing international law applies to cyberspace and welcome the work of our Foreign Ministers to promote this approach at the UN and other international fora. We also commit to work together to urgently address the escalating shared threat from criminal ransomware networks. →

Global Healthcare is a Global Responsibility

www.globusrelief.org www.inc-world.info

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→ We call on all states to urgently identify and disrupt ransomware criminal networks operating from within their borders, and hold those networks accountable for their actions.

• Securing supply chains.

Recognising the foundational role that telecommunications infrastructure, including 5G and future communication technologies, plays and will play in underpinning our wider digital and ICT infrastructure we will promote secure, resilient, competitive, transparent and sustainable and diverse digital, telecoms, and ICT infrastructure supply chains.

• Deepening cooperation on Digital Competition in order to drive innovation across the global economy, enhancing consumer choice. We recognise that there is increasing international consensus that participants with significant market power can exploit their power to hold back digital markets and the wider economy. Therefore, building on the 2019 French G7 Presidency’s common understanding on ‘Competition and the Digital Economy’, we will work together through existing international and multilateral fora to find a coherent way to encourage competition and support innovation in digital markets.

35. Beyond these priorities, we will review whether other areas of collaboration with respect to future frontiers are appropriate. We are committed to the safe and sustainable use of space to support humanity’s ambition now and in the future. We recognise the importance of developing common standards, best practices and guidelines related to sustainable space operations alongside the need for a collaborative approach for space traffic management and coordination.

We call on all nations to work together,

through groups like the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, the International Organization for Standardization and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, to preserve the space environment for future generations.

36. Underpinning all of these future frontiers, and wider challenges of the coming century, is the importance of scientific discovery and its deployment.

We will therefore work together to promote stronger collaboration on research and development, and promote principles of research security and integrity and open science building off the historical levels of collaboration seen in the past year to internationally beneficial results. Central to this should be building a diverse and resilient science and research community, inclusive for all groups including women. Domestically we will seek to redress the imbalance in women’s and girls’ under-representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) which acts as a barrier to access to these growing industries. We will explore how existing and potential new mechanisms and initiatives can support risk reduction, prevention and response to future systemic crises, natural disasters and pace of technological change. As such we endorse the G7 Compact on Research Collaboration and its commitment to: support policies, legal frameworks and programmes to promote research collaboration; promote sharing of research data; explore enhancements to research assessment and rewards for collaboration and knowledge sharing; and develop a common set of principles which will help protect research and innovation ecosystem across the G7 to open and reciprocal research collaboration.

We will explore how existing and potential new mechanisms and initiatives can support risk reduction, prevention and response to future systemic crises, natural disasters and pace of technological change.

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CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT 37. The unprecedented and interdependent crises of climate change and biodiversity loss pose an existential threat to people, prosperity, security, and nature. Through global action and concerted leadership, 2021 should be a turning point for our planet as we commit to a green transition that cuts emissions, increases adaptation action worldwide, halts and reverses biodiversity loss, and, through policy and technological transformation, creates new high quality jobs and increases prosperity and wellbeing.

Ahead of the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15), the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP26) and the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD COP15), we commit to accelerating efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep the 1.5°C global warming threshold within reach, strengthening adaptation and resilience to protect people from the impacts of climate change, halting and reversing biodiversity loss, mobilising finance and leveraging innovation to reach these goals. We welcome and encourage business, civil society and regional commitments to global climate and biodiversity ambition through science based targets, including the Race to Resilience and Race to Zero campaigns. Together we welcome the active role and participation of vulnerable communities, underrepresented groups and will work towards achieving equality, including gender equality, in the climate and environment sector.

We will continue our efforts to progress the Equal by 30 Campaign for gender equality in the energy sector.

38. As G7 members, we all reaffirm our commitment to the Paris Agreement and to strengthening and accelerating its implementation through robust national policies and measures and scaled up international cooperation. o this end we collectively commit to ambitious and accelerated efforts to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and by 2050 at the latest, recognising the importance of significant action this decade. In line with this goal, we

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have each committed to increased 2030 targets and, where not done already, commit to submit aligned Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as soon as possible ahead of COP26, which will cut our collective emissions by around half compared to 2010 or over half compared to 2005. We also commit to submit 2050 Long Term Strategies (LTSs) by COP26 and to regularly update these as needed in line with the Paris agreement to reflect the latest science, technological advances and market developments. Recognising the importance of adaptation in our own national planning, we also commit to submitting adaptation communications as soon as possible, and if feasible by COP26. In fulfilling these commitments we will continue to increase our efforts to keep a limit of 1.5°C temperature rise within reach and chart a G7 pathway towards Net Zero economies. We call on all countries, in particular major emitting economies, to join us in these goals as part of a global effort, stepping up their commitments to reflect the highest possible ambition and transparency on implementation under the Paris Agreement. We also note the value of supporting international initiatives such as the OECD’s International Programme for Action on Climate Mechanism (IPAC) 39. To be credible, ambitions need to be supported by tangible actions in all sectors of our economies and societies.

We will lead a technology-driven transition to Net Zero, supported by relevant policies, noting the clear roadmap provided by the International Energy Agency and prioritising the most urgent and polluting sectors and activities: • In our energy sectors, we will increase energy efficiency, accelerate renewable and other zero emissions energy deployment, reduce wasteful consumption, leverage innovation all whilst maintaining energy security.

Domestically, we commit to achieve an overwhelmingly decarbonised power system in the 2030s and to actions to accelerate this. Internationally, we commit to aligning official international financing with the global achievement of net zero GHG emissions no later than 2050 and for deep emissions reductions in the 2020s. → 25

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→ We will phase out new direct government support for international carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy as soon as possible, with limited exceptions consistent with an ambitious climate neutrality pathway, the Paris Agreement, 1.5°C goal and best available science. To be credible, ambitions need to be supported by tangible actions in all sectors of our economies and societies. We will lead a technology-driven transition to Net Zero, noting the clear roadmap provided by the International Energy Agency and prioritising the most urgent and polluting sectors and activities.

• Recognising that coal power generation is the single biggest cause of greenhouse gas emissions, and consistent with this overall approach and our strengthened NDCs, domestically we have committed to rapidly scale-up technologies and policies that further accelerate the transition away from unabated coal capacity, consistent with our 2030 NDCs and net zero commitments.

This transition must go hand in hand with policies and support for a just transition for affected workers, and sectors so that no person, group or geographic region is left behind. To accelerate the international transition away from coal, recognising that continued global investment in unabated coal power generation is incompatible with keeping 1.5°C within reach we stress that international investments in unabated coal must stop now and we commit now to an end to new direct government support for unabated international thermal coal power generation by the end of 2021, including through Official Development Assistance, export finance, investment, and financial and trade promotion support. This transition must also be complemented by support to deliver this, including coordinating through the Energy Transition Council. We welcome the work by the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) and donors plan to commit up to $2 billion in the coming year to its Accelerating the Coal Transition and Integrating Renewable Energy programs. These concessional resources are expected to mobilize GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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up to $10 billion in co-financing, including from the private sector, to support renewable energy deployment in developing and emerging economies.

We call on other major economies to

We will lead a technology-driven transition to Net Zero, supported by relevant policies, noting the clear roadmap provided by the International Energy Agency and prioritising the most urgent and polluting sectors and activities.

adopt such commitments and join us in phasing out the most polluting energy sources, and scaling up investment in the technology and infrastructure to facilitate the clean, green transition. More broadly, we reaffirm our existing commitment to eliminating inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, and call on all countries to join us, recognising the substantial financial resource this could unlock globally to support the transition and the need to commit to a clear timeline.

• In our transport sectors, we commit to sustainable, decarbonised mobility and to scaling up zero emission vehicle technologies, including buses, trains, shipping and aviation. We recognise that this will require dramatically increasing the pace of the global decarbonisation of the road transport sector throughout the 2020s, and beyond. This includes support for accelerating the roll out of necessary infrastructure, such as charging and fueling infrastructure and enhancing the offer of more sustainable transport modes, including public transport, shared mobility, cycling and walking. We commit to accelerate the transition away from new sales of diesel and petrol cars to promote the uptake of zero emission vehicles.

• In our industrial and innovation sectors we will take action to decarbonise areas such as iron nd steel, cement, chemicals, and petrochemicals, in order to reach net zero emissions across the whole economy. To this end, we will harness our collective strengths in science, technological innovation, policy design, financing, and regulation including through our launch of the G7 Industrial Decarbonisation Agenda to complement, support and amplify ambition of existing initiatives.

This includes further action on public procurement, standards and industrial efforts to define and stimulate demand for green products and enhance energy and resource efficiency in industry. We will focus on accelerating progress on electrification and batteries, hydrogen, carbon capture, usage and storage, zero emission aviation and shipping,

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and for those countries that opt to use it, nuclear power. We therefore fully support launching Mission Innovation phase two and the Clean Energy Ministerial third phase.

• In our homes and buildings, and also industry, we recognise the need for an urgent step change in the deployment of renewable heating and cooling and reduction in energy demand. This complements required shifts in building design, sustainable materials and retrofits. We therefore welcome the Super-Efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment (SEAD) initiative’s goal of doubling the efficiency of lighting, cooling, refrigeration and motor systems sold globally by 2030.

• In our agricultural, forestry and other land use sectors, we commit to ensuring our policies encourage sustainable production, the protection, conservation, and regeneration of ecosystems, and the sequestration of carbon. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues at the COP26 Transition to Sustainable Agriculture Policy Dialogue and UN Food Systems Summit in September.

40. Achieving our collective ambitions of a global green and resilient recovery offers the greatest economic opportunity of our time to boost income, innovation, jobs, productivity and growth while also accelerating action to tackle the existential threat of climate change and environmental degradation. To close the gap between the funds needed and actual finance flows requires mobilising and aligning finance and investment at scale towards the technologies, infrastructure, ecosystems, businesses, jobs and economies that will underpin a net-zero emissions resilient future that leaves no one behind. This includes the deployment and alignment of all sources of finance: public and private, national and multilateral. We recognise the particular challenges of financing the transition to net zero economies poses for developing countries and stand by our bilateral and multilateral commitments to support these partners, in the context of meaningful and transparent decarbonisation efforts.

We reaffirm the collective developed country goal to jointly mobilise $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025 in the context

of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.

Towards this end, we commit to each increase and improve our overall international public climate finance contributions for this period and call on other developed countries to join and enhance their contributions to this effort. We welcome the commitments already made by some of the G7 to increase climate finance and look forward to new commitments from others well ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.

This increase in quantity and predictability is complemented by improved effectiveness and accessibility, and includes more finance contributing to adaptation and resilience, disaster risk and insurance, as well as support for nature and nature-based solutions.

We are committed to further enhance synergies between finance for climate and biodiversity and to promote funding that has co-benefits for climate and nature and are working intensively towards increasing the quantity of finance to nature and nature-based solutions. We welcome efforts of the MDBs to scale up their climate and nature finance, urge them to mobilise increased finance including from the private sector, and call on them, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), multilateral funds, public banks and relevant agencies to publish before COP26 a high-level plan and date by which all their operations will be fully aligned with and support the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the multilateral environmental agreements we support.

41. We also support the transformation underway to mobilise further private capital towards these objectives in particular to support developing countries and emerging markets in making the most of the opportunities in the transition; whilst mitigating and adapting to climate change. We call upon the MDBs and our DFIs to prioritise capital mobilization strategies, initiatives and incentives within their operations. The G7 commits to leverage different types of blended finance vehicles including through our greater strategic approach to development finance, greater collaboration between our DFIs and billions worth of planned commitments towards CIF and Green

Climate Fund, all of which will mobilise billions more in private finance. We also encourage further development of disaster risk finance markets. Towards this, G7 members have committed hundreds of millions worth of new financing for early action, disaster risk and insurance in line with the InsuResilience Global Partnership and Risk-Informed Early Action Partnership (REAP). We commit to establishing the necessary market infrastructure for private finance to support and incentivise the net zero transition.

Developing the global green finance market will help mobilise private sector finance, and reinforce government policy to meet our net zero commitments. We support the recently launched Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero, and call on swift, robust delivery of their commitments to reduce real economy emissions. We emphasise the need to green the global financial system so that financial decisions take climate considerations into account.

We support moving towards mandatory climate-related financial disclosures that provide consistent and decision-useful information for market participants and that are based on the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework, in line with domestic regulatory frameworks. We also look forward to the establishment of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and its recommendations. These initiatives will help mobilise the trillions of dollars of private sector finance needed, and reinforce government policy to meet our net zero commitments. We recognise the potential of high integrity carbon markets and carbon pricing to foster cost-efficient reductions in emission levels, drive innovation and enable a transformation to net zero, through the optimal use of a range of policy levers to price carbon. We underline their importance towards the establishment of a fair and efficient carbon pricing trajectory to accelerate the decarbonisation of our economies, to achieve a net zero global emissions pathway. In all this, we will develop gender-responsive approaches to climate and nature financing, investment and policies, so that women and girls can participate fully in the future green economy. → 27

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We support an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted by parties at CBD COP15 which sets ambitious goals, strengthens implementation, and enhances regular reporting and review. → 42. Biodiversity loss is an intrinsically linked, mutually reinforcing, and equally important existential threat to our planet and our people alongside climate change.

In this context, we acknowledge as the G7 our contribution to the decline of biodiversity and pledge to play our part in its restoration and conservation. We support an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted by parties at CBD COP15 which sets ambitious goals, strengthens implementation, and enhances regular reporting and review. We acknowledge our responsibility to support the world in reversing the trajectory of the loss of biodiversity and the natural environments that support it, alongside ensuring that the impact on nature is fully taken into account in our policy decision making.

43. In support of strong outcomes for nature at the Convention on Biological Diversity COP-15 in Kunming and COP26 this year, and noting the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature launched at the 75th session of the UN General Assembly 2020, we adopt the G7 2030 Nature Compact in support of the global mission to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The Nature Compact commits us to take action across four key pillars: GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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•F irst, we commit to champion ambitious and effective global biodiversity targets, including conserving or protecting at least 30 per cent of global land and at least 30 per cent of the global ocean by 2030.

We will contribute by conserving or protecting at least 30 per cent of our own land, including terrestrial and inland waters, and coastal and marine areas by 2030 according to national circumstances and approaches. These actions will help stem the extinction crisis, safeguard water and food supplies, absorb carbon pollution, and reduce the risks of future pandemics. We also fully support the commitment of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to develop a representative system of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Convention area in the Southern Ocean based on the best available scientific evidence.

•S econd, we will support the transition to sustainable management and use of natural resources, and use appropriate levers to address unsustainable and illegal activities negatively impacting nature, and therefore livelihoods. This includes stepping up action to tackle increasing levels of plastic pollution in the ocean, including working

through the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) on options including strengthening existing instruments and a potential new agreement or other instrument to address marine plastic litter, including at UNEA-5.2.

• Third, we will work intensively towards increasing investment in the protection, conservation and restoration of nature, including committing to increase finance for nature based solutions through to 2025, maximising synergies of climate and biodiversity finance, and ensuring prominence of nature in both policy and economic decision-making.

•F inally, we will prioritise strengthened accountability and implementation mechanisms of Multilateral Environmental Agreements to which we are parties. We will implement the Compact and review our progress against it regularly through existing G7 mechanisms, including at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in five years when we will review options to ratchet up our action and ambition, as needed, to ensure delivery of our 2030 vision. Those G7 members party to the CBD will also champion successful implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be agreed at COP15. →

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GENDER EQUALITY → 44. Gender equality is at the heart of an open, inclusive, and just society.

Persistent gaps in gender equality affect access to basic services as well as decent work, equal pay, social protection, education, technology and many other areas. Unequal division of unpaid care responsibilities in the home and low pay for paid care work also limits women’s empowerment, social and economic participation and leadership. Gender equality intersects with other characteristics and our actions need to take account of these intersections in a meaningful way, including tackling racism in all forms and violence and discrimination against LGBQTI+ populations. We recognise the devastating and disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on women and girls, which risks reversing hardwon gains especially with regards to gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, education and jobs.

45. The advancement of gender equity and equality are a central pillar of our plans and policies to build back better, informed by three key priorities: educating girls, empowering women and ending violence against women and girls. Achieving gender equality needs to be underpinned by the full, equal and meaningful participation of women in all aspects of decision-making. We are committed to close alignment with the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) and commend the organisation of the first G20 Ministerial Conference on women’s empowerment. We thank the Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC) for its work and recommendations, and look forward to receiving the GEAC’s

full report in the Autumn. We agree to a consistent and sustained focus on gender equality to project our global leadership on this issue, and intend to convene the GEAC as a standing feature of all G7 Presidencies. We know that we cannot make true progress towards gender equality without robust data and a way to track it over time. We invite the GEAC to work with existing accountability mechanisms such as the Accountability Working Group and the Taormina Roadmap to monitor G7 commitments to achieve gender equality on an annual basis.

46. We reaffirm our full commitment to promote and protect the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of all individuals, and recognise the essential and transformative role they play in gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment, and in supporting diversity, including of sexual orientations and gender identities. We commit to working together to prevent and address the negative impacts on access to SRHR from the COVID-19 pandemic, with specific attention to the most at risk, marginalised and inadequately served groups. In recognition of increased violence against women and girls during the COVID-19 crisis, we commit to preventing, responding to and eliminating all forms of sexual and gender-based violence (GBV). We will achieve this through women’s empowerment and by scaling-up implementation of evidence-based, accessible survivor and victim-centred policies, prevention and support programmes, including through our pandemic response and recovery at home, in partner countries and in

conflict zones. We acknowledge our collective responsibility to beneficiaries and partners, their communities, and survivors to do more to address sexual exploitation and abuse in international aid. We condemn GBV against women and girls and denounce the use of sexual violence in conflict situations and underscore that such acts may constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes. We note the varied legal and institutional frameworks which currently address conflict and invite Foreign and Development Ministers to consider how best to strengthen international architecture around conflict-related sexual violence.

47. COVID-19 has exacerbated underlying inequalities, leading to one of the worst education crises in history for children around the world, but especially for the most marginalised and at risk girls. Around 11 million girls from pre-primary to secondary school are at risk of not returning to school. We commit to two new global SDG4 milestone girls’ education targets: million more girls in education by 2026 in low and lower-middle income countries; and 20 million more girls reading by age 10 or the end of primary school by 2026, in low and lower-middle income countries. We endorse the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ Girls Education Declaration. These targets should be underpinned by sustainable financing and so today G7 members commit to a combined total pledge of at least $2¾ billion funding over the next 5 years for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) ahead of its replenishment in July. We call on others to join with the G7 and make ambitious pledges to a fully funded GPE.

Gender equality is at the heart of an open, inclusive, and just society.

Persistent gaps in gender equality affect access to basic services as well as decent work, equal pay, social protection, education, technology and many other areas. Unequal division of unpaid care responsibilities in the home and low pay for paid care work also limits women’s empowerment, social and economic participation and leadership.

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GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY AND INTERNATIONAL ACTION 48. We will work together to promote our shared values as open societies in the international system, as reflected in the Statement on Open Societies signed with the Leaders of countries from the Indo-Pacific region and Africa, who have joined us at Carbis Bay, namely, Australia, India, South Africa and the Republic of Korea. Further to this, we commit to: increase cooperation on supporting democracy, including through strengthening the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism to counter f oreign threats to democracy including disinformation; strengthen media freedom and ensure the protection of journalists; support freedom of religion or belief; condemn racism in all its forms; address human rights abuses, including the failure to protect civilians in conflict; oppose the practice of arbitrary detention, including by amplifying the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations and welcoming its Partnership Action Plan; and recognise the need for

action on corruption, including by sharing information on illicit financial activities, tackling the misuse of shell companies, and curtailing the ability of illicit actors to hide wealth, including in real estate. We support the growth of peaceful, just and inclusive societies by ensuring safe and vibrant civic spaces.

For our own part, our discussions have benefited from input from the perspectives and expertise of external engagement groups representing all sectors of society, including the Business 7, Civil Society 7, Labour 7, Science 7, Women 7 and Youth 7. We thank them for their consideration and recommendations across the breadth of our policy priorities.

49. We recognise the particular responsibility of the largest countries and economies in upholding the rulesbased international system and international law. We commit to play our role in this, working with all partners and as members of the G20, UN and wider international community, and encourage others to do the same. We will do this based on our shared agenda

and democratic values. With regard to China, and competition in the global economy, we will continue to consult on collective approaches to challenging non-market policies and practices which undermine the fair and transparent operation of the global economy. In the context of our respective responsibilities in the multilateral system, we will cooperate where it is in our mutual interest on shared global challenges, in particular addressing climate change and biodiversity loss in the context of COP26 and other multilateral discussions. At the same time and in sodoing, we will promote our values, including by calling on China to respect City Energy Analyst Tool human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. 50. We endorse the statement made by our Foreign and Development Ministers in May. Building on this, in particular to reflect recent developments, we have reviewed the following live issues.

51. We reiterate our interest in stable and predictable relations with Russia, and will continue to engage where there are areas of mutual interest. We reaffirm our call on Russia to stop its destabilising behaviour and malign activities, including its interference in other countries’ democratic systems, and to fulfil its international human rights obligations and commitments. In particular, we call on Russia to urgently investigate and credibly explain the use of a chemical weapon on its soil, to end its systematic crackdown on independent civil society and media, and to identify, disrupt, and hold to account those within its borders who conduct ransomware attacks, abuse virtual currency to launder ransoms, and other cybercrimes.

52. We reiterate our support for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders. We call on Russia to alleviate tensions and act in accordance with its international obligations, and to withdraw the Russian military troops and materiel at the eastern border of Ukraine and on the Crimean peninsula. We remain firmly of the view that Russia is aUrban partySingapore to → 31

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→ the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, not a mediator. We affirm our support for the Normandy Process to secure the implementation of the Minsk agreements, and call on Russia and the armed formations it backs to engage constructively and recommit to the ceasefire. We reaffirm our efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s democracy and institutions, encouraging further progress on reform.

53. We are deeply concerned by the Belarusian authorities’ continuing attacks on human rights, fundamental freedoms and international law, as exemplified by the forced landing of flight FR4978 and the arrest of an independent journalist and his partner.

We will work together to hold those responsible to account, including through imposing sanctions, and to continue to support civil society, independent media and human rights in Belarus. We call on the regime to: change course and implement all the recommendations of the independent expert mission under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Moscow Mechanism; enter into meaningful dialogue with all sectors of society; and hold new free and fair elections.

54. We are deeply concerned by the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and reports of an unfolding major humanitarian tragedy, including potentially hundreds of thousands in famine conditions. We condemn ongoing atrocities, including widespread sexual violence, and we welcome the ongoing Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) investigations and call for full accountability for reported human rights violations in Tigray and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, unimpeded humanitarian access to all areas and the immediate withdrawal of Eritrean forces. We urge all parties to pursue a credible political process, which is the only solution to the crisis. We further call upon Ethiopia’s leaders to advance a broader inclusive political process to foster national reconciliation and consensus toward a future based on respect for the human and political rights of all Ethiopians.

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55. While acknowledging the increased international mobilisation and the progress in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel, we express our concern about the continuing attacks targeting civilian populations, and the deepening humanitarian crisis. We urge all actors to respect human rights and international humanitarian law. We will deliver on our commitments to renew efforts to address drivers of instability, with a focus on political and civilian dimensions of the “civil surge” agreed upon by the governments of the G5 Sahel and their partners, gathered in the Sahel coalition, at the N’Djamena summit in February 2021. We support

the efforts of the African Union and Economic Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in responseto recent events in Chad and Mali. We reiterate the necessity to create the conditions for timely civilian-led transitions to democratic, constitutional rule in both countries.

56. We confirm our full support for the interim executive authority as it pursues Libyan-led and Libyan-owned stabilisation, facilitated by the UN in the framework of the Berlin Process.

Wereaffirm the importance of free, fair and inclusive elections to be held on 24 December. We reiterate the urgent need to implement in full the 23 October

We will work together to promote our shared values as open societies in the international system, as reflected in the Statement on Open Societies signed with the Leaders of countries from the Indo-Pacific region and Africa, who have joined us at Carbis Bay, namely, Australia, India, South Africa and the Republic of Korea.

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ceasefire agreement, including through the withdrawal of all foreign fighters and mercenaries from Libya.

All states must comply with UN Security Council Resolutions 2570 and 2571.

57. We call on all Afghan parties to reduce violence and agree on steps that enable the successful implementation of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire and to engage fully with the peace process. In Afghanistan, a sustainable, inclusive political settlement is the only way to achieve a just and durable peace that benefits all Afghans.

We are determined to maintain our support for the Afghan government to address the country’s urgent security and humanitarian needs, and to help the people of Afghanistan, including women, young people and minority groups, as they seek to preserve hard-won rights and freedoms.

58. We call for the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the verifiable and irreversible abandonment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) unlawfulweapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes in accordance with all relevant UN Security Council resolutions. We call on all states to fully implement these resolutions and their associated sanctions. We welcome the readiness of the United States to continue its diplomatic efforts in coordination with all relevant partners and call on the DPRK to engage and resume dialogue. We once again call on DPRK to respect human rights for all and to resolve the issue of abductions immediately.

59. We condemn in the strongest terms the military coup in Myanmar, and the violence committed by Myanmar’s security forces, and we call for the immediate release of those detained arbitrarily. We pledge our support to those advocating peacefully for a stable and inclusive democracy.

Recalling ASEAN’s central role, we welcome its Five Point Consensus and urge swift implementation. We reiterate our commitment to ensuring that neither development assistance nor the sale of arms will benefit the military, and urge businesses to exercise due diligence in their trade and investment in the same vein. We reaffirm G7 unity

on pursuing additional measures should they prove necessary. We are also deeply concerned by the humanitarian situation, call for unfettered humanitarian access to vulnerable and displaced populations, support the Humanitarian Response Plan, and encourage others to contribute.

60. We reiterate the importance of maintaining a free and open Indo Pacific, which is inclusive and based on the rule of law. We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo and increase tensions.

61. We are committed to ensuring that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon. We welcome the substantive discussions between Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) participants, and separately with the United States, to accomplish a return of the United States and Iran to their JCPoA commitments. We support the goal of restoring the nonproliferation benefits of the JCPoA and of ensuring the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. We urge Iran to stop and reverse all measures that reduce transparency and to ensure full and timely cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A restored and fully-implemented JCPoA could also pave the way to further address regional and security concerns.

We condemn Iran’s support to proxy forces and non-state armed actors, including through financing, training and the proliferation of missile technology and weapons. We call on Iran to stop all ballistic missile activities and proliferation inconsistent with UNSCR 2231 and other relevant resolutions, refrain from destabilising actions and play a constructive role in fostering regional stability and peace. We support efforts to pursue transparency, accountability and justice for the victims of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, shot down by Iran in January 2020.

We reiterate our deep concern over the continued human rights violations and abuses in Iran.

62. We commend the Iraqi Security Forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga, and Government of Iraq in their success against ISIS and affirm continuing support for those efforts, including stabilisation in liberated areas.

We also affirm our support for Iraq’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity. We fully endorse UNSCR 2576 and its call for election monitors to help ensure free and fair elections in October, and encourage all Iraqis to participate in those elections.

Finally, we welcome the efforts of the Government of Iraq to hold illegal armed groups accountable for attacks against Iraqi citizens and Coalition personnel who are in Iraq at its invitation solely to train and advise Iraqi forces in their fight against ISIS. 63. We acknowledge the far-reaching impacts of COVID-19 on the poorest countries who already were grappling with the effects of conflict, climate change, socio-economic shocks and a chronic lack of resources and infrastructure. As we advance recovery plans to support our economies and build back better, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including through innovative measures and massive budgetary support, developing partner countries, especially in Africa, cannot be left behind. We are deeply concerned that the pandemic has set back progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and continues to exacerbate global inequalities, and therefore recommit to enhance our efforts to achieve the SDGs by 2030, including by supporting the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) and aligning financial flows with the SDGs. We take note of the policy options developed through the Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond Initiative.

64. The IMF estimates that, between now and 2025, low income countries will need around $200 billion to respond to the pandemic and $250 billion in investment spending for convergence with advanced economies. We reiterate our commitment to implement the G20 and Paris Club Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative. We support fair and open lending practices, and call on all creditors to adhere to these. → 33

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→ We underline the importance of information sharing, and reiterate the need for comparability of treatment for private and other official bilateral creditors in debt treatments. We urge the MDBs to explore all options to unlock additional financing for developing countries, including more efficient and effective use of their resources, further work on balance sheet optimisation and further analysis of their capital adequacy frameworks.

65. We welcome the agreement by G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to support a new $650 billion allocation of IMF Special Drawing Rights, urging implementation by the end of August 2021 accompanied by transparency and accountability measures. We encourage the IMF to work quickly with all relevant stakeholders to explore a menu of options for channelling SDRs to further support health needs, including vaccinations, and to help enable greener, more robust recoveries in the most affected countries, supporting the poorest and most vulnerable countries in tackling these urgent challenges. G7 countries are actively considering options that we cantake as part of a global effort to magnify the impact of this general allocation for countries most in need, especially in Africa, including through voluntarily channelling SDRs and/or budget loans, in line with national circumstances and legal requirements.

This includes scaling up financing to the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and the IMF’s review of concessional financing and policies to strengthen its capacity to support low income countries. To support our aim to reach a total global ambition of $100 billion, we call for contributions from other countries able to do so, alongside the G7. We task G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to urgently consider the detail of this, including by working with the G20 and other stakeholders.

66. We note with grave concern that the world faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis as the UN reports that over 34 million people are already facing emergency levels of food insecurity and are one step from catastrophe or famine. In this light, GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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we endorse the G7 Famine Prevention and Humanitarian Crises Compact committed to by G7 Foreign and Development Ministers. We reaffirm our commitment to provide $7 billion in humanitarian assistance, take diplomatic action to promote humanitarian access and the protection of civilians, including women and girls, and strengthen anticipatory and early action in partnership with the UN and World Bank Group. We call attention to the rise in poverty, hunger and malnutrition globally, noting the exacerbating role of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, economic shocks, biodiversity loss and increased conflict, and agree further action is needed to reverse these trends and strengthen global food systems. We reaffirm our commitment to the Broad Food Security and Nutrition Development Approach made at Elmau in 2015, and note that responsible investments in food security, food systems, and nutrition are essential to support SDG2 and World Health Assembly nutrition targets. We further encourage strong commitments in these areas to be announced at the G20, the UN Food Systems Summit, COP26 and the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit later this year.

67. We recognise the significant infrastructure needs across low and middle income countries, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting our shared values and shared vision, we will aim for a step change in our approach to infrastructure financing, notably on quality infrastructure and investment, to strengthen partnerships with developing countries and help meet their infrastructure needs. Working together and with others, and by building on and going beyond our existing action, we will develop a partnership to build back better for the world with the aim of maximising impact on the ground to meet the needs of our partners, and to ensure our collective effort is greater than the sum of its parts. This partnership will orient development finance tools toward the range of challenges faced by developing countries, including in resilient infrastructure and technologies to address the impacts of climate change;

health systems and security; developing digital solutions; and advancing gender equality and education. A particular priority will be an initiative for clean and green growth to drive a sustainable and green transition in line with the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030.

Underpinning our approach will be the following key principles: • values-driven vision: we believe that infrastructure development, implementation and maintenance carried out in a transparent and financially, environmentally, and socially sustainable manner - will lead to beneficial outcomes for recipient countries and communities.

• intensive collaboration: we will each pursue the necessary actions through our own DFIs, and other relevant bodies, while strengthening collaboration to determine how we can increase the scale and scope of our collective offer to developing partner countries.

• market-led: we believe current funding and financing approaches are not adequate to address the infrastructure financing gap and are committed to enhancing the development finance tools at our disposal, including by mobilising private sector capital and expertise, through a strengthened and more integrated approach across the public and private sector, to reduce risk, strengthen local capacities, and support and catalyse a significant increase in responsible and marketbased private capital in sectors with anticipated returns, and to strengthen local capacities, in a sustainable manner, in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development.

• strong standards: to ensure our approach and values are upheld, and to drive a race to the top, we will make high standards - across environmental, social, financial, labour, governance and transparency - a central plank of our approach, including by building on multilateral agreed standards on quality infrastructure such as the G20 Principles for Quality Infrastructure Investment. This will help to provide citizens of recipient communities with the long-run benefits they expect and deserve. We emphasise the importance

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of transparent, open, economically efficient, fair and competitive standards for lending and procurement, also in line with debt sustainability, and the adherence of international rules and standards for major creditor countries.

• enhanced multilateral finance: we recognise that many MDBs and other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have evolved to embody the highest standards for project planning, implementation, social and environmental safeguards, and analytical capability. We will work with the IFIs to enhance their catalytic impact and increase the mobilisation of capital needed for impactful and sustainable infrastructure investment, and ensure that the pace of project development and disbursement meets the needs of partner countries.

• strategic partnerships: we will ground this initiative in strategic and substantial partnerships between countries, to support innovation and technological development, focused on the most pressing needs.

We will work together to take forward an agenda based on these principles and work closely with others, including developing country partners, to ensure that it is developed in an open and collaborative way. We will establish a taskforce to develop practical proposals and report back to us in the Autumn.

68. A central focus of our new strategic approach will be supporting sustainable growth in Africa. Building on the conclusions of the Summit on Financing African Economies that was held in Paris on 18 May 2021 and on the needs expressed by our African partners, we are resolved to deepen our current partnership to a new deal with the African continent, with African states, institutions and expertise at its core. In line with these ambitions, our DFIs and multilateral partners intend to invest at least $80 billion into the private sector in Africa over the next five years to support sustainable economic recovery and growth in line with the AAAA. This builds on the 2X Challenge partnership between G7 DFIs launched in 2018 and the target of an additional $15 billion of new funding for this as announced by G7 Foreign and Development Ministers

in May 2021 to help address the disproportionate barriers that women face to access capital, leadership roles, quality employment and affordable care. We welcome the Alliance for entrepreneurship in Africa that was launched on May 18 and look forward to its first meeting by the end of the year, under the auspices of the International Financing Corporation and in full partnership with all public and private partners willing to invest more in Africa’s future and to leverage its growth opportunities. We ask the MDBs and especially the World Bank to mobilise more private financing into Africa by developing and reinforcing the relevant risk sharing instruments for the benefit of African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

We reiterate our support to the G20 Compact with Africa as a key

framework to enhance the business environment in Africa and call on reform orientated partners to join and strengthen this initiative. We invite G7 Foreign and Development ministers to continue to work with developing country partners and DFIs at the second Foreign and Development Ministers meeting.

69. As open societies we are committed to accountability and transparency, and to upholding the promises we have made. In this spirit, we endorse the 2021 Carbis Bay Progress Report from the G7 Accountability Working Group, reporting on G7 commitments to strengthen health systems to advance universal health coverage and global health. We look forward to the next Comprehensive Progress Report from the G7 Accountability working group in 2022. ◆

CONCLUSION In Cornwall we have revitalised our G7 partnership. Our Shared Agenda for Global Action is a statement of our shared vision and ambition as we continue to collaborate this year and under future Presidencies. As we do so we look forward to joining with others to ensure we build back better, in particular at the G20 Summit, COP26, and CBD15 and the UN General Assembly, and reiterate our support for the holding of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 in a safe and secure manner as a symbol of global unity in overcoming COVID-19.

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W WORLD TRADE

Liz Truss Calls on G7 Partners to Modernise World Trade The International Trade Secretary used the UK-hosted G7 Trade Ministerial meeting this week (27 to 28 May) to rally the world’s leading democracies to the cause of WTO reform.

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Liz Truss will push for a fully-functioning dispute settlement system, to tackle unfair subsidies in industry and agriculture, to modernise the WTO rulebook, and advance digital and green trade.

She will warn that if real progress is not made to bring the WTO into the 21st century, there is a danger of the global trading system fragmenting.

Truss will urge the G7 to support the WTO’s new Director General, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is working to make progress on reform and create a new framework for action ahead of the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC-12) in November.

The UK is seeking agreement at the WTO on the need to tackle harmful industrial subsidies, which distort competition and undermine international trade. As holders of the G7 Presidency, the UK will increase collaboration and cooperation between G7 members on stopping unfair trading practices through methods such as better evidencesharing and greater transparency from non-market economies.

This week’s trade meeting provides an opportunity to push for G7 support for sustainable supply chains, a crucial aspect of the UK’s commitment to promoting greener trade, ahead of the COP26 Summit in November.

During the meeting the International Trade Secretary will also call for collective action to boost production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and medical goods.

Speaking at the opening session of the G7 Trade Track, International Trade Secretary Liz Truss is expected to say: It really is now or never for the World Trade Organisation. International trade only works when it is fair and when countries submit themselves to a common set of rules, and for that to happen we need a more modern and dynamic WTO. We want to use our G7 Presidency to address the fundamental issues facing global trade, and support Dr Ngozi in her work to bring the WTO into the twentyfirst century. Like- minded democracies need to lead the charge on trade reform, because if we don’t then there is a very real danger that global trade fragments and that fewer countries end up playing by the rules.

The International Trade Secretary will be joined at the second virtual G7 Trade Track meeting by trade Ministers from the member countries of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, US, and the EU, as well as Dr Okonjo-Iweala, members of the Business 7 group, the Gender Equality Advisor Council (GEAC) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The third and final G7 Trade Track meeting is due to take place in person in October where the UK will be looking to finalise our shared agenda with our G7 partners. ◆

Truss will push for collective G7 support for the creation of rules governing digital and data trade and making international trade greener.

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G7 CARBIS BAY

HEALTH DECLARATION G7 leaders pledge to lead the way in building a resilient, integrated and inclusive global health system prepared and equipped to prevent the causes and escalation of disease, and to detect emerging health threats quickly.

We, the G7 Leaders, commit to work expeditiously and collectively toward the goal of ending the COVID-19 pandemic, while also recognising that the next one could come at any time. This declaration sets out our commitment to take action to strengthen our collective defences to better prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from, future pandemics through effective multilateral action and a strengthened global health system, with the World Health Organization (WHO) at its centre.

Global solutions are needed. We welcome the strides we have already taken with our partners across the international health system, including the Rome Declaration adopted at the G20 Global Health Summit and the steps taken at the 74th World Health Assembly (WHA). We acknowledge the bold recommendations of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) and the other review committees. Building on these recommendations, we will continue to work with the G20, United Nations(UN), WHO, and other relevant international organisations and stakeholders to seek the necessary multilateral consensus and take concrete action this year to strengthen the global health and health security

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architecture. We note the IPPPR’s many recommendations, including for a potential treaty under the framework of the WHO. We welcome the WHA’s decision to set up a Member States Working Group on Strengthening WHO Preparedness and Response to Health Emergencies. We look forward to considering their report at the Special Session of the WHA in November.

Through this declaration, we acknowledge our particular roles and responsibilities in international efforts to strengthen the global health and health security architecture, and commit to harnessing our shared democratic values and unique strengths as leaders in science, research and public health to support this.

We pledge to lead the way in building a resilient, integrated and inclusive global health system prepared and equipped to prevent the causes and escalation of disease, and to detect emerging health threats quickly. We need to have multilateral mechanisms in place to transparently report and respond collectively to pandemics and mitigate their impact including on essential services; and take concrete steps to recover once immediate health threats have passed. Consequently, we commit to take action across each stage of the prevent, detect, respond and recover cycle.

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We will uphold a strengthened global health system, premised on transparency, collaboration and accountability.

PREVENT 1. We will uphold a strengthened global health system, premised on transparency, collaboration and accountability.

Building on the recommendations of the IPPPR and other relevant reviews, we fully support working to strengthen the WHO, which has a crucial role to perform at international, regional and country level. We welcome the measures set out within the ‘Strengthening WHOpreparedness for and response to health emergencies’ Resolution, as adopted at the 74th WHA, including the call for increased core and more flexible contributions, and we strongly underscore the need to establish an expert-driven, transparent, and independent process, to expeditiously investigate outbreaks of unknown origin.

2. We will invest in our own human, animal and environmental health systems and in domestic preparedness to foster resilient populations. We will support vulnerable countries to do the same and encourage others to join us.

We will strive for fairness, inclusion and equity, and address the links between health crises, the wider social determinants of health and noncommunicable disease. We recognise the importance of access to health services, leaving no one behind by →

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→ advancing the achievement of Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. Global healthand pandemic preparedness, as well as resilience to other health threats like antimicrobial resistance and climate change, rests on strong health systems and institutions that are responsive to the needs of the populations they serve.

3. We will lead the way in reaffirming our commitment to the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005), improving implementation and compliance, and determining how to better hold ourselves and each other to account. We will work together with others to proactively demonstrate transparency and accountability on our pandemic preparedness, including through compliance with the IHR monitoring and evaluation framework, such as Joint External Evaluations (JEE). To this end, we support the recommendation of the IHR Review Committee and IPPPR to develop proposals for a renewed periodic review mechanism for IHR compliance Through the work of our Health and Foreign and Development Ministers, we will support vulnerable countries to improve implementationn of the IHR and strengthen health systems, including through coordination of G7 financial investments, promotion of country ownership, and collaboration with regional public health institutions and leadership networks in Africa, Asia and beyond. We will continue to support and advance efforts to accelerate building core capacities, including through the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) and the WHO Academy.

4. We will champion an integrated and systems-based One Health approach across all aspects of pandemic prevention, preparedness, detection and response and work to foster a healthier planet.

We support a stronger, expanded ‘Tripartite Plus’ alliance of World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, and the WHO, bringing in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as an equal partner. We invite their leaders to work together, with the guidance of the One Health High-Level Expert Panel GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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and including by conducting a One Health intelligence scoping study, to strengthen collaboration and coordination and align with other One Health initiatives such as PREZODE. Building on past G7 and G20 commitments, we call on our Health, Finance, Environment and Foreign and Development Ministers to continue to take action to tackle antimicrobial resistance. Recognising the links between biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and risks of zoonotic disease, we commit to play our part to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss, including through our G7 2030 Nature Compact.

DETECT 5. We will harness the power and potential of data, digital technologies, science and research to improve prevention, detection and response to future pandemic threats. We support the establishment of a stronger international pathogen surveillance network, and welcome the WHO’s commitment to work with expert partners and countries to help achieve this. Such a network should build on existing structures, including the recently announced WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, and ensure a One Health approach to support effective early warning and rapid response and inform vaccine, therapeutic and diagnostic development.

To achieve the goal of global coverage, we also urge countries to increase their surveillance and genomic sequencing capacities and will offer capacity building to those who cannot. We commit to supporting the development of common approaches and norms for rapidly sharing information, data, and samples necessary to prepare for monitoring and reporting on the emergence and spread of threats under the auspices of the WHO, IHR and OIE notification requirements while complying with data protection standards.

We thank the Science Academies of the Group of 7 and take note of their recommendations on the use of health data for emergencies.

6. We support the WHO to take concrete steps towards establishing a more nuanced and effective global early warning system, with clear triggers

for collective action, and welcome the recommendations from the IPPPR and other reviews in this regard.

Surveillance needs to enable rapid risk assessment and feed into an effective end-to-end global infrastructure, ready to raise the alarm and facilitate timely, evidence-based and coordinated responses to health threats.

RESPOND 7. We will adopt mutually determined ‘no regrets’ actions in response to WHO triggered alerts and in line with evidence-based global protocols, including on travel and trade. We look forward to work by G7 Transport Ministers to support safe and sustainable international travel during pandemics while aligning with the work of the relevant multilateral organisations. To enable equitable access to and affordability of essential products to protect the health of all, we commit to support trade in and exports of critical healthcare products and vaccines, and will continue to work in partnership with other World Trade Organisation (WTO) members to formulate longer term pragmatic, effective and holistic solutions for trade

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W H E A LT H

We will work together to invest in innovation now with the aim of making safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics available within 100 days of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) being declared. in health. We recognise the importance of open, diversified, secure and resilient supply chains in this context, to support global availability of health products. This will increase global access to critical healthcare products and vaccines in the short term, and support future pandemic preparedness and long-term recovery.

8. We will work together to invest in innovation now with the aim of making safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics available within 100 days of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) being declared, consistent with our core principles of equitable access and high regulatory standards, and noting the unpredictable nature of future health emergencies. The rapid development of safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for COVID-19 has

shown the power of science, collaboration and innovation across the public and privateNsectors. We thank the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser and his G7 counterparts, the international organisations, industry representatives and expert advisers involved in the partnership on pandemic preparedness convened by the UK Presidency and note their practical proposals. We welcome the 100 Days Mission, and recognise that this will require continued, concerted collaboration between the public and private sectors, and the leadership of international health organisations, to make what has been exceptional during this crisis become routine in the future.

We invite G7 Chief Scientific Advisers or equivalents to review progress and report to Leaders before the end of the year.

9. We recognise the value of having a rapid response framework for pandemic tools ready to deploy in the event of a pandemic, such as the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) and its COVAX facility which have played an essential role in the ongoing pandemic response. As we review the existing response mechanisms and capture learning from the current crisis, we will consider lessons learned from ACT-A to explore potential future solutions for a sustainable network of international health organisations, with the WHO coordinating, poised to kick-start global collaboration, such as advance commitment facilities for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, when faced with another pandemic. We will also support and strengthen rapid response networks and mechanisms, where needed, such as the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). We will explore the establishment of regional hubs for manufacturing vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and personal protective equipment to strengthen resilience in the face of the next threat.

RECOVER 10. We agree to enhance and further develop medium- and long-term global health financing mechanisms for pandemic preparedness, prevention, detection and response. To be sustainable

these will need to leverage funding in a predictable, transparent, coordinated, and collaborative manner, with robust oversight and drawing from a wide range of sources including public, private, philanthropic and international financial institutions. We underline the need for countries to finance their national capacities, primarily through domestic resources in line with their national circumstances, and mustering support for those unable to do so.

Through the joint work of our G7 Finance Ministers and other related fora, we will pursue solutions for the financing of the current pandemic response, and the medium- and longerterm, in order to facilitate recovery and build back better resilient, inclusive health security and sustainable health systems.

11. We endorse better coordination and cooperation between the International Finance Institutions (IFIs) and the global health system, ensuring that post-pandemic economic recovery packages promote investment in health systems and facilitate improved global economic risk monitoring in the context of future health threats. We call on the WHO to work with the International Financial Institutions to explore ways to ensure that countries are not disadvantaged economically by reporting potential pandemic threats faster and earlier, and are integrating health and health security in long-term national security and economic strategies.

12. We agree to support a robust global recovery from COVID-19, ensuring that countries are able to effectively address the indirect impacts on physical and mental health and broader socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic.

As we support global economic recovery, we must also recognise the significant impacts of the pandemic, notably the devastating and disproportionate impact on women and girls and on vulnerable and marginalised populations. We call on multilateral institutions, governments and the private sector to work together to mitigate further strain on systems and communities, as well as to regain development losses. ◆ 43

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W S TAT E M E N T

2021 Open Societies Statement We, the leaders of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, the United States of America and the European Union, reaffirm our shared belief in open societies, democratic values and multilateralism as foundations for dignity, opportunity and prosperity for all and for the responsible stewardship of our planet.

As leaders of over half of the world’s population living in democracies, we believe it is imperative that we reaffirm and encourage others to embrace the values that bind us together, including our respect for international rules and norms relating to:

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•H uman rights for all, both online and offline, as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights instruments, and opposition to any form of discrimination, so that everyone can participate fully and equally in society; •D emocracy, including each citizen’s right to vote in free and fair elections and everyone’s right to assemble, organise and associate peacefully, within a system of accountable and transparent governance; •S ocial inclusion, solidarity and equal opportunities for all, including digital inclusion and full enjoyment of civil and political rights in both physical and digital spheres;

• Gender equality and the political, social and economic empowerment of women and girls, including through girls’ education, responding to and working to eliminate gender-based violence, promotion of women’s and girls’ rights, and the protection of sexual and reproductive health and rights; • Freedom of expression, both online and offline, as a freedom that safeguards democracy and helps people live free from fear and oppression; • The rule of law and effective, independent and impartial judicial systems free from corrupt influence or coercion, so that each person can access justice and benefit from a fair trial;

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W S TAT E M E N T

• An effective multilateral system underpinned by principles of openness, transparency and accountability, including access to free and fair, rules-based trade, as well as collaboration on global challenges, including COVID-19 immunisation, for the good of all; • The importance of civic space and partnership with diverse, independent and pluralistic civil societies, including human rights defenders, in promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms.

These founding values define our inclusive way of life and benefit our people. Fundamental freedoms empower people and inspire the innovation and ingenuity needed to maximise opportunities, tackle shared challenges and drive progress for the world.

Openness encourages collaboration that delivers better outcomes than any nation could achieve alone. As we build back better from the pandemic, we must

continue to deliver a better quality of life for our people, with no one left behind. We are at a critical juncture, facing threats to freedom and democracy from rising authoritarianism, electoral interference, corruption, economic coercion, manipulation of information, including disinformation, online harms and cyber attacks, politically motivated internet shutdowns, human rights violations and abuses, terrorism and violent extremism. We also face threats to our social fabric from persistent inequalities and discrimination, including racism and resistance to gender equality. In the midst of these threats we will work together to create an open and inclusive rules-based international order for the future that promotes universal human rights and equal opportunities for all.

Our democratic systems are strong and resilient, but we cannot be complacent – we address our own vulnerabilities and tackle common threats. In this spirit, we commit to cooperate together and with partners to: •S trengthen open societies globally by protecting civic space and media freedom, promoting freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and freedom of religion or belief, and by tackling all forms of discrimination, including racism; •C ontinue to exchange information and coordinate effective responses to shared threats to human rights, democracy and the rule of law, such as disinformation and arbitrary detention, including through relevant partnerships such as the Rapid Response Mechanism, as appropriate; •P romote economic openness and resilience and oppose economic coercion by reasserting our shared economic model, which is founded on open markets, faircompetition, and the rule of law, and by reforming the World Trade Organization; •P revent and tackle corruption and illicit financial flows and promote integrity, transparency and accountability; •P romote respect for internationally accepted norms that drive inclusivity and protect digital civic-space, including through capacity building, and ensure that the design and

application of new technologies reflect our shared values, respect human rights and international law, promote diversity and embed principles of public safety; • Prioritise gender equality, women’s empowerment and the full enjoyment of human rights for women and girls in the global recovery, as well as disability inclusion and equal opportunities for young people in education and employment; • Collaborate on science-based responses to global challenges and drive innovation by calling on every nation to increase their research transparency and integrity; • Reinforce our commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 16 to ‘Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies’, and to support developing country achievement of the 2030 Agenda, including by taking concrete actions to address key financing for development challenges.

We look forward to building on these commitments in other multilateral fora, including at the G20 Summit, the UN and US Summit for Democracy. We resolve to collaborate with partners around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, to actively promote these shared values for the good of all. We call on all like-minded partners to support this statement. ◆

Fundamental freedoms empower people and inspire the innovation and ingenuity needed to maximise opportunities, tackle shared challenges and drive progress for the world.

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G7 RESEARCH COMPACT

As Open Societies democratic values we believe in academic freedom. The freedom to pursue intellectual enquiry and to innovate allows us to make progress on shared issues and drive forward the frontiers of knowledge and discovery for the benefit of the entire world. We recognise that research and innovation are fundamentally global endeavours.

Nations, citizens, institutions, and businesses have made huge strides forward, not otherwise possible, through open research collaboration across borders. Working together we will use our position as leading science nations to collaborate on global challenges, increase the transparency GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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and integrity of research, and facilitate data free flow with trust to drive innovation and advance knowledge.

SHARED VALUES The global response to COVID-19 has demonstrated the progress that arises from long-term collaboration which puts science at the heart of prevention, preparedness, response, recovery and resilience. This progress requires sustained investment in research and supporting infrastructure, including in basic research and high-risk, highreward undertakings. As our nations and communities start to recover from the pandemic and build resilience for future shocks, we will continue to work

with our research and business communities to remove barriers to the open and rapid sharing of knowledge, data and tools, to the greatest extent possible, recognising the importance of research security in particular in cutting-edge fields, and to promote open science and increase open, safe and transparent dissemination of science to citizens, and to strive to minimise technology-related risk.

We can only tackle the greatest challenges that we face and will face over coming decades – such as climate change, pandemics and biodiversity loss – through transparent, open and agile research collaboration. We must bring the widest possible range of resources,

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W CHINA

The freedom to pursue intellectual enquiry and to innovate allows us to make progress on shared issues and drive forward the frontiers of knowledge and discovery for the benefit of the entire world. expertise and perspectives to bear on solutions which will benefit people across the globe.

We commit to promoting international research cooperation and the conditions of freedom, independence, openness, reciprocity and transparency under which it flourishes. Our governments have the right and responsibility to effectively ensure the security and

integrity of the research ecosystem, in partnership with the research community, preventing the theft, misuse and inappropriate exploitation of our intellectual property and personal data, and other forms of misconduct.

We are committed to developing a strong, diverse and resilient science and research community which is inclusive of all groups, as recognised by the

Working Group on Financing Science for Inclusive Growth. It is important to deepen participation of underserved, underrepresented and marginalised communities and expand their participation in the research and innovation ecosystem. Inclusion will enhance the strength of our research base and increase momentum on dismantling the social, legal, and regulatory barriers limiting participation, and complementing our G7 gender equality goals by tackling gender gaps. Principles and practices of inclusive growth distribute the benefits of science among diverse communities and regions across the G7 and beyond. → 47

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ACTIONS → Openness, reciprocity and cooperation are shared G7 values. We commit to work together to uphold and protect the principles that underpin effective international collaboration that is as open as possible and as secure as necessary. To facilitate this, we support continued collaboration on Open Science through continuation of the existing G7 Working Group and establishing a new Working Group on the Security and Integrity of the Research Ecosystem.

In light of this, the G7 nations commit to work together to: • Maintain policies, legal frameworks and programmes which promote research collaboration – among our scientists, research institutions and innovative businesses; • Promote the efficient processing and sharing of research data as openly as possible and as securely as necessary across the G7 and beyond, by improving the availability, sustainability, usability and interoperability of research data, technologies, infrastructure and services. We will work together to address the administrative, legal, and regulatory barriers that hinder our scientific cooperation and slow our ability to respond to crises. A specific GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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Working together we will use our position as leading science nations to collaborate on global challenges, increase the transparency and integrity of research, and facilitate data free flow with trust to drive innovation and advance knowledge. case study focussed on data sharing in an emergency will increase our resilience by working through barriers; •E xplore incentives, including enhancements to research assessment that foster recognition and reward collaboration across all disciplines and topics to drive a culture of rapid sharing of knowledge, data, software, code and other research resources.

Investigate how open science practices help achieve increasingly robust, reliable and impactful research outcomes; •A s we continue to see the benefits of international collaboration in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have a

shared aspiration for more flexible and agile research collaborations facilitating rapid, interdisciplinary, and evidence-based responses to future systemic crises and natural disasters across G7 nations and beyond. We will explore how existing and potential new mechanisms and initiatives can support risk reduction, prevention and response to these events; • The G7 Working Group on the Security and Integrity of the Research Ecosystem will develop a common set of principles which, when implemented, will help to protect the research and innovation ecosystem across the G7 from risks to open and reciprocal research collaboration, and preserve the principles of open science and research freedom and independence.

The Group will develop proposals for a virtual academy and toolkit, bringing together and developing the skills and experience of researchers, innovators, business leaders, and policy makers from any nation to develop a shared understanding of research integrity and security. This will embed the behaviours, systems and processes needed to protect valuable knowledge and technology assets where necessary, allowing international collaboration to continue with confidence. ◆

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W L I E C H T E N S T E I N B A N K E R S A S S O C I AT I O N B R A N D E D S T O RY

When Slowing Down Leads to Speeding Up

By Simon Tribelhorn

Without the past, there is no future.

Tradition is important – especially for banks like ours, given that they pursue a long-term, cross-generational approach in all their thought and action. But we cannot rest on the laurels of our past. In other words: Tradition must not mean that we unconditionally stick to what we’ve always done, without constantly questioning ourselves and our surroundings. We need a good mix between the proven and the new – between tradition and innovation.

This is why, together with our member banks, we have developed our new multi-year strategy, Roadmap 2025. Its leitmotif is “Growth through innovation and sustainability”, deliberately placing an even greater emphasis on sustainability than we already have in the past. The goal is for the banking centre to play a crucial and creative role shaping the GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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so urgently needed transformation of the global economy and society towards greater sustainability and to achieve a real impact with our products and services for the benefit of our clients and future generations.

We strive for a comprehensive approach to sustainability, whereby the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations not only serve as guiding principles, there is a strong business imperative to deliver them.

The recent ‘Better Business, Better World’ report revealed that pursuing sustainable and inclusive business models could unlock economic opportunities worth at least US$12 trillion a year by 2030 and generate up to 380 million jobs, mostly in developing countries. Hence, we do this knowing that our clients expect more than simply high-quality services.

Our clients also want financial institutions to contribute to solving the environmental and social

challenges of our time. Are we on the right track? – Yes, we think so, but we are aware that much remains to be done. And again speaking for Liechtenstein banks, especially in our core business – investment advice and asset management – our range of products and services must be swiftly further expanded.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused us all – including investors – to reflect more deeply about the future. The focus has shifted dramatically towards health and security, and sensitivity about one’s own financial security in the future has noticeably increased. The slowing down of our everyday lives has led to a speeding up of sustainable investments. A change in thinking can be seen in society, politics, and business: Energy companies like Total and BP are looking for new, sustainable business models, and even traditional car producers are converting their entire fleet to e-mobility; the German Bundestag is holding general parliamentary debates on sustainability; and Austria has set out a clear objective in its current government programme 2020-2024 to become climate-neutral by 2040 and to invest in sustainability, to name just a few examples.

In addition to sustainability, we must also incorporate the opportunities and risks of digitalisation in a meaningful way. COVID-19 has shown us this impressively as well. In particular the way we work, and above all where we work, changed significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. Up to 90% of the employees of our financial institutions had to work from home and in some cases still do. The coronavirus did not invent the home office, but it dramatically accelerated an existing trend. What was unthinkable just a few months ago has suddenly become reality and will become an integral part of our everyday life in the future. In the medium to long term, neither employees nor employers will want to – or be able to – completely do without the advantages of working from home. Hybrid forms or the “flexible office” are likely to dominate after the coronavirus.

In any event, three questions relating to this new world of work will occupy

us in the banking sector for quite some time. Firstly, what impact will these developments have on corporate culture. At the latest since management guru Peter Drucker, we have known that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This spirit is strongly influenced by interaction among employees. Atmosphere, personal exchanges, and joint activities help shape identity. In the “flexible office”, where everyone is hardly ever on site at the same time, these drivers are missing. As a consequence, culture must be rethought and put into practice differently. Secondly, personalised services and support for our clients continue to be of vital importance, especially in the core business of our member banks, asset management. Only the future will tell to what extent this will still go hand in hand with interactions in person and on site. Clearly, younger generations are more mobile, digitally savvy, and used to virtual interactions. At the same time, they expect more than merely customer care; they desire customer experiences. For the service industry in general and banks in particular, the challenge will be to remain relevant to tomorrow’s customers and to create traceable and measurable added value in a digital world. And last but not least, the “war for talents” is likely to intensify.

Qualified personnel will continue to be scarce, especially for a small country like Liechtenstein, which is dependent on workers from abroad. Companies will be challenged to offer employees tailored working models that are optimised to their work and objectives and that both create attractive jobs and ensure business success.

In Roadmap 2025, we have addressed these and other questions relating to new worlds of work and defined concerns and measures to become fit for the future in this area as well. As outlined, digitalisation and sustainability go hand in hand. For example, digitalisation also leads to less intensive use of our overburdened infrastructure, which not least of all benefits the climate. And so we come full circle, showing that a comprehensive approach to sustainability makes absolutely sense. ◆

The coronavirus pandemic has caused us all – including investors – to reflect more deeply about the future. The focus has shifted dramatically towards health and security, and sensitivity about one’s own financial security in the future has noticeably increased.

About the Liechtenstein Bankers Association Established in 1969, the Liechtenstein Bankers Association is the domestic and international voice of the banks operating in and out of Liechtenstein. It is one of the country’s most significant associations and plays a key role in the successful development of the financial centre. Member interests are pursued in accordance with the principles of sustainability and credibility. As a member of the European Banking Federation (EBF), the European Payments Council (EPC) and the European Parliamentary Financial Services Forum (EPFSF), the Liechtenstein Bankers Association is a member of key committees at the European level and plays an active role in the European legislation process. Since 2017, the LBA has also been a member of the Public Affairs Council (PAC) with offices in Washington and Brussels and since 2018 of the international network ‘Financial Centres for Sustainability’ (FC4S).

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W EUROCHAMBRES

Build Back Better and Smarter A pandemic requires global solutions to tackle the challenges effectively.

It is more important than ever for the G7 nations to lead the way in creating a predictable and forwardlooking trading environment for the post-COVID era.

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It has been more than a year since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Even now, as multiple countries recover and the pace of the vaccination drive increases, the state of the global economy remains vulnerable and requires strong leadership to fully recover and rebuild. This is why we at EUROCHAMBRES believe that this year’s G7 must demonstrate that it can deliver a progressive vision for the business community, and firmly advance the global agenda in areas that reflect our shared values and interest as likeminded partners.

United against rising protectionism and unfair trade As we are currently seeing with a scarcity of certain raw materials, and bottlenecks in the logistics sector, the COVID crisis continues to pose enormous challenges for our highly interconnected economies. A pandemic requires global solutions to tackle the challenges effectively. However,, it is more important than ever for the G7 nations to lead the way in creating a predictable and forward-looking trading environment for the post COVID era, pushing back decisively against rising protectionist tendencies that risks undermining our nascent recovery.

At the same time, the G7 Summit is an excellent occasion to strengthen our collective resolve in addressing unfair trading practices on the global stage.

Issues such as forced technology transfers, or injurious subsidization have too often led to global overcapacities and consequent hardship for companies in all G7 economies. The lesson from this should be that we are better off acting together than individually, and we believe this spirit must guide our actions as a G7 in the months to come.

Boosting fair and open trade will not only play a key role for the pace and effectiveness of our recovery, but it will also strengthen G7 efforts in creating more sustainable and resilient supply chains post COVID. Global trade has proven to be an extremely valuable driver of growth that must be fully harnessed for our recovery, particularly for our SMEs, as they rely on access to global markets and global value chains for the innovation, growth and resilience of their business. In this

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Boosting fair and open trade will not only play a key role for the pace and effectiveness of our recovery, but it will also strengthen G7 efforts in creating more sustainable and resilient supply chains post COVID.

sense, within the EU alone in 2017, international trade has secured over 36 million jobs, with every additional billion EUR traded creating 13.000 jobs on average within the EU. It is with this in mind that we as Chambers stand for open, fair and inclusive trade, and why urgent action is needed among the G7 to halt and roll back the protectionism that is affecting ever more important areas of the European economic fabric, and arguably ever more important fields in the economic fabric of all G7 countries.

Restoring predictability, reducing barriers to trade and creating a level playing field – as has been discussed vividly in the lead-up to the Carbis Bay Summit - must therefore be a cornerstone of a more coordinated G7 agenda to global trade.

Strengthening the multilateral trade system Strengthening rules-based trade on the global stage must also be a priority for the G7. As EUROCHAMBRES and the associated Global Chamber Platform (GCP), we have also long advocated for the need to fully restore the functionality and effectiveness of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

To that end, we must urgently make progress, if necessary, among a coalition of willing countries first, to update and re-invigorate global trade rules, in order to make them fit for contemporary business challenges. → 53

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workers as we emerge form the crisis.

The G7 should therefore ensure that employment will not be outpaced by the new digital age – for instance by putting the focus on specific training opportunities and scope for collaboration in the areas of artificial intelligence, big data, and other emerging professions in the digital economy. The sooner the G7 leadership can present a common vision, the sooner the private sector will be able to provide practical solutions for its implementation.

We should strive for common approaches, shared ideas and increased cooperation where possible to harness the potential of the digital transition. → This goes for rules on digital trade, services liberalization, but also with respect to more transparency from all WTO members. In this sense, EUROCHAMBRES has suggested creating annual public reports that mirror the World Bank’s “Doing Business Report” to track performance and compliance with WTO commitments in a much more open and visible way.

Above all however, we urge G7 leaders to sketch a credible path towards swiftly reappointing officials to the Appellate Body, as there can be no predictability in global trade without proper adjudication and enforcement.

Furthermore, we believe policy makers globally and in the G7 in particular must do more to integrate SMEs better in global trade post COVID. As EUROCHAMBRES, we have therefore called for an ambitious SME agenda at the WTO, and this should be a priority for all G7 countries as part of their WTO reform agenda in order to support them in re-connecting with the world.

A clear digital global vision for our recovery In light of the increasing digitization of world trade, it is also vital for the G7 to champion the future-proofing of trading rules, with particular attention on new GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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digital technologies and future developments. The cross-border flow of data should not be impaired unduly among our economies; intellectual property and know-how should be better protected, and we should work together on aligned future standards in emerging technologies. We should be vigilant that digital or technological sovereignty will not be construed to mean striving for economic, technical, or scientific self-sufficiency, or to justify discrimination in the terms of market access. On the contrary, as a group of G7 countries, we should strive for common approaches, shared ideas and increased cooperation where possible to harness the potential of the digital transition.

At the same time, with the rapid digitalization of the economy, we must pay special attention to ensuring that our workforce is well equipped for the new work environment. Digital skills will be essential, yet there is a large gap between the demands of the labour market and the available supply of talent. 90% of future jobs will require digital skills and digital literacy, yet a sizeable segment of the population does not currently possess such skills. This illustrates the pressing need to provide adequate training opportunities to our

The green transition needs coordination Lastly, the transition towards a more sustainable global economy is a priority for EUROCHAMBRES, as it is for the European Union as a whole. COVID presents an opportunity to build back better and greener. The European reen Deal underlines the scale of transformation that large parts of the European economy will undergo.

European businesses are already world leaders in many green technologies as well as in the transition towards circular economies. With other key players in the G7 following a similar path, it will be essential to secure increased coordination among our economies, as well as with our global partners in order to minimize any potential disruption for our businesses.

The high level of ambition regarding international commitments to climate neutrality within the G7 is already a welcome and positive step towards that aim.

It remains critical however, that the G7 also ensures the right supporting measures and conditions for the green transition by striking the correct balance between financial incentives and regulation. Moreover, given SMEs will need additional support, we must also pay close attention that the administrative burden to implement regulations and access to funding are coherent, proportionate, and easy to implement for all companies.

This G7 is taking place in a context like no other. Leaders need to rise to the occasion if our economies are to embark on a global recovery like no other and our businesses are to be enabled to build back better. ◆

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W C L I M AT E C H A N G E

A statement by the UK Presidency of the G7

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As we look ahead to the UNFCCC COP26 meeting in Glasgow in November, this statement - issued by the UK as G7 Presidency, and incoming Presidency for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP26) in Glasgow, in partnership with Italy - takes stock of new climate and nature commitments made by G7 members and partner countries who attended the Carbis Bay Summit on 12-13 June 2021. In line with the Paris Agreement, the Presidency notes that developed country parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets and in mobilising climate finance to support developing countries in their mitigation efforts and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

Carbis Bay discussions During their meeting in Carbis Bay, the Leaders of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, and the United States discussed the interdependent challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss that threaten nature, people, prosperity and security.

They were joined by heads of the UN, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and OECD along with Sir David Attenborough, COP26 People’s Advocate, who called on Leaders to take urgent action to avoid environmental crises:

“Tackling climate change is now as much a political and communications challenge as it is a scientific or technological one. We have the skills to address climate change in time, all we need is the global will to do so.

Decisions taken at this G7 meeting, at the Biodiversity COP in China, and COP26 in Glasgow are the most important decisions humanity has ever taken” The discussion recognised this and highlighted that 2021 is a critical year of international leadership towards achieving a sustainable future, looking forward to the UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 in Kunming.

As the Prime Minister has said:

Developed country parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets and in mobilising climate finance to support developing countries in their mitigation efforts and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

“The solution to our climate conundrum is on the surface of it simple - achieve net zero and limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5c... I will be seeking commitments from G7 members to use their voices and their votes wherever and whenever possible to support the transition to net zero, kick start a green industrial revolution, and build economies that can withstand whatever our changing climate throws at us….We simply must meet our existing commitments on climate finance, that long overdue $100 billion dollars a year target, and then we must go further still…

Developed nations cannot stop climate change on their own, but if we want others to leapfrog the dirty technology that did so much for us, then we have a moral and a practical obligation to help them do so.” → 57

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→ Supporting COP26 Presidency goals Reflecting on the COP26 Presidency goals, the Prime Minister invited partners at the meeting to set out the specific actions they are taking to drive a global green transition both in their own economies, and to support developing nations on a path to reaching net zero.

GOAL 1: Secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach Ahead of COP26, the UK COP Presidency is calling on all countries o come forward with ambitious 2030 emissions reductions targets (Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)) that align with reaching net zero by the middle of the century. To deliver on these stretching targets countries will need to: accelerate the phase out of coal; curtail deforestation; speed up the switch to electric vehicles; and encourage investment in renewables.

At the Carbis Bay Summit, Leaders discussed the global imperative of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

Recognising that the path would look different for each country, as well as the specific challenges faced by developing countries, particularly those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, Leaders acknowledged the collective effort needed to significantly reduce emissions during this decade and reach net zero global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible in order to keep the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement in reach.

Beyond the collective commitments made by G7 Leaders, as detailed in the Carbis Bay G7 Summit Communique, the United Kingdom has reaffirmed its commitment to reduce emissions by at least 68 per cent by 2030 and by 78 per cent by 2035 from 1990 levels.

Australia has reaffirmed its intention to overachieve on its 2030 emissions reduction target of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels, and to release its LongTerm Strategy ahead of COP26. Canada GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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In his address, Sir David Attenborough highlighted coal power generation as the single biggest cause of global temperature increases.

has reaffirmed its commitment to reduce emissions by 40-45 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels. The European Union has reaffirmed its commitment to reach climate neutrality by 2050 and to a Union-wide target of reducing net emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels. France has reaffirmed its commitment to reduce emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels. Germany has reaffirmed its commitment to reach net zero by 2045 and to reduce emissions 65 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels. Italy has reaffirmed its commitment to reduce emissions by 33 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels. Japan has reaffirmed its commitment to reduce emissions by 46 per cent in FY2030 from FY2013 levels while continuing to take on a challenge to aim at the goal of cutting emissions by 50 per cent. The Republic of Korea has reaffirmed its commitment to achieving Net Zero by 2050 and to release an updated NDC at COP26.

The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to its updated NDC target of 50-52 per cent emissions reduction in 2030 below 2005 levels.

In their discussions in Carbis Bay, Leaders were encouraged by the accelerated deployment of renewable and clean energy technology. In his address, Sir David Attenborough highlighted coal power generation as the single biggest cause of global temperature increases and, in that context Leaders discussed the need to further accelerate the transition away from unabated coal capacity and to an overwhelmingly decarbonised power system, and noted the differential phase out dates for developed and developing countries set out in the International Energy Agency’s ‘Net Zero by 2050’ report, published in May 2021.

Leaders also recognised the importance of sustained policy support and investment to promote green growth and address climate change in their recoveries. In line with the Paris Agreement, Leaders noted in their discussions the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities so that no person, group or geographic region

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is left behind. Beyond the collective commitments made by G7 Leaders, as detailed in the Carbis Bay G7 Summit Communique, the United Kingdom has reaffirmed its commitment to phase ut unabated coal power by 2024, committed to end in 2021 direct international government support for fossil fuels, and committed to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030 and hybrids and plug-ins by 2035. Canada has reaffirmed its commitment to phase out unabated coal power by 2030, and also reaffirmed its commitment to no new financing for thermal coal plants, mines, or infrastructure abroad and confirmed that new or expanded thermal domestic coal mining does not align with Canada’s climate plan. The European Union has reaffirmed its commitment to an immediate end to all financing of new coal infrastructure in third countries. France has reaffirmed its commitment to phase out unabated coal power by 2022 and reaffirmed its commitment to end direct international government support for oil by 2025 and for gas by 2035. France has also reaffirmed its commitment

to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. Germany has reaffirmed its commitment to phase out unabated coal power by 2038 at the latest and committed to an electric vehicle uptake target of 7-10 million by 2030, and has introduced a price on all emissions from the combustion of heating oil, natural gas, petrol and diesel. Italy has reaffirmed its commitment to phase out unabated coal power by 2025, and committed to electric vehicle phase-in targets of 4 million by 2025 and 6 million by the 2030s. India has reaffirmed its commitment to install 450GW of renewable energy by 2030 and reaffirmed the commitment for Indian Railways to become net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Japan announced a commitment to end direct new government support for unabated international thermal coal power generation by the end of 2021 and has committed to a target of full electrification in new passenger car sales by 2035. The Republic of Korea has joined the G7 in committing to stop public financing for new overseas coal fired power plants. South Africa has noted its aim to reduce dependence on coal from 89 per cent of its energy structure currently, to 59 per cent by 2030. The United States has committed to a domestic goal of Net Zero in the power sector by 2035 and to end direct new government support for unabated international thermal coal power generation by the end of 2021.

In their discussion, Leaders recognised the central role of businesses, workers, civil society and local governments in the transition and noted commitments made through the Race to Zero campaign, and called for more partners to join ahead of COP26.

GOAL 2: Adapt to protect communities and natural habitats The climate is already changing and it will continue to change even as we reduce emissions, with devastating impacts. At COP26 we need to work together to enable and encourage countries affected by climate change to: protect and restore ecosystems; build defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure and agriculture to

avoid loss of homes, livelihoods and even lives.

In Carbis Bay, Leaders shared views on the impacts of climate change already being experienced worldwide and committed to supporting vulnerable people, communities and natural habitats to adapt to and cope with the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss. The Presidency affirmed the Paris Agreements recognition that developing country partners are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

To support this effort, Leaders discussed the need to scale-up financial resources for adaptation action according to national plans (including National Adaptation Plans) and at local and sub-national levels. Further, Leaders recognised the important goal of “30by30” targets to conserve or protect at least 30 per cent of global land and 30 per cent of the global ocean by 2030, and supporting domestic targets according to national circumstances and approaches. CBD COP15 represents a once in a decade opportunity to determine a new Global Framework for Biodiversity, including new targets to 2030.

In support of adaptation to protect communities and natural habitats, the United Kingdom has submitted an Adaptation Communication and is a partner to the Risk-Informed Early Action Partnership (REAP) and the InsuResilience Global Partnership.

To protect lives and tackle loss and damage caused by climate change, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States have committed to a package of support. As part of this the United Kingdom and Germany have committed £120 million and E125 million of new financing respectively to deliver pre-arranged disaster risk finance for vulnerable communities through regional risk pools, contributing to REAP and InsuResilience Global Partnership protection targets. Under the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) the United Kingdom and India have jointly committed to promote climate resilient infrastructure through a new facility for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Australia is an executive member of the Coalition for Disaster → 59

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→ Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), has committed to submit an Adaptation Communication before COP26, and has joined the Adaptation Action Coalition and the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI). Canada has joined the InsuResilience Global Partnership, the CDRI, the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI), has joined the Adaptation Action Coalition, and has committed to join and submit an Adaptation Communication before COP26. The European Union has joined the InsuResilience Global Partnership, and has committed to submit an Adaptation Communication before COP26 on behalf of its Member States (including France, Germany, Italy).

France has joined the InsuResilience Global Partnership, and the REAP. Germany has joined the InsuResilience Global Partnership and has joined the REAP. Italy has joined the CCRI. As well as its commitments related to SIDS, India has joined the Adaptation Action Coalition. Japan has joined the InsuResilience Global Partnership, REAP and the steering committee for the Adaptation Action Coalition and has committed to submitting an Adaptation Communication, doing so before COP26 if feasible. On biodiversity, India and South Africa have noted the importance of ocean protection and he need for nations to act together.

The United States has joined the InsuResilience Global Partnership, has joined REAP, and has committed o join and submit an Adaptation Communication before COP26. The United States has joined the Adaptation Action Coalition, has announced its support for CDRI’s work, and has committed to new initiatives to transform energy systems and increase resilience for islands and remote communities, including strengthening SIDS’ climate resilience capacity. Canada and the United Kingdom have joined the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) as full members. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, the European Union and India have joined ORRAA as observer members.

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Indonesia and Pacific island states to tackle unsustainable fishing, protect and restore coastal ecosystems like mangroves and coral reefs, and reduce marine pollution. Australia has joined the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, is increasing financing for nature-based solutions to climate change, has committed $100 million to increase support for blue carbon initiatives and marine protection, has joined the G7 in affirming their support for the global “30by30” targets, and has supported making the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision universal and the development of a global agreement on marine plastic pollution. Canada is committed to planting an additional two billion trees over the next 10 years, and has spearheaded the Ocean Plastics Charter since its 2018 G7 Presidency.

The European Union has endorsed the Ocean Plastics Charter and supported starting negotiations on a new global plastics agreement at the next meeting of the UN Environment Assembly.

France has endorsed the Ocean Plastics Charter. Germany has endorsed the Ocean Plastics Charter. Italy has endorsed the Ocean Plastics Charter.

India has joined the G7 in affirming their support for collective global “30by30” targets, and committed to achieving domestic land degradation neutrality and restoring 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.

Japan has engaged in making the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision universal, which includes the G20 Implementation Framework for Actions on Marine Plastic Litter. The Republic of Korea has also joined the G7 in affirming their support for collective global “30by30” targets by endorsing the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People.

GOAL 3: Mobilising finance To deliver on our first two goals, all finance must be aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100 billion in climate finance per year through to 2025 from public and private sources.

Additionally, international financial institutions must play their part and we need work towards unleashing the

To deliver on our first two goals, all finance must be aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100 billion in climate finance per year through to 2025 from public and private sources.

trillions in private and public sector finance required to secure global net zero.

In Carbis Bay, Leaders discussed the essential need to scale up public and private climate finance, including for developed countries to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance for developing countries as committed in Copenhagen and reaffirmed in Paris.

Within this context, Leaders confirmed the importance of scaling up finance for adaptation and nature, and improving the effectiveness and accessibility of climate finance. Leaders discussed how a green and climate resilient recovery could be achieved, noting that a transformed global financial sector is necessary to support this in all countries - and will play a major role in meeting global financing needs.

Leaders agreed that mobilising finance requires a global effort led by developed countries and including the public andprivate sectors, and called on

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MDBs, IFIs and Developed Financial Institutions (DFIs) to increase finance for climate and nature, including private co-financing flows and ensure their policies and investments are Paris aligned by 2023 or sooner. Leaders called on MDBs, DFIs, and other public financial institutions to accelerate the development of solutions that mobilise private finance for mitigation, adaptation and resilience, and that support developing countries seeking to implement ambitious NDCs, climate resilience and climate-supportive economic policies. Leaders also supported the transformation underway to mobilise further private capital towards these objectives in particular to support developing countries and emerging markets in making the most of the opportunities in the transition; whilst mitigating and adapting to climate change.

In support of mobilising finance for developing countries and beyond the

collective commitments detailed in the Carbis Bay G7 Summit Communique, Leaders have made the following specific commitments in order to increase and improve climate finance through to 2025: the United Kingdom will double its climate finance to £11.6 billion from 2021-2025 (compared to 2016-2020) to 2025, with roughly half for adaptation £3 billion of this for nature and all primarily grant based. Australia has reaffirmed its commitment to increase its climate finance by 50 per cent over five years, to AUD $1.5 billion, with a third going to Pacific Island countries. Canada has committed to a doubling of its climate finance to CAD $5.3 billion through to 2025, with an increased allocation toward grants of 40 per cent (this financing includes increased funding for adaptation, as well as biodiversity and nature-based solutions). The European Union has reaffirmed its intention to increase its climate finance

to EUR 24 billion Euros over 2021-27 and to work towards the ambition of providing 7.5% of its annual spending to biodiversity objectives in the year 2024 and 10% in 2026 and 2027.

France has reaffirmed its commitment to 6 billion Euros annually out to 2025 (up from 5 billion Euros in 2020) with a third on adaptation, and with 30 per cent on biodiversity co-benefits by 2030.

Germany prospectively announced to increase its climate financing from E4 billion to 6 billion Euros per year by 2025 at the latest. Japan has committed to extend climate finance of JPY 6.5 trillion over the next 5 years, from 021 to 2025 and to improve its quality, including further enhancing assistance for adaptation . The United States has pledged to double its public climate finance by 2024 to $5.7 billion, tripling adaptation finance and is increasing commitments through the International Development Finance Corporation and Millennium Challenge Corporation. → 61

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→ The Presidency looks forward to further commitments from others well ahead of COP26, including scheduled commitments from Italy ahead of UNGA. The Republic of Korea will scale up its green ODA by 2025, and provide a $5 million Green New Deal trust fund to accelerate the green transition and carbon neutral economic growth of developing countries. To support the efforts of developing countries that have decided to transition away from unabated coal-fired power, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States plan to commit up to $2 billion in the coming year to the Climate Investment Funds Accelerating the Coal Transition and Integrating Renewable Energy programs, which is expected to directly mobilise up to $10 billion in private finance.

Beyond the collective commitments made by G7 Leaders, as detailed in the Carbis Bay G7 Summit Communique, the United Kingdom has committed to mandatory disclosure in line with the

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Leaders confirmed the importance of scaling up finance for adaptation and nature, and improving the effectiveness and accessibility of climate finance.

Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) by 2025, with majority coverage by 2023. France is working with public and private partners to fast-track the greening of our economies through the framework of the One Planet Summits and has fully implemented the TCFD’s recommendations with the publication in May 2021 of a regulation on the extra-financial transparency of financial market players. Japan has taken steps

towards mandatory TCFD based disclosures for top listed companies.

The United States has committed to develop a comprehensive government -wide strategy to identify and disclose climate-related financial risk.

GOAL 3: Working together to deliver We can only rise to the challenges of the climate crisis by working together.

At COP26, the Presidency is clear that we must accelerate action and partnerships to tackle the climate crisis throughcollaboration between governments, businesses and civil society. Within the multilateral process, as incoming COP26 Presidency the UK is committed to facilitating agreement on the outstanding elements of the Paris Rulebook (the detailed rules that make the Paris Agreement operational) as part of an ambitious set of negotiated outcomes that leave no issue and no Party behind.

At Carbis Bay, Leaders discussed

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the importance of working together internationally to combat the dual challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss and of deepening collaboration to accelerate the development and deployment of green technology and nature-based solutions. Leaders discussed how best to collaborate on industrial decarbonisation, including through the new Industrial Decarbonisation Agenda, on aligning policy levers such as standard setting, investment support and procurement, working with wider initiatives and partners. Leaders also discussed how internationalcollaboration, including through the Energy Transition Council, could support the new economic opportunities and sustained quality job creation offered by a just transition to clean energy in developing countries.

In support of international collaboration, the United Kingdom has signed the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature.

The UK has established and continues to co-chair, with Indonesia, the Forest,

Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) dialogue. Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Republic of Korea have also signed the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature.

The European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States are participating in the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) dialogue. Alongside G7 members, Australia, the Republic of Korea and India are supporting Mission Innovation (MI) 2.0 and the Clean Energy Ministerial (CMI) 3.0 to accelerate the pace of low emissions technology development and deployment. The United States will host the 2022 CEM and MI meetings and is spearheading several global technology innovation initiatives. India will hold the CEM and MI meetings in 2023.

India, with the United Kingdom, has committed to launching a global Green Grids Initiative at COP26 alongside providing constructive leadership through the COP26 Zero Emission

Vehicle Transition Council and the Energy Transition Council. India, as co-lead for the initiative, and the Republic of Korea have joined the G7 members in endorsing the Superefficient Equipment and Appliances Deployment initiative and its goal to double the energy efficiency of key energy using products sold globally by 2030.

UK-Italy Joint Statement: five months to go to COP26 As we look from Carbis Bay to Glasgow in November, via the pre-COP in Milan in September and the G20 Summit in Rome in October, the UK and Italy are committed to working together and with all countries to increase global action on climate and nature, through our G7, G20 and COP26 Presidencies and beyond. Recognising that the avoided climate impacts are greater at 1.5°C than 2°C, the UK and Italy urge all countries to do their part and to take the steps that keep 1.5°C within reach.

The UK and Italy affirm our strong and steadfast commitment to strengthening implementation of the Paris Agreement and to unleashing its full potential.

At their discussions in Carbis Bay, and throughout this year, Leaders have made important commitments on global emissions, financing and adaptation to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

But significant further action is needed, and through the five months ahead of COP26, the UK and Italy will continue to work with all countries, to encourage ambitious commitments towards the four COP26 Presidency goals.

The UK and Italy intend to use our respective Presidencies to build momentum as we approach UNFCCC COP26 and CBD COP15. We are committed to an inclusive, ambitious COP26 and a comprehensive negotiated outcome, and call on all countries, businesses, civil society, citizens and other stakeholders to join us in stepping-up efforts. We encourage businesses to set science-based targets, including through the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience campaigns.

Together, these actions will be crucial as we collectively seek to make 2021 a turning point for our planet. ◆ 63

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W ISSUU B R A N D E D S T O RY

Page by Page, Digital Publishing Platform Issuu is Saving Trees and Helping Businesses Grow

By Joe Hyrkin, CEO, Issuu

The effects of climate change are hard to ignore.

From wildfires, droughts, and flooding in the West to rising sea levels and typhoons in the East, companies must realize that finding solutions is not only a governmental and societal problem, but a business imperative.

It’s not only about making your office green or employee policies more environmentally friendly, it’s actively seeking ways that your business or government agency can make thoughtful business decisions with sustainability in mind.

As a digital publishing company, the nature of Issuu’s business helps improve the environment. Digital publishing saves an immense amount of paper each year, and every piece of paper saved helps repair our planet.

As you know, trees serve a vital role in not only converting CO2 to oxygen, but storing much of the world’s carbon.

Sustainability matters to us all, and at Issuu, we’ve prioritized it as an important core business value. So we watch our metrics closely, tying them to both revenue and environmental impact.

A few months ago we conducted an internal analysis of the aggregate publishing activity happening on Issuu, and the data was inspiring.

More than 20,000 new documents and publications are uploaded to Issuu every day. These range in size from two-page sales spec sheets and 10-page real estate brochures to 48-page travel magazines, 300page retail catalogs and 500+ GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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page textbooks and beyond.

In addition to the number of pages, we also take into consideration the number of times a piece of content is read when measuring impact. This is because while someone only needs to upload a publication once to Issuu, in the physical world they would need to print a new copy for almost every reader. Often, people don’t even read every page that is printed in a magazine or book. Yet it still consumes a sheet of paper.

Between March 2020 and March 2021, digital documents and publications were read over 1.5 billion times on Issuu.

1,588,139,035, to be precise. However in the digital world, a page not-read has zero environmental impact.

So we dug deeper. Using the same subset of data, we tracked over 32 billion pages read. Instead of calculating our impact based on the number of pages published, we used the number of pages read.

Next, we considered how many sheets of paper an average tree produces.

The industry consensus is 8,333. Of course different tree types and sizes produce differing results, but for our purposes, we took the average.

Based on these numbers, we estimate that our Issuu publishing community has saved 3,811,686 trees in the past year alone. This kind of impact from our customers is what makes our everyday efforts worth it.

What can your company do to improve your environmental impact?

Here are six tips.

Reduce business travel, and make necessary trips count Issuu has offices in Copenhagen, Berlin, Braga (Portugal), and Palo

Alto (California), plus many of our U.S. employees work in cities and towns across the country. We work across continents and time zones, nd while nothing replaces in-person relationships, we rely heavily on tools like Slack, Zoom, Loom, and Jira to foster collaboration. When we do have to travel, we condense trips and combine meetings to get the most out of every mile.

Encourage the use of public transportation for commuting.

During the pandemic, our employees worked mostly from home, which saved countless emissions. But as we reopen our offices, as safety allows, we’re hopeful that public transportation will once again be a popular way to commute to work.

Donate extra office furniture and computers to nonprofits and local governments With many companies going remote, you may have extra office furniture and computer equipment on hand. Instead of offloading it to liquidators for pennies on the dollar, research local nonprofits and essential businesses such as hospitals, NGOs, and local governments and donate it. In many cases you may receive a write-off, but more importantly recycling furniture can help both the environment and organizations dedicated to social good.

If you make physical goods, reconsider your packaging and shipping Reducing plastic is critical to the preservation of our oceans, and helps landfills. There are many green alternatives available today, and the costs are often comparable or only

Based on these numbers, we estimate that our Issuu publishing community has saved 3,811,686 trees in the past year alone.

solutions may help. And if no one notices, turn off the printer. You’ll save energy with little cost. For larger printing jobs such as trade show collateral, brochures etc., try using digital tools to host your content online, and experiment with QR codes to bridge the gap between in-person interactions and your digital content.

slightly more expensive than plastic.

As for shipping? Try to disperse manufacturing to more plants closer to customers, and avoid quick-ship options. If your customers value your product, they’ll wait a few extra days to receive it and you’ll help reduce shipping-based environmental costs.

Reduce paper usage Whether for internal or external use, businesses often use a lot of paper.

Try turning off your office printer for a week to easily identify areas of over-printing. If you notice specific employees often printing large files, learn more and see if training in digital

Use Issuu Issuu provides the tools to transform content you might normally print into elegant looking digital formats that can be shared digitally across any channel. Millions of businesses and organizations have jettisoned printing altogether and rely on Issuu’s tools to present their materials and information to their audiences on their device of choice. Issuu provides an alternative that is more convenient, less costly and of course more environmentally beneficial than print.

Here at Issuu, we understand just how important it is for larger companies and organizations to make steps towards a more sustainable future. We’re committed to doing our part, and hope you will join us. ◆ 65

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W EMISSIONS B R A N D E D S T O RY

Transition to Net-Zero: The Collaborative Imperative (Adapted from Consultation Report on the Canadian Energy Sector’s Transition to Net Zero)1

The breadth of climate change impacts and implications on the entire global population underpins a necessity for collaboration between countries to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. A rational but rapid response to climate change is pertinent as global governments, businesses, investors and civil society are focused on the actions required to meet those goals. The Paris Agreement includes achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level – with a stretch goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

However, today companies operate in an increasingly volatile, complex and interconnected global environment.

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face pressure to demonstrate plans toward achieving net-zero, at the same time as some face existential challenges. For many, company priorities unavoidably shifted to focusing on supporting employees, averting disruptions to business, and devising innovative solutions to continue operations amid interruptions and uncertainty. Embedding a climate change strategy into those activities however, while challenging, is vital to the success of achieving net-zero emissions.

Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada’s Transition to Net-Zero Series As part of an initiative to appreciate the roles of the various players and economic sectors in Canada’s transition to net zero, Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada along with The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) Canadian Chapter of the CFO

leadership Network hosted a series of roundtables.

The roundtable sessions gathered insights and viewpoints from corporate directors, senior management, and operational teams of Canadian companies, as well as from representatives of the institutional investment community that provides capital to the companies. We sought to explore key challenges and opportunities for each sector in the transition to net-zero.

This article is intended to augment some of the findings from three important themes that emerged from the Transition to Net-Zero roundtable series and highlight a recurring focus on the weight of collaboration as a success factor.

Although uniquely Canadian, the article presents themes and possibilities that are common to a global movement to a net-zero environment.

Investors, a key catalyst in a transition to net-zero must establish consistent expectations amongst their peers and with investee companies. Meanwhile, companies must get better at telling their story, so their investors and other interested stakeholders are receiving honest, transparent information.

Stakeholders must also seek opportunities to collaborate with Canada’s Indigenous peoples to enable an inclusive transition. Creating platforms that enable inclusive collaboration will lead to increased development of innovative climate solutions.

Themes i. As a longstanding cornerstone of Canada’s economic foundation, the oil and gas sector will be a critical player in achieving Canada’s net-zero aspirations by 2050. However, transition is an issue of national interest for all Canadians and companies in all sectors.

Integrating climate initiatives is complex and requires buy-in from all levels of a company as well as from investors and other stakeholders.

Collaboration between stakeholders and sectors along the supply chain is essential to achieving a long-term,

prosperous plan. In fact, consideration of the end-to-end supply chain is mandatory to integrating Scope 3 GHG emissions (the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization, but that the organization indirectly impacts in its value chain)2 into decision-making.

Globally, however, investor expectations are changing, and investors and funders each have their own set of criteria, which gives rise to ambiguous expectations. Complexities and unclear expectations within a company may act as a deterrent to taking action on transitioning.

This article is intended to augment some of the findings from three important themes that emerged from the Transition to Net-Zero roundtable series and highlight a recurring focus on the weight of collaboration as a success factor

ii. Technologies and innovations are an integral part of reducing costs and emissions for Canadian oil and gas companies. Canada is well situated to be a global leader in low-carbon innovation by developing, commercializing and exporting innovative cleantech solutions.

Several promising technologies and innovations being implemented will facilitate Canada’s transition to a lower-carbon economy while providing opportunity to export solutions.

According to Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance, “Canada has a strong, diversified and resource-rich economy; a world-leading financial sector; and excellent capacity for innovation. By harnessing these advantages, Canada can be among the leaders in the global transition to a low-emissions future as a trusted source of climate-smart solutions, expertise and investment.”3 Sustainable finance programs are a key feature of public policy initiatives that support business investment in these technologies. Sustainable finance can accelerate transition and help businesses and civil society to initiate actions toward a transition to net zero. iii. Regulation that enables transition was regarded by roundtable participants as a significant success factor in the Canadian landscape.

Companies and investors require regulatory certainty and clear policy incentives for net-zero investments.

Without stable signposts and direct incentives via policy and regulation, companies may avoid the research → 69

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→ and development spending required to scale up emissions reduction efforts in a meaningful way.

As the global economy moves rapidly toward a low-carbon transition, clear and consistent policies and regulations will enable companies to develop supporting technologies that are both feasible and affordable.

Regulatory and policy certainty allows companies to take the long-term view required to develop and implement concrete plans to achieve net-zero aspirations.

By facilitating more effective public-private dialogue, the business community can collaborate with various levels of government to develop and implement effective policies, with an aim to achieve common goals, including Nationwide emissions reduction.

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Chartered Professional Accountants (CPAs) can help CPAs can accelerate the net-zero transition by supporting companies’ identification, assessment and disclosure of climate or transition related risks. A proliferation of data and its consumption by consumers, governments and investors puts companies at risk of losing control of their story. The accounting profession can play an important role in separating noise from facts, by developing frameworks and processes that provide specific metrics across stakeholder groups.

CPAs’ competencies in managing financial information can and should be transferred to intangible data value chains to ensure the key performance measures and other metrics being reported are well suited to the fluid

digital information environment.

The profession’s convening ability has proven successful in bring together sectors and various functions that play a role in the transition to a net-zero economy. By facilitating a more effective public-private dialogue, CPAs can support the business community to collaborate with each other and with various levels of government to develop and implement policies, with an aim to create a strategy toward a Nation-wide response to achieving net zero emissions. ◆ 1. Consultation Report on the Canadian Energy Sector’s Transition to Net Zero 02689-RG-CPA-Canada-Consultation- Report-Canadian-Energy-SectorTransition-Net-Zero (10).pdf 2. Scope 3 Inventory Guidance | US EPA 3. Expert panel sustainable finance Canada.ca

Helping businesses navigate climate change

Chartered Professional Accountants (CPAs) can help your organization make more informed decisions — and increase resilience — in the face of climate change.

How? By identifying climate-related risks and opportunities. By estimating financial impacts and performing scenario analyses. By advising on long-term business performance.

Need a strategic response to climate change? Enlist a CPA. FIND OUT MORE AT cpacanada.ca/ClimateChange 17-0683

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W ILLICIT TRADE

Illicit Trade is a Global Risk the World Can’t Afford to Ignore

By Jeff Hardy

Illicit trade is a major and growing policy challenge worldwide. From smuggling, counterfeiting and tax evasion, to the illegal sale or possession of goods, services, and wildlife, governments are losing billions in tax revenues, legitimate businesses are undermined, and consumers are exposed to poorly made and unregulated products. These crimes in turn are tied to human rights and labor rights violations, money laundering, illicit financial and arms flow, child labor, and environmental degradation.

The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report lists illicit trade and the associated proliferation of illicit economic activity as a “global risk” with the potential to cause significant negative impact for several countries or industries within the next 10 years.

For governments, illicit trade has an extensive destabilizing impact on global security due to its central role in facilitating transnational organized crime and illegal flows of money, people and products across borders. This in turn undermines the formal authority of rule of law, which can destabilize business and discourage investment.

THE GROUP OF SEVEN The UK is taking on the Presidency of the G7 at a critical time for the world. While new vaccines offer a way to end the COVID-pandemic, the virus continues to wreak havoc across the globe and new variants threaten the global recovery.

The pandemic has also allowed an unremitting illicit economy to expand and take root. Many factors shape the dynamics of illicit trade, from the international political and security landscape to macro socio-economic dynamics and national law enforcement capacity - all of which have been affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

While the immediate effect was predictably to slow down all forms of economic activity, including the illicit, the COVID-19 pandemic spawned new markets for illicit trade, like falsified vaccines, and deepened age-old illicit trade in alcoholic beverages, tobacco and counterfeits.

While initially set up as an informal forum for dialogue between leading

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economic powers to coordinate economic and financial policies, the G7 has increasingly used its clout to address common major global challenges including peace and security, counterterrorism, development, health, climate change, as well as the threat of illicit trade.

This year’s Leaders’ Summit, held in Carbis Bay, Cornwall on 11–13 June 2021, saw the G7 continue to demonstrate leadership against several illicit trade challenges: Forced Labour The G7 has made several pledges to eradicate forced labor, starting with their 2015 Elmau commitment to foster sustainable supply chains and then G7 Social Ministers pledging to promote decent work, responsible business conduct and human rights due diligence in global supply chains in 2019. This was also reinforced by G20 Labor and Employment Ministers in Mendoza, in 2018, who committed to eradicate child labor, forced labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery.

Leaders in Carbis Bay continued this path by agreeing to work together to ensure that global supply chains are free from the use of forced labor specifically highlighting state-sponsored forced labor of vulnerable groups and minorities, including in the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors - and tasked their Trade Ministers to identify areas for strengthened cooperation and collective efforts towards this goal.

Human rights abuses—specifically in the form of forced and child labor—are a fundamental characteristic of illicit economic activity. Joint and decisive action by the G7 to address forced labor in global supply chains is important, but the far greater challenge that, to date, has received too little attention is addressing these human rights and labor violations in the informal sectors of the economy – many of which are tied to illicit trade.

In 2019 the UN General Assembly announced that 2021 would be the “International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour”. While the past decade has seen child labour decrease by 38%, 152 million children are still affected.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has considerably worsened the situation.

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Leaders in Carbis Bay committed to ensuring that their forestry policies encourage sustainable production, the protection, conservation, and regeneration of ecosystems, and the sequestration of carbon.

Without decisive and coordinated action against illicit trade, governments around the world will fall short of their targets to root out child labor.

Illegal Timber Building on the 2016 Ise-Shima Summit’s pledge to tackle illegal logging, Leaders in Carbis Bay committed to ensuring that their forestry policies encourage sustainable production, the protection, conservation, and regeneration of ecosystems, and the sequestration of carbon. The inclusion of this pledge is particularly important given that reduced forest monitoring and fewer patrols by enforcement agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic has created opportunities for criminal groups to expand illegal logging activities. As a result, there has been an uptick in illegal logging, with reports of increased logging activity from Brazil, Colombia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and Madagascar.

IUU fishing Illicit fishing is an abhorrent crime against planet earth and SDG 14 mandate to protect life below water.

It generates billons in revenue for transnational organized crime and the criminals involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing

operations also make use of fishing vessels for related criminal activities, such as drugs and firearms trafficking, money laundering, tax fraud, bribery, migrant smuggling, trafficking in persons for the purpose of forced labor, piracy and acts of terrorism.

Subsidies to the fisheries sector, roughly US$35 billion annually,33 can exacerbate unsustainable fishing practices by artificially increasing fishing capacity – which in turn promotes overfishing and other destructive fishing practices. By some estimates these subsidies have helped produce a worldwide fishing fleet that is up to 250 percent larger than is economically and environmentally sustainable, driving overexploitation f already depleted resources.34 This year Leaders will have a unique opportunity to make good on their longstanding pledge to step up efforts to prevent IUU fishing. If their Carbis Bay pledge of working with other WTO members in “reaching a meaningful conclusion to the multilateral negotiations on fisheries subsidies” translates into an agreement ahead of MC12, this would demonstrate the value of collective G7 action and create a pivotal moment for the world’s oceans and the livelihoods of fishers and other workers. → 73

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Online fraud → The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation, bringing about a surge in online shopping and other ecommerce activities. Unfortunately, this exponential growth has also brought with it a flood of online fraud, with unscrupulous counterfeiters seeking to exploit the health crisis by selling everything from fake testing kits, treatments and personal protective equipment (PPE), to falsified medicines and dubious vaccines. This development has intensified the need for better rules and standards to ensure that the business practices of ecommerce platforms sufficiently prevent bad actors from selling unregulated, unsafe or otherwise fraudulent products to consumers.

The G7 has supported the WTO’s Joint Statement Initiative on E-commerce (JSI), which may provide the first steps in this direction, as the outcome of the JSI negotiations will likely affect the governance of various dimensions of e-commerce, with implications for all countries, whether they are party to these negotiations or not.

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Exponential growth has also brought with it a flood of online fraud, with unscrupulous counterfeiters seeking to exploit the health crisis by selling everything from fake testing kits, treatments and personal protective equipment (PPE), to falsified medicines and dubious vaccines. online fraud and illicit activities have on building trust in e-commerce and ensuring consumer protection.

The recovery As G7 Leaders move from crisis management into recovery mode, it will be important to amplify their attention to the problem of illicit trade and to press for implementation and enforcement of all its standing commitments. Without continued political will to prioritize the problem there is a real threat that illicit trade activities caused by the pandemic become permanent features of the post-pandemic economy.

While COVID-19 has been a catalyst for new and increased illicit trade, it also underscores the importance of sustained collaboration between governments and private sector partners. TRACIT has worked with industry partners during the pandemic to publish papers and reports thar raise

awareness and help protect consumers from COVID-19-related fraud.

Our efforts show that business can contribute by continuing to develop technical solutions that protect the integrity of supply chain, and share intelligence, data, resources and measures that can mitigate illicit activity. And business is willing to work with partners to convene stakeholders, improve awareness, expand the knowledge base, and energize the global dialogue.

Governments, however, need to improve regulatory structures, set deterrent penalties, rationalize tax policies, strengthen capacity for more effective enforcement, and educate consumers. This is a matter of urgency and G7 government efforts to fight illicit trade should be considered to be critical investments that pay tangible dividends for a strong and sustained economic recovery. ◆ About Tracit The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT) is an independent, non-profit business trade association to drive change to mitigate the economic and social damages of illicit trade by strengthening government enforcement mechanisms and mobilizing businesses across industry sectors most impacted by illicit trade.

TRACIT works across 11 industry sectors and addresses human and wildlife trafficking. For more information, please visit: TRACIT.org

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G7:

Successes and Failures

By Chris Southworth, ICC UK

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So, what can we take away from the G7 Summit? Hear are a few reflections.

First, we have to applaud the government on a well-orchestrated event. After 4+ years of friction and trade tension, this is no small feat. To see G7 leaders back around the table in constructive dialogue is more than a welcome development and sets up the possibility of more, much needed collective action. Second, to see the US engaged again is a game changer - if there is one thing we have learnt over recent years, the world is a poorer place without US leadership. It changes the possibilities, the tone and the dynamic which has all sorts of positive repercussions in places like the OECD and WTO.

The G7 commitment to digitise trade documentation has to be one of the most exciting and transformational trade initiatives in world trade.

Sweeping away unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy ticks all the boxes. it will cut the cost and complexity of trade in half, remove a host of pain points for traders, enable more SMEs to participate, inject growth into the economy and free up the market to innovate. Antiquated laws and systems have hampered trade for decades, if not centuries, so this is a huge and progressive step forward from G7 leaders and exactly what we need to breath oxygen into the trading system.

The breakthrough on securing a solution to digital services tax is another game changer. The tax

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system desperately needs reform and modernisation in this space but the only sustainable solution is multilateral so to have the US engaged is an enormous step forward to solving a really important issue for both business and governments.

Finally, credit has to go to the UK in providing a forum to create the space for leaders to convene and act together.

Great location, well-organised and well thought through. This was intentional on behalf of the UK so let’s again applaud the government for that approach. It worked. Let us also hope this is a sign of more to come - it’s where the UK, in my view, can play to its strengths and make a difference in the world. Facilitating, convening, bridging dialogue and getting back to our traditional role of being an outward facing, pragmatic nation able to broker solutions for everyone.

We shouldn’t underestimate any of these achievements. They are all big in their own right.

However… on the biggest issue of the day, Covid, the G7 missed an enormous opportunity. Let’s be frank, this is a critical path issue. If we don’t solve Covid, every other priority becomes infinitely more difficult to solve whether that is trade reform, climate change, digitisation or other. None of these issues can wait - they all need action now. We’ve seen just how all consuming the pandemic has been to the UK, the 5th largest economy. We have struggled to deal with any other challenge because government has been overwhelmed and stretched to the max dealing with the crisis. Imagine, how much bigger that problem becomes if you are the 105th largest economy where capacity is already limited and stretched and you have nothing like the resources we have available.

It’s a showstopper.

Without doubt, the failure was a woefully weak commitment on vaccines for poorer nations. The world can’t get back to operating to it’s full potential until we have solved the vaccination problem. It is the only sustainable solution. We have the vaccines but we must distribute them fairly at speed if we are to stand a chance of allowing everyone to get on with their lives and economies back up and running. To achieve that, we need at least 11 billion

vaccines - the G7 committed 1 billion, half of which is coming from one G7 member, the US. If averaged out, that’s a commitment of 83 million vaccines from each of the remaining G7. To put that in context, by April 2021 the UK had purchased 450 million vaccines for itself.

It’s a huge, missed opportunity to change the game on Covid and demonstrate that the bigger nations of the world can respond to the biggest challenge in front of us and help the smaller nations after a catastrophic year in 2020. We did just that when G7 responded to the financial crisis in 2008 with immediate and large-scale action to stabilise the global economy. When the G7 could have gone in big, they went in small. If they had gone in big with half the 11 billion vaccines needed, it would have put enormous pressure on the rest of the G20 nations to provide the rest but that will now be extremely unlikely.

Unless there is a miraculous change of heart, it’s now almost impossible to see any chance of solving the pandemic in 2022.

The G7 have the financial muscle to commit to more vaccines but for whatever reason chose not to and that, as a message, looks terrible. Whilst we all get vaccinated, we leave everyone else to fend for themselves until a later date with a trickle of help in the meantime. It’s not just everyone else either, we are talking about the poorest who need the help the most. We are also talking about the fastest growing economies (pre-Covid) that we want to

trade with the most. It fails the test of basic humanity and fails on all the messaging to tackle inequality and build back better.

On Covid, the G7 had the chance to inspire, walk the talk and lead by example but failed to do so. Not only do we have a moral duty to save lives and help the poorest (in my view, that should be reason enough) but it’s in our economic interests to do so. The cost of not vaccinating the world will be $8-9 trillion, half of which will sit with wealthy nations including the G7.

There is a very good economic reason for committing to bigger numbers of vaccines. We need the world vaccinated or we will be forever disrupted and unable to trade and do business with the world. If we don’t, it is going to cost us a lot more than 1 billion vaccines that’s for sure. Aside of the ethics, it’s basic economics.

The G7 Summit was a success in getting global leaders back around the table but on the biggest issue of the day, it completely failed to step up to the plate to help the rest of the world which will probably be what G7 Cornwall will now be remembered for which is a great shame. Being a believer, I would like to think that Cornwall was just the start of a collective dialogue and that our global leaders will find a way to solve Covid.

It’s not too late to act this year and when there is political will, there is always a way so let’s hope leaders think again, show what they can do and inspire us all on what’s possible when we put our minds to it. ◆

Without doubt, the failure was a woefully weak commitment on vaccines for poorer nations.

The world can’t get back to operating to it’s full potential until we have solved the vaccination problem. It is the only sustainable solution. We have the vaccines but we must distribute them fairly at speed if we are to stand a chance of allowing everyone to get on with their lives and economies back up and running.

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Building a Prosperous Future in Africa

By Peter Varndell & Terrence Mutuswa

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The championing of global shared values has never been more important than in these current times. It is incumbent on all citizens of the world to actively participate in the building of a prosperous future based on universal freedoms and equitable economic gains. In a world where developing economies still struggle to catch up, fair trade and global partnerships must become the ideal we strive for.

The good news is that Africa is bouncing back from the impact of COVID-19. Through a balancing act between cautious measures to manage the pandemic and aggressive strategies to boost economic activities, most

countries are now able to survive in the ‘new normal’.

Africa is rapidly adapting the industrialisation of the continent in alignment with global goals of green energy, climate change and the development more localised market (intra-African trade). The key is creating critical linkages between government and business and making these relationships the linchpins for economic development.

At the NEPAD Business Foundation (NBF) we specifically seek to accelerate programmes and projects where there is an intersection of interest between public and private sector stakeholders.

These initiatives include African

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development masterplans such as those of the African Union (AU), African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), SADC and the South African National Development Plans.

The NEPAD Business Foundation (NBF) is a non-profit organisation that was formed in 2004 in order to mobilise private sector resources in support of government endorsed initiatives.

Our objective is to stimulate inclusive and sustainable economic growth in Africa and we focus on interventions in infrastructure, industrial value chains and trade facilitation. We strongly believe that making these mega-projects happen will fundamentally change the lives of our fellow African people.

Our unique project execution model is built around being agile in order to respond to the varied and specific needs of project sponsors to implement their projects. Our role is to act as neutral facilitators/ programme managers and we actively look to collaborate with relevant partners wherever possible.

Typically, NBF funding is sourced from corporates with an aligned vision to promote Africa’s economic development and we leverage our relationships with donors and DFIs in order to fund specific project work.

The NBF provides value in two primary ways: firstly, through our Project Management Unit model where we have the demonstrated capacity to successfully develop and implement programmes; secondly, where required, we also act as Host for other programmes and initiatives where the NBF has a proven track record of managing multi-donor funds as well as having significant convening power.

We are extremely proud of the NBF and its diverse programmes that continue to deliver remarkable results. These programmes include: • The North-South Rail Corridor Project which is focused on the optimisation, rehabilitation and upgrade of the NSC railway network.

The corridor is defined as the main railway line connecting the mining district of Kolwezi in the DRC to the ports of Durban and Richards Bay in South Africa • The SADC Regional Gas Task Force which is a multi-stakeholder platform for public-private sector dialogue designed to enable and support the monetisation of the natural gas resources within the SADC region

• The Pharmaceutical Working Group which is a collective of pharmaceutical stakeholders who work jointly to increase pharmaceutical value chain investments in SADC • Host of the SADC Business Council which is the apex body of national business associations of the 16 SADC Member States and Regional Business Associations in Southern Africa.

• Host of the Strategic Water Partners Network which is a multi-stakeholder partnership working collectively to close a 17% gap between water supply and demand that is anticipated to manifest by the year 2030 in South Africa.

Our strategy is set by our members, key stakeholders and very experienced Board. It includes continuing to leverage our existing regional/national integration and infrastructure projects as well as catalysing new priority initiatives. In doing this, guidance has been received from our Members and Strategic Partners Advisory Committee.

The Committee recommended that the NBF focus on supporting the following initiatives: • Supporting the execution of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) • Continuing with the North-South Corridor Trade and Infrastructure programme • Providing support to Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) • Developing a regional digital infrastructure programme to expand broadband connectivity • Developing a SADC Agricultural Value Chain Programme. ◆

Our strategy is set by our members, key stakeholders and very experienced Board.

It includes continuing to leverage our existing regional/national integration and infrastructure projects as well as catalysing new priority initiatives.

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The NBF has work advisors and neu partnership betw

NEPAD PUBLIC SECTOR The NBF works with continental, regional and national governments to achieve NEPAD aligned objectives across the continent.

About the NBF

The NEPAD Business Foundation (NBF) is an independent non-profit organisation that coo alignment with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) thematic areas. The o private sector resources (finance, expertise and information) towards Africa’s economic growt

ked tirelessly to become one of the most trusted utral facilitators that promote cooperation and ween governments and businesses in Africa.

BUSINESS FOUNDATION PRIVATE SECTOR

FUNDERS

The NBF operates as a Host, Secretariat and Project Management Unit (PMU) for private sector-led interventions in Africa.

The NBF works with Sponsors, Donors and DFIs to fund high-impact programmatic projects and initiatives.

ordinates private sector efforts aimed at Africa’s economic growth and development in objective of the NBF is to support public sector endorsed plans and projects by mobilising th and development.

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Guided Career Pathway: Leading Students of Color through the Accounting Diversity Pipeline on the 100th Anniversary of the First Black CPA in the USA

By Chestley E. Talley & Kathy M. Graham

The Demand for minority students entering the Accounting profession far exceeds the Supply of qualified candidates within the talent pipeline.

Supplying a sufficient number of candidates to satisfy this demand requires an industrywide accounting diversity strategy that prepares and channels qualified students of color into the profession at the earliest entry points, per AICPA1.

Centennial Celebration of the First Black CPA A century after John W. Cromwell Jr. in 1921 was the first Black American to become a Certified Public Accountant

Jarvis Christian College NABA Team at Ernst & Young “Elements of Success” workshop

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(CPA) in the United States (licensed, New Hampshire)2; there is still a scarcity of CPAs of color in public accounting. Ironically it took 44 years just to get the first 100 across the licensure finish-line with 28 of the total issued in Illinois, where the National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants (NSBCPA)3 incorporated in June 2020 to increase the number of CPAs by providing the most relevant knowledge, resources, and advocacy; and promoting cultural competence4, diversity, and inclusion. Coincidently, two of the first 100 being recognized, Mr. Sanford M. Perkins and Dr. Johnnie L. Clark, respectively were the Dean of

Business at Norfolk State University and Atlanta University, where this article’s co-author obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and an MBA. First Lieutenant Sanford M. Perkins5 was a United States Air Force P-51 Mustang pilot flying 65 combat missions as a ‘Red Tail’ with the 332nd Fighter Squadron stationed in Italy in 1944. Earlier in 1939, this future Tuskegee Airman launched a Business program at the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College (now, Norfolk State University) before being commissioned into the Air Force to fight in World War II. Mr. Perkins returned to Norfolk State after the war and later became the Dean of Business.

Johnnie L. Clark6, CPA, MBA, Ph.D. is a founding member of the American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants of Georgia and a lifelong champion for diversity and inclusion, highlighted by being Citizens Trust Bank President, an Entrepreneur, and Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Atlanta University (now, Clark Atlanta University).

Creating a Pipeline to Increase Diversity & Inclusion In a Journal of Accountancy article entitled, “A Pipeline for Diversity: Initiative Spearheads Profession Wide Effort to Attract Underrepresented Minorities to Accounting”, Ross, et al.

(2014, August 1)7 discussed a troubling hiring trend concerning Accounting students of color. Although U.S. Census data in 2012 reported AfricanAmericans and Hispanics were one-toone 13.1% and 16.9% of the population, they secured just 4% and 6% of new hires at CPA firms in 2012 per AICPA.

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Also, AICPA data indicated AfricanAmerican enrollment in bachelor’s degree accounting programs declined from 11% in 2001-02 to 7.2% in 201112. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 13% projection of future accounting jobs’ demand between 2012 and 2022 will outpace the expected supply of African-Americans and Hispanics in the accounting profession pipeline, because the talent pipeline was already not full enough in 2012. The numbers support the industry narrative that “underrepresented minorities as a whole are making only slow [progress] in the profession” leaving the essential question unanswered: What can be done?

The Pipeline Project Ross, et al. (2014, August 1) reminds professional services firms that “the talent of its people is the No. 1 asset…

The profession cannot enjoy sustainable growth without a strategy to increase its attractiveness to larger talent pools….”

To address this challenge of too few candidates of color in the Accounting field, the Howard University School of Business Center for Accounting Education created the “Pipeline Working Group” to collaborate with the AICPA National Commission on Diversity & Inclusion to develop unified, nationwide initiatives to recruit minority students into the field, launching the Pipeline Project.

The purpose of the Pipeline Project is to develop “a professionwide strategy… to enhance accounting education and convince top, underrepresented minority students to choose a career in accounting”, since “success in a high school accounting course often plays a significant role in the decision to major in accounting once a student enters college”. Collaboratively, the Pipeline Project and AICPA sought to engage students through an integrated program of scholarships, internships, and career exploration to encourage high-schoolers to investigate the profession with “the goal that these students will eventually become certified after [college]”. The urgency of the Pipeline Project was validated by AICPA’s 2016 trends survey of 608 public accounting firms reporting only 1% of CPAs in the industry were Black, although comprising 13% of the US population8.

2015 Diversity Pipeline Symposium Call to Action The purpose of the 2015 Accounting Profession Diversity Pipeline Symposium: “Waves of Opportunity, Oceans of Success” in Washington, DC was to introduce the Pipeline Project as an industry-wide call-to-action “to serve as the vehicle to assemble accounting profession pipeline stakeholders to explore and garner continued profession-wide buy-in for the Accounting Profession Diversity Pipeline Project”. The expected outcome was “participants [would] generate specific related action items for their specific sphere of influence for profession -wide and profession-supported initiatives, plans, programs and best practices”.

1. Launching a Professional Association: Establish Jarvis chapter of National Association of Black Accountants (NABA).

• NABA affords students networking and mentoring opportunities with peers and industry leaders.

Jarvis Guided Career Pathway Armed with a strategy after attending the Symposium, the Jarvis Career Center recalibrated its mission—from being the last stop for accounting seniors looking for a job to priming the pump of the accounting diversity pipeline by guiding freshmen into the profession via a structured career pathway. The Jarvis 2015 Guided Career Pathway Action Plan included:

3. Student Engagement: Career readiness and preparedness.

• Career Readiness “START” Program: PwC’s “Early Start” Career Preview Program10 is designed for highperforming freshmen/sophomores who are members of underrepresented minority groups in the professional services industry. In 2019, Corey Harris and Keilahn Garrett were chosen and afterwards invited to summer internships in both 2020-2021. →

2. Recruiting Potential Accounting Majors: Network with Accounting Career Awareness Program (ACAP) students in high school and/or attending a Dallas County Community College District9 campus.

• Jarvis NABA Team’s first President was then Freshman Wendon Blair, DeSoto High School (Texas) ACAP graduate, who was the first of nine students recruited for an internship with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

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The purpose of the Pipeline Project is to develop “a professionwide strategy…to enhance accounting education and convince top, underrepresented minority students to choose a career in accounting”, since “success in a high school accounting course often plays a significant role in the decision to major in accounting once a student enters college”. → Career Preparedness “Elements of Success” (2015 to 2019): Career Services escorted students to Ernst & Young’s ACAP/NABA Preconference Workshops in Dallas to prepare students for the NABA National Conference.

4. Partnerships with Professional Services Firms: employer advisory committee formation.

• Faculty-Employer Advisory Committee (FEAC): Aligns with college’s mission ensuring all are prepared to

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successfully enter the workforce or higher education. PwC’s employees on Jarvis FEAC include two Dallas-based Directors and Joseph H. Files, CPA, Samford, Connecticut (former student of Dr. Johnnie L. Clark).

5. Experiential Learning: Student engagement with partner organizations.

• Citi’s HBCU Innovation and Leadership Symposium.

• Clinton Global Initiative: Your Life Matters! COVID-19 Is Color Blind, Protect Yourself & Others! Public

Awareness Campaign.

• Enactus USA Projects: •AIG “Revive & Thrive” Challenge.

•Menasha “Future of Employment” Accelerator.

6. Transferable Skills Learning: Microsoft Certification Center.

• Received a $15,000 Digital Enablement Award from PwC to establish a Microsoft Certification Center.

7. Priming the Diversity Pipeline: Jarvis selected one of only 17 of 170 campuses in Texas for PwC’s Entry Level Campus Recruiting Program11.

The success of profession-wide and profession-supported initiatives like he Jarvis Guided Career Pathway Action Plan depends on the accounting profession changing how it recruits and mentors candidates (Demand) once those qualified candidates of color (Supply) exit the diversity pipeline.

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“Creating” not just “Acquiring” Talent Podcaster Josh Bersin advocates industry Rethink Recruiting in the New Economy12 by creating a “diversified portfolio” for strategically evaluating talent as “appreciating assets” based on need, such that, companies can expect the return on those assets to get higher every year. Just “hiring and churning through people doesn’t work right now”13. Bersin (2021, May 2) encourages employers to think “Creating Talent” not just “Acquiring Talent”. A forwardlooking strategy invests in improving productivity, well-being, and culture to focus efforts to grow their diversified portfolio of assets (employees) based on quality versus quantity. PwC’s “Culture of Belonging” leverages “creating talent”.

[starting with] strengthening relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and community colleges”. PwC aspires “to see 35% Black and Latinx representation among [their] experienced hires, entry-level hires, and interns. This is significantly higher than [their] current makeup which is 19% for entry level hires, 18% for experienced hires, and 22% for interns”.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ US Chair and Senior Partner is taking steps to ensure a robust and diverse pipeline of qualified candidates is primed and ready to drive future industry success. ◆

PricewaterhouseCoopers “Culture of Belonging” In 2018, Brookings14 blogger William Frey15 asserted “new census population projections confirm the importance of racial minorities as the primary demographic engine of the nation’s future growth…. The new statistics project that the nation will become “minority white” in 2045… [comprising 49.7%] of the population….”

When Tim Ryan became US Chair and Senior Partner of PwC US, he made it known organization-wide that “if all I achieve is growth of PwC’s financial success, then I will have failed at my job”.16 In June 2020, PwC launched a data-led Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy to expand its existing culture of belonging to engage the disproportionately underserved, Black, and Latinx student populations. Ryan (2020, August 26) chose to evolve away from a series of diversity initiatives toward interventions at critical moments of individuals’ career journeys. He acknowledged: “no single program, action, or leader can foster a culture of belonging…Rather, it has to be the result of many deliberate decisions, difficult conversations, consultations with outside expertise, and learning from what has worked and what hasn’t”.

D&I strategies embolden PwC colleagues in the majority to expand the diversity of the people being recruited. PwC’s D&I imperative “[aligns their] recruiting efforts to the expected college enrollment for Black and Latinx individuals…

2 https://www.nsbcpa.org/first100

This [PricewaterhouseCoopers] internship means a lot to me, it means everything to me.

It will inspire other people– minorities like me, who don’t know that opportunities like this are out there. It’s more than an internship to help me accomplish my goals. It paves the road for the others who come after me––those coming from nothing just like me.

Brayan Perez Mendez, Future CPA, President, Jarvis NABA Team

1 AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)

3 Butts, E. (2020). First 100. National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), Inc. https://www.nsbcpa.org/first100/The National Society of Black CPAs was founded to focus on increasing the number of Black CPAs licensed in the United States….Out of the first 100 Black CPAs 28 were licensed in the state of Illinois, which is why the NSBCPA was formed in the State of Illinois.

4 Cultural Competence — loosely defined as the ability to understand, appreciate and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one’s own — has been a key aspect of psychological thinking and practice for some 50 years [www.google.com].

5 M. Perkins (personal communication, June 8, 2021) provided one page write-up about her grandfather’s life, Mr. Sanford M. Perkins, in the USAF and at Norfolk State University. Permission to use photograph provided

by Michelle-Renee Perkins.

6 American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants (AWSCPA), Georgia Affiliate (Ed.). (2015, January 8).

Celebrating You! Legacies. Leaders. Luminaries. AWSCPA of Georgia Honors Johnnie L. Clark CPA, MBA, Ph.D.: A Champion for Diversity & Inclusion. https://gawcpa.starchapter.com/images/downloads/Sponsor_Guide/ celebrating_you_1_8_2015_sponsor_guide.pdf.

7 Ross, F. K., Wells, J. T., & Clarke, A. T. (2014). A Pipeline for Diversity: Initiative Spearheads Profession Wide Effort to Attract Underrepresented Minorities to Accounting. Journal of Accountancy, 218(2), 48.

8 Iacone, A. (2019, July 8). Fifty Years, Little Progress for Black Accountants. Bloomberg Industry Group News. https://news.bloombergtax.com/financial-accounting/fifty-years-little-progress-for-black-accountants.

9 Pierce, T. (Chairperson, Moss Adams CPAs), & Ansiaux, R. (Recorder). (2020, April 27). Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) Accounting Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes on February 27, 2020 at 12:00.

Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM international conference on the design of communication. Publisher.

10 https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/entry-level/programs-events/career_preview.html 11 PwC Entry Level Campus Recruiting Map: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/entry-level/recruiting/ recruiter-map.html 12 Bersin, J. (2021, May 2). Not Enough Workers: Rethink Recruiting In The New Economy. JOSH BERSIN Insights on Corporate Talent, Learning, and HR Technology. https://joshbersin.com/2021/05/not-enough-workers-rethinkrecruiting-in-the-new-economy/.

13 Churn and Burn: Employee churn is the overall turnover in an organization’s staff as existing employees leave and new ones are hired. An unusually high rate of employee turnover is considered indicative of problems within the organization. Micromanagement, ineffective human resource management practices, and unreasonable expectations can all lead to unacceptable levels of staff turnover.

14 Frey, W. H. (2018, September 10). The US will become ‘minority white’ in 2045, Census projects. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/.

15 Frey, W. H. (2018). The US will become ‘minority white’ in 2045, Census projects Youthful minorities are the engine of future growth. In Diversity explosion: how new racial demographics are remaking America. Introduction, Brookings Institution Press.

16 Ryan, T. (2020, August 26). Building on a Culture of Belonging: Releasing our first Diversity and Inclusion Transparency Report, By the US Chair and Senior Partner, PwC US [web log]. https://www.pwc.com/us/en/ press-releases/building-on-a-culture-of-belonging-diversity-inclusion.html.

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Remembering Tulsa in 1921 while Celebrating Excellence in 2021

By Dr. Dale G. Caldwell

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in 1896 that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation.

Black communities survived this racist ruling by developing segregated communities that thrived economically because of successful black-owned small businesses. These neighborhoods fought against discrimination by developing healthy communities rooted in entrepreneurship. The wealthiest of these communities was the Greenwood Section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. This community was so strong economically that it was nicknamed “Black Wall Street.”

Unfortunately, white supremacists and the local government were so jealous of the economic success of this community that on May 31st and June 1st, 1921 they bombed it by plane and attacked it by foot. Tragically, more than 300 people were killed and 200 businesses destroyed simply because the black community was living the “American Dream” of entrepreneurial success. This event, now known as the GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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Tulsa Race Massacre, was one of the most significant events in US history.

However, political leaders have been so ashamed of the massacre that on June 1st of this year, President Biden became the first American President to visit Tulsa and condemn the mass murder of black Americans and the devastation of successful businesses. His visit drew global attention to one of the most horrific acts of domestic terrorism in American history.

Fortunately, Biden’s visit was not the only historic event taking place on the 100th anniversary of the race massacre. The Black Excellence Alliance (BEA) organized a ground-breaking gala dinner honoring the victims of the massacre while, at the same time, recognizing the first inductees into the Black Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame and the Black Inventors Hall of Fame. This event was intentionally held on May 30, 2021 because May 30, 1921 was the last full day that the Greenwood Section of Tulsa was the wealthiest black community in the US. The BEA began the evening by presenting a plaque to

the City in honor of the victims of the massacre. They then focused the Gala on celebrating black entrepreneurial and invention excellence in the past, present and future. The BEA suggested that Greenwood was a model of what poor urban communities could become with the right investment in entrepreneurship and job training.

This event attracted some very influential attendees who appreciated the BEA’s ability to acknowledge the problems of the past while focusing on future solutions. The murder of George Floyd by the police has been the catalyst for an international focus on the struggles of the black community.

Benjamin Crump, the Floyd family lawyer who has played an important role in this mindset change, brought Texas Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee to the Gala because of its significance. Former TLC Beatrice CEO Loida Lewis accepted the induction trophy on behalf of her late husband Reginald Lewis. John Rodgers, the founder of Ariel Investments, accepted the induction trophy on behalf of his

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maternal great grandfather J.B. Stradford. Emmitt J. McHenry and Albert White, who founded the blackowned company Network Solutions that provided the first domain names to the public, were in attendance as well. Representatives of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the global collegiate entrepreneur program ENACTUS were in attendance to accept

People do not realize that, in spite of segregation being the law of the land, seven families in Greenwood were so wealthy that they owned their own plane.

their awards as the organizations of the year.

Who is the BEA and why are the halls of fame important? BEA is an alliance of eight independent organizations dedicated to improving the black community through education, employment and entrepreneurship. In addition to the Black Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame and the Black Inventors Hall of Fame, BEA includes the Black Educators Hall of Fame and the Black Executives Hall of Fame which immortalize individuals who have changed the world but have been largely overlooked in the history books. These halls of fame teach people of all ages, races and backgrounds about individuals and events that they otherwise would not know about. The education that they provide inspires audiences through incredible stories of people breaking through barriers of race and class to do amazing things.

The BEA also includes four nonprofit organizations focused on increasing the number of living-wage jobs through trauma-informed job training and the creation of Entrepreneur Zones around the country modeled after Greenwood.

Glenn Best, the executive director of the Black Hall of Fame stated “the focus of the event was on the historic inaugural hall of fame inductions to introduce the world to extraordinary business leaders and inventors who have succeeded in spite of discrimination.” The Black Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame inducted J.B. Stradford who owned the largest black-owned hotel in the US and helped to establish the Greenwood business district; John and Loula Williams who owned the legendary Dreamland Theater in Greenwood; and Reginald F. Lewis who negotiated the largest buyout of overseas assets by an American company.

James Howard, the executive director of the Black Inventors Hall of Fame (BIHOF) stated “the unique combination of innovation and resilience, as demonstrated by our BIHOF inductees this year, is the main reason that the black community could survive centuries of oppression.” The Black Inventors Hall of Fame inducted Dr. Gladys Mae West for her role in developing the Global Positioning System (GPS); Dr. Mark Dean for

his role in inventing the IBM PC; Dr. Patricia Era Bath for her role as the inventor of laser cataract surgery; Granville T. Woods who had more than 60 patents and was the inventor of what we now call the “third rail” on train tracks; and, Dr. Charles Drew for his groundbreaking work on blood storage and transfusions. The evening ended with the induction of Dr. Lonnie G. Johnson into both halls of fame for his work at NASA and the invention of one of the most popular toys in history – the Super Soaker.

The BEA Gala in Tulsa was one of the most significant events commemorating the Greenwood section for two primary reasons. First, because it introduced the world to legendary black entrepreneurs and inventors that most people have never heard about. These individuals demonstrated that, even in the midst of racism and oppression, they could achieve extraordinary things. Second, the evening made the case that black entrepreneurs and inventors are the key to transforming struggling neighborhoods into communities that can be as successful as Greenwood.

People do not realize that, in spite of segregation being the law of the land, seven families in Greenwood were so wealthy that they owned their own plane. When entrepreneurship is allowed to flourish, it can help residents move from poverty to the middle class in spite of the challenges presented by government policies. Marie Espinoza, the President of presenting sponsor 4insite/SBM stated “This event made it clear that there is hope for the world if public, private and non-governmental organizations invest in developing entrepreneurs and inventors in communities that have historically struggled financially.” ◆

About the author DR. DALE G. CALDWELL is a professor and the executive director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Rothman Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship which is focused on researching, supporting and promoting entrepreneurship in the United States. He received a BA in Economics from Princeton University, an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Doctorate in Education Administration from Seton Hall University.

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Fighting Poverty with Entrepreneurship

By Dr. Dale G. Caldwell

My father, the late Reverend Gilbert H. Caldwell, Jr. was a Civil Rights Movement “foot soldier” who knew and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a child of the “Movement,” I paid close attention to Dr. King’s strategic approach to transforming the United States. Most people are not aware that the official name of the march where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech was the “March on Washington for Jobs

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and Freedom.” In this historic speech, he states that it is tragic that some people live “on an island of poverty in the midst of avast ocean of material prosperity.” Dr. King knew that racial equality would only be sustainable if residents of poor communities had jobs that enabled them to pay their monthly bills. I am convinced that if he were alive today, Dr.King would say that the economic stability of communities is

the foundation of the social wellbeing of countries.

No country has sufficient funds to fight poverty in perpetuity. Current “top down” poverty reduction programs providing a “safety net” have had little success reducing systemic poverty. The current safety net programs trap families in a net of economic instability that is difficult to untangle. It is time for a “people up” poverty reduction program designed to provide a “safety trampoline” that bounces people up from poverty to the middle class. Poverty reduction strategies must be based on the belief that if you give someone a fish you can feed them for a day. However, if you help them start a fishing business you

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can feed a community for a generation.

The United Nations made “Ending poverty in all its forms” its number one Sustainable Development Goal because the inability of people throughout the world to feed, house, cloth and educate their families is a“cancer” on society that can be cured if innovative new approaches are implemented at the community level. The Grameen Bank microfinance program, created by the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunis, is an example of a successful innovative program that works very well in certain circumstances.

Unfortunately, the community development bank approach has limited applicability in many locations. One of the most successful ways to reduce

poverty in the Group of Twenty (G20) countries is to implement a place based program called “Entrepreneur Zones” or “EZones.”

Specific words can be a powerful tool in generating support for a community revitalization program. The term “Entrepreneur” refers to a specific person committed to utilizing novel approaches to creating value. The term“Zone” is a specific location with clear boundaries. Historically, poverty reduction programs have been disconnected “social support” programs that exist as long as there is political support and government funding.

The EZones are a“social investment” program designed to help entrepreneurs create jobs and generate greater income and tax revenue. One of the key components of the program is the provision of quality job training and placement for residents. By investing in EZones with public funding, private investment, grant funds and tax credits,economically challenged communities can generate the revenue and jobs needed to reduce local poverty in a sustainable way (without the need of long-term government funding).

One of the best examples of an Entrepreneur Zone was the Greenwood Section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Plessy v.

Ferguson was a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1896 that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation in the US. Black communities survived this racist ruling by developing, what we would consider today as, segregated EZones that succeeded economically because of thriving black-owned small businesses. These neighborhoods fought against discrimination by developing healthy communities rooted in entrepreneurship. The wealthiest of

these communities was the Greenwood Section of Tulsa. This community was so strong economically that it was nicknamed “Black Wall Street.” White supremacists and the local government were so jealous of the economic success of this community that on June 1, 1921 they bombed it by plane and attacked it by foot. Tragically, more than 300 people were killed and 200 businesses destroyed simply because the black community was living the “American Dream” of entrepreneurial success.

One positive lesson that we can learn from this embarrassing American history is that when economically challenged communities are given the opportunity to develop entrepreneurial businesses they can flourish and transform poor communities into middle class communities. Government leaders committed to implementing sustainable solutions to chronic poverty, should establish EZones in economically challenged communities around the world. Businesses in these locations should receive public funding, regulation relief,investment fueled by tax credits, grants and entrepreneurship training.

In addition, qualified nonprofit organizations should provide povertyinformed job training and placement programs helping the long-term unemployed find jobs. Government programs providing housing, education and health services should be aligned and leveraged to provide more comprehensive and effective support o residents of the EZone community.

By creating Entrepreneur Zones in economically challenge communities, we can move the world closer to Dr. King’s “Dream” of a society where all people live in an “ocean” of financial stability and social well-being. ◆

One positive lesson that we can learn from this embarrassing American history is that when economically challenged communities are given the opportunity to develop entrepreneurial businesses they can flourish and transform poor communities into middle class communities.

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THE INDIA-UK PARTNERSHIP: A FORCE FOR GLOBAL GOOD

By Kevin McCole & Kealan Finnegan

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It matters when the 5th and 6th largest economies in the world, India and the UK, come together. Bilaterally, our countries share a long history, bound together by democratic values, language, and people – often dubbed the “living bridge”. But it is also important that the UK and India engage in multilateral forums like the G7 to collaborate on global problems, like climate change, poverty, inequality and, in the short to medium term, in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic.

It matters not just for our two countries but for the world.

The UK-India relationship is in a good place and getting better In the year before the pandemic, bilateral trade grew by 10 percent to GBP 24 billion. Businesses are already well-established in both countries; UK direct investment into India is responsible for more than 400,000 direct jobs in India, and many more indirectly, and approximately 850 Indian companies have created over 110,000 jobs in the UK. The UK is currently the sixth largest investor in India, with a cumulative inflow from 2000–2020 of over GBP 21 billion.

India was the second-largest source of FDI into the UK in 2019 (after the US) with 120 projects creating over 5400 new jobs in the UK. What is even more encouraging is the relationship’s upwards trajectory.

Businesses from both countries are enthusiastic about the opportunities to do more and the Governments have increased engagement to facilitate that.

Both countries have supported each other when needed in the pandemic too. India sent PPE and paracetamol to the UK last year, the UK has delivered oxygen concentrators and ventilators to India this year, and both have worked together on one of the world’s leading vaccines, the Oxford University-Astra Zeneca vaccine manufactured in the Serum Institute of India.

A new and transformative Comprehensive Strategic Partnership While combatting COVID must remain the immediate term focus of the bilateral partnership, Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Narendra Modi set-out on 4th May a “transformational

Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”, with a 10-year roadmap, which included the UK-India Enhanced Trade Partnership (ETP), an ambition to double trade by 2030, and the intent to open FTA talks.

Within the 2030 roadmap are five themes: healthcare; climate change; defence and security; trade and investment; and the people-to-people links that underpin and bring so much energy and innovation to the bilateral relationship. All five themes are important to businesses and businesses are important in all five themes.

What does the 2030 roadmap cover?

Although the roadmap is bilateral, it is also global. It is built on shared UK-India strengths in science, innovation and creativity, and demonstrates a clear commitment to bring these strengths to bear in solving major global challenges.

Healthcare: Friends and partners support each other in challenging times, and since the onset of the pandemic the UK and India having supported each other in multiple ways (as described above). Increased cooperation on life sciences and healthcare will not only support our countries’ own populations but will bring benefits to countries across the world. Together, the UK and India can lead the world on healthcare R&D and manufacturing, and collaborate on the digital technology and AI that will be invaluable in improving the efficacy and availability of healthcare solutions.

Climate Change: From governmental policy levers to tech-rich business solutions to sustainable finance, there is great scope to make a positive impact on the journey to Net Zero. The

strengths of both countries’ solar and wind sectors are well-known and must continue to grow, while waste to energy solutions can help to address two significant problems with the same stone. Hydrogen, too, can be a gamechanger and is seeing increased cooperation. Similarly, EV and transport infrastructure will be key, again addressing a multitude of challenges.

Defence and Security: A flourishing Indian defence sector requires increased foreign technology transfer and investment which will ultimately lead to the co-creation of technology and manufacturing partnerships which can meet not just the needs of India but also be exported to other countries.

UK businesses are profoundly committed to India, and the backing of both Governments to defence cooperation is immensely valuable. Given India is the world’s third-highest military spender, and now with an enhanced FDI cap from 49% to 74%, there is significant scope for investments from the UK. People to people – the “Living Bridge”: At the heart of the bilateral relationship is the people living in and between our two countries. This Living Bridge binds our countries together and enables us to share ideas, expertise, and work on common goals. The new Migration and Mobility Partnership, supporting the movement of students and professionals in both directions, will only strengthen the Bridge.

Trade and Investment: The ETP is a big deal because it matters when two of the biggest and fastest growing economies in the world form a trade partnership and set-out a plan to double trade to GBP50 billion per year by 2030. →

The UK is currently the sixth largest investor in India, with a cumulative inflow from 2000– 2020 of over GBP 21 billion. India was the second-largest source of FDI into the UK in 2019 (after the US) with 120 projects creating over 5400 new jobs in the UK. 91

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→ There is great ambition and yet achievable targets.

Businesses in both countries agree that removing tariff and non-tariff barriers and a pragmatic, businessfriendly approach to regulation and tax policies will see significant increases in trade and investment flows. All sectors will benefit, and the companies that will succeed are those with great innovations and strong brands.

When the ETP was signed, it included immediate reforms to remove non-tariff barriers to trade in apples, pears and medical devices, and signalled the intent to conclude a Mutual Recognition of Qualifications agreement by the end of 2021. So great news for exporters, universities and students.

There is more to come. In fact, there are three aspects of the ETP that are particularly positive.

The first is that it addresses market access and regulatory issues on an immediate and ongoing basis. This is important for businesses who want to increase investments and create jobs and prosperity straight away. The announcement of a new and refreshed UK-India Ease of Doing Business MoU was also very much welcomed by businesses as it will lead to the two Governments continuing to share experiences on regulatory reform, tax administration, trade facilitation and standards which will ease the nontariff challenges faced by companies.

A second major positive is that the ETP and FTA will cover goods and services, including the technology, digital, financial, and IP-rich services where the UK and India are globally competitive and where there is scope for far greater bilateral activity. By focussing on the trade of the future now, the UK-India ETP and FTA can be a model for all trade deals that follow.

Thirdly, an impressive timetable was set, with both governments committing to completing pre-negotiation scoping by the end of this year. The ball is very much rolling.

What are the potential stumbling blocks?

It was this time last year that PM Modi launched the self-reliant India (Atmanibhar Bharat) initiative.

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survey in September 2020 stated that Atmanibhar Bharat was a positive for their business, others have argued that it has the potential to curtail international trade and investment, through increased tariffs, non-tariff restrictions on imports, and import substitution.

The Government of India, from PM Modi down, have stressed that their approach is “integration, not isolation”.

Nevertheless, it will be important that the Government of India and State Governments are alert to the unintended consequences of the initiative. India needs to protect and, indeed, enhance its reputation as an open economy. If it is perceived to be protectionist, it could slow the flow of investments and limit India’s integration into global supply chains.

From the perspective of UK businesses, the ETP and future FTA present an opportunity to make sure he UK is not affected by any restrictive measures. But India could take sensible steps to reassure the international community that its self-reliant mission is a force for global good.

In a new UK India Business Council report: “The Road to a Self-reliant India”, we make 5 recommendations that will dispel the notion that India is seeking isolation and accelerate and deepen global integration.

1. Build a strategy for the future, taking a long-term view It is important to recognise that, increasingly, supply chains are regional, with manufacturers clustering close to the end consumer, and location decisions are based on quality rather than cost. Thus, supply chain trade is becoming more knowledge-intensive, with increasing value in IP, R&D, and brands.

2. Focus on developing nd supporting innovators With international businesses making investment decisions based on access to talent and technology, India should focus on developing a workforce that has the skills of the future. That means a focus on STEM, digital, creative and critical thinking skills that will build leaders and workers who can innovate and solve problems. The Indian

economy would benefit from a much closer collaboration between industry and academia, including the science being developed in academia, which will accelerate the commercialisation of R+D and its application in solving societal challenges.

3. India should become increasingly open to free and fair trade India should increase its efforts o expand trade and investment collaboration in Asia. By giving global manufacturers improved access to the whole of Asia, India will become an even stronger magnet for investors.

Moreover, India should attract investors due to its strengths rather than by using tariffs as a tool to push international businesses to invest and make in India.

4. Digital and data With digital and data services increasingly important in global trade, there is an opportunity for India to fully integrate with other major democratic markets. India should continue to harness and actively invest in the opportunities that AI, digital technology and data present to achieve its growth potential. To do so will require a first-class data protection regime that protects the innovation of business and builds confidence among consumers.

5: Put sustainability at the heart of India’s trade and investment strategy Whether it is through UN forums the Sustainable Development Goals and COP26 - or discussions at the WTO, G7, or G20, sustainability issues are increasingly a feature of trade

discussions. If shaped properly, trading arrangements can help support the poor and protect the environment.

Build back better, together As India takes steps to make itself self-reliant, the UK too is changing.

It is pursuing well-founded interests in the Indo-Pacific, but it is also reshaping its relationship with the EU and businesses believe that it should strengthen its close ties with European partners. It is invaluable that UK-based manufacturers can freely access EU supply chains, that businesses can seamlessly trade goods whether physical or digital, and that students and workers can travel, exchange ideas, and share platforms. This will reinforce the UK’s position as a global hub.

At the same time, the UK is also addressing economic imbalances within its own borders and is taking measures and making policy decisions to spur long-term, sustainable, green and more equitable economic growth all across the country as part of the “levelling-up” and “build back better” agendas. This is relevant for Indian and other international investors as it should open opportunities to access the brilliant innovation, technology, and talent living and working in every corner of the UK. Journey to an FTA A successful journey to an FTA will not be straightforward. Inevitably, there will be bumps, domestically and in the bilateral relationship. So it will be important to build momentum and confidence, delivering incremental market access reforms and deepening bilateral co-operation across all five themes in the 10-year roadmap. This year’s G7, followed by the G20 in October, and COP26 in November, are important opportunities to deepen and accelerate co-operation. While the decade-long journey is starting in challenging, dark times, there is optimism for a bright future where the UK and India are ever-closer partners. ◆

As India takes steps to make itself selfreliant, the UK too is changing. It is pursuing wellfounded interests in the Indo-Pacific, but it is also re-shaping its relationship with the EU and businesses believe that it should strengthen its close ties with European partners.

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What Prime Minister Modi Says on Climate Change and Combatting COVID Matters for the World

By Richard Heald

Several momentous announcements came out of the recent G7 meeting none more so than the attendee’s commitment to working towards a greener, safer and freer future.

That Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended as a guest - albeit virtually - was important not merely as a recognition of the growing economic power of India but also of the fact that India is a critical ally of the developed world in tackling the key global challenges of climate change and the environment as well as of COVID-19.

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(UKIBC) would argue that an ongoing and close Indian involvement in seeking solutions to the G7 agenda underpins the likelihood of making significant progress.

The Summit covered a wide range of areas, spanning healthcare and pandemic response, climate change and the environment, security, trade and investment, infrastructure, and education and gender equality. I would like to focus on two areas which are particularly pertinent right now: climate change and COVID-19.

Being the most prominent of any Indian prime minister on climate change, what Mr Modi says on the subject is important. And, his actions

speak louder than words - the 200 nation International Solar Alliance, the Clean Ganga Mission, the pan Indian Swajal Scheme to name a few.

Moreover, India’s domestic energy transition strategy and its climate leadership is increasingly resulting in an Indian population becoming more sensitised to and supportive of environmental issues.

What India does matters not only to its population but also to the world.

Nearly 20 percent of the world’s population live in India with a predominately youthful demographic; similarly, according to the World Economic Forum, India’s economy is already the fifth largest in the world

India has a committed voice in Prime Minister Modi in these important areas. Indeed, the UK India Business Council (UKIBC) would argue that an ongoing and close Indian involvement in seeking solutions to the G7 agenda underpins the likelihood of making significant progress.

as measured by nominal GDP. And India will soon be the world’s largest country by population and the third largest economy. Such changes will require careful conservation of resources and emissions with resulting significant impacts beyond India’s borders.

On a G7 session on climate change, Mr Modi outlined the need for developing countries to have better access to climate finance. The UKIBC recognises that climate-related and sustainable finance will be vital to help poorer countries to invest in climateresilient infrastructure and clean energy, and to incentivise sustainable behaviours. We fully endorse UK Prime

Minister Boris Johnson’s wider call for net zero. Through the UKIBC’s Energy Transition and Green Economy Sector Advocacy Group, made up of UK and Indian businesses, we will support our members and clients to play their part, through renewable energy solutions, energy-related infrastructure, as well as sustainable financing.

Energy transition financing is also a vital theme in the lead up to, and beyond, COP26 in Glasgow in November.

The G7’s pledge of USD100 billion a year by rich countries to help poorer ones cut emissions and cope with climate change is a positive start and we expect more to be done come November end.

On the other hand, as a leading economy and a healthcare, life sciences and vaccine powerhouse, India has a central role to play in beating this pandemic and in helping the planet build back better. UKIBC welcomes the ‘One Earth, One Health’ narrative of Prime Minister Modi at the G7. This pandemic will not be beaten until we all beat it, so working together is the only answer.

The UKIBC welcomes the G7’s immediate response of 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses over the next year to poorer countries. As UKIBC’s Kealan Finnegan wrote ahead of the summit, India and South Africa, as the two developing nations at the event, were likely to call for greater support from advanced countries for the world, through sharing expertise and enabling widespread distributions and production of vaccines.

And, the global vaccine roll-out will

remain important in the coming weeks, months, and years as the world rises to the COVID challenge and introduces systems to enable the planet to live with COVID. Global cooperation will support the UK-India bilateral relationship, as two key allies, and the bilateral relationship will support global cooperation as the UK and India share goods, services, and innovations more freely.

The future UK-India FTA can go a long way to ‘championing freer, fairer trade within a reformed trading system [and] a more resilient global economy’, as the leaders’ communique set out.

Business will play a key role in the innovation, production, and distribution of the goods required to overcome global challenges, including the urgent pandemic and climate change.

So, the G7 resulted in some positive announcements to tackle some mighty challenges. The hard work starts now, and efforts from government, business and civil society will be equally important. We look forward to the G20 summit later this year and to following the positive pronouncements at the summit in Cornwall put to action.

And we look forward to Prime Minister Modi’s involvement in the discussions.

We are better working together, sharing ideas and experiences, and relevant solutions through people-topeople links, trade, investment, and R&D. We at UKIBC congratulate Prime Minister Johnson for hosting a successful summit and warmly welcome the critical inputs from Prime Minister Modi to achieve the G7’s goals. ◆ 95

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W BIRMINGHAM CARE GROUP B R A N D E D S T O RY

Serving its Community During the Pandemic

Mahatma Gandhi said: ‘the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members’.

I am Fiona Ramdeen, and I come from a background of caring for some of the most vulnerable people in my community. In May 2012 I established the Birmingham Care Group, a registered charity (1149682). It has been supporting older adults with a range of conditions such as dementia and younger adults with conditions such as learning disabilities and autism.

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their loved ones. The aim of our service is to support our beneficiaries to engage in a range of activities bespoke to their needs and preferences to provide opportunities for their self-development and achievement of outcomes which have a true meaning for them.

Our centre Manager Sharon BholaHarris alongside Roshan and Rani has created an environment where they feel safe and have built a good rapport and understanding of their needs.

Our service also provides the added value for informal carers to have break from their caring role. Our focus as a service is to promote and encourage a healthier, active lifestyle whilst forming

companionship within an informal but safe setting for our users.

There is an increasing demand for our services particularly from our aging population. Thus, services, have become more limited (stretched) within the local area because of the increase in more service users attending our centre. Many of them do not meet the criteria for their day care service to be funded by the Council, increasing the burden on informal carers to look after for their loved ones.

As a small community organisation, we have limited resources available.

We need to expand our services to meet the increasing demand for our

service particularly those who do not meet the funding criteria of the Council. These people have limited resources to fund their own day care opportunity. Many of our beneficiaries have very little to no contact with their families and rely on our services to socialise and integrate with others in the community.

Aims and Objectives: • To provide person centered day care opportunities for older adults and younger adults with a range of disabilities where they can interact, participate and integrate with the local community.

• To support service users with their

health and well-being through activity workshops/exercise of their choice and social interaction with other people • Support the social cohesion within our community by maintaining and developing social capital • To support service users and with their service providers within the care sector.

• To work with the relevant authorities to promote the views, needs, rights and aspirations of the voluntary sector in providing a day opportunity service.

We have a Quality Assurance Framework which monitors the quality and safety of our service for example we capture the customer experience of our beneficiaries through the deployment of evaluation forms where we ask them to complete regularly.

Outcomes from such surveys feed into service improvements such changes in the content of activities.

Our service is bespoke to the needs and preferences of our service users and so we provide a range of therapeutic activities to maintain a nd improve the physical and mental wellbeing of our beneficiaries whilst providing a welcome break from the caring role of their loved ones.

As a charity all proceeds from the day care service is invested back into the organisation so that we can continue to deliver a high quality service for our beneficaries.

We closed our facilities in March 2020 due to COVID-19 which saw many of our service users isolated and alone with no little to no contact from family or friends.

Our dedicated team of volunteers maintained contact with our service users whilst adhering to the social distancing guidelines. We repurposed our premises and opened an emergency food bank that enabled us to provide food parcels to the whole community and deliver to those who were vulnerable and shielding.

We have become one of the largest food banks in Birmingham, catering predominantly for the BAME Community, providing culturally sensitive foods that supports their health and wellbeing. We have several funders who have supported the food bank, in particular the National Lottery Community Fund to help with running

As a charity all proceeds from the day care service is invested back into the organisation so that we can continue to deliver a high quality service for our beneficaries.

Fiona Ramdeen, Founder & Chair, Birmingham Care Group

costs and a minivan, Errol Drummond owner of Sunrise Bakery, Kathleen Harris the Community Champion from Morrisons (Edgbaston) and Tropical Sun Foods with Caribbean produce.

We have been fortunate to have partnered with Wes Sinclair and Marco Guerreiro from Colourway Printing who are providing items of clothing and blankets for our families suffering hardship and our homeless citizens.

We welcome donations to continue our charitable work in serving our community through this global pandemic. ◆ Please visit: birminghamcaregroup.org for further information.

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Turning Around Our Health Through Dietary Change Why Food Allergy Research Is on the Cutting Edge of Foods as Medicine.

By Lisa Gable

With the growth of chronic diseases, the alignment of our food consumption with individual medical needs could result in a significant health transformation creating a positive future for our patients.

Emerging innovations in culinary medicine, medically tailored meals and lifestyle medicine provide hope for a new level of personalized solutions.

Today, there is growing acceptance of non-clinical interventions that may ease the suffering of patients and have a direct positive health impact on individuals. The gathering and sharing of health data that includes dietary data—avoidance and consumption— could be among the most impactful public private initiatives both within the U.S. and through multinational collaborations. Through multi-sectoral data sharing and analysis, innovators in the field could deliver solutions that meet the needs of each patient.

Medically tailored meals, individually customized recipes, and the ability to identify barriers to access for diverse populations are opportunities being discussed for diseases like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and food allergies.

Food allergy researchers continue to be at the forefront of these conversations.

Here is what we know. First, through avoiding proteins that can trigger an allergic reaction, patients can eliminate the risk of anaphylaxis. Second, the LEAP and EAT studies, funded in part by FARE, showed that early introduction of peanut and egg to babies can decrease their risk of developing food allergies when parents comply with the recommended feeding regime; these foods can also increase nutrient density in the diets of young children.

Third, oral immunotherapy treatments that include the incremental introduction of allergen to a foodallergic child under the supervision of a medical professional are showing levels of desensitization and a reduction in anaphylactic reactions. Palforzia, the first FDA-approved therapy in market to be based on this concept, is made

by Aimmune, a company recently purchased by Nestle. As noted by Dr. Kari Nadeau in her book, The End of Food Allergies, “Immunotherapy is at the heart of this new world. This powerful technique trains the immune system to stop treating a given food as an enemy.”

Life-threatening food allergies, celiac disease and irritable bowel syndrome share a commonality that they are diseases triggered by the consumption

Life-threatening food allergies, celiac disease and irritable bowel syndrome share a commonality that they are diseases triggered by the consumption of food. In partnership with industry and thought leaders, FARE is elevating the impact of food-related diseases.

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of food. In partnership with industry and thought leaders, FARE is elevating the impact of food-related diseases.

Recent research sponsored by FARE in collaboration with McKinsey, Northwestern University and Global Strategies Group showed that food allergies and intolerance impact the purchasing decision of one in four Americans—85M people—and an estimated nearly one-half billion people worldwide. The study estimated that this is a $19B market that could be captured through a more informed management of our food supply.

FARE is working towards a future free of food allergies and intolerances.

FARE’s overarching approach to achieving this vision will be realized through four distinct areas of focus: Access to Care, Biomarker Research, Gut Health and Prevention. Prevention is an essential piece of the overall food allergy puzzle. Collaboration across disease groups, governments and industries in data gathering and data analytics will be part of that breakthrough. Making modest, incremental gains in this area has the potential to have great impact. By addressing food allergies at their root causes, we can develop a practical path for the elimination of food allergies for future generations. Two prevention strategies that align with Food As Medicine conversations and policies include early introduction of potentially allergenic proteins and probiotic introduction.

Working in partnership with governments, it will be incumbent on disease advocates to help design regulatory systems that encourage and support the rapid innovation and introduction of foods with medical benefits. With advancements in artificial intelligence, data gathering and analytics as well as the potential for just-in-time meal delivery, creating an infrastructure to support and maintain non-clinical interventions may be on the horizon.

Collaboration across sectors is required. ◆ About the Author Lisa Gable is the Chief Executive Officer of Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE), a former U.S. Ambassador and senior advisor to four U.S. presidents.

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RESEARCH | BOOKS | EVENTS

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W U7+ ALLIANCE

Sparking Solutions to Global Challenges We, as the U7+ Alliance of universities spanning six continents and representing all of the G7 nations as well as 10 other nations, are committed to working with the G7 to recognize the key role that universities play as primary global actors that can support the G7’s efforts to tackle climate change and preserve the planet’s biodiversity, lead the global recovery from the coronavirus while strengthening resilience against future pandemics, and champion shared values. The U7+ Alliance and its member universities are eager to work with the G7 leaders to prioritize the interests and rights of youth and future generations as they implement their commitments in Cornwall and in the lead up to the COP26 in Glasgow.

In particular, we are committed to working with the G7 and leaders across the public and private sectors to create new opportunities for mutual understanding and equitable resource sharing across generations. As an alliance of universities, we sit at the crossroads of generations—in a space where knowledge is generated and new, bolder visions for the future are imagined—and have committed to

serving as platforms for open intergenerational dialogue.

The U7+ wishes to highlight priority areas in terms of opportunities to collaborate with G7 leaders to actively take responsibility for and foster intergenerational dialogue on issues of importance to this year’s multilateral agenda 1. Leading the global recovery from the coronavirus while strengthening resilience against future pandemics: Resilience depends on the education of our citizens. As G7 leaders reflect on how to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen resilience against future pandemics, the preparation of the next generation of leaders must be a paramount concern, and we recognize our universities have a distinctive responsibility to train and nurture responsible, active citizens who will contribute to society, at the local and global levels.

2. Tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s biodiversity: We recognize that our universities have a major role to play in addressing environmental issues and challenges

to sustainability and are committed to promoting access to courses related to climate, biodiversity and sustainability for all of our students. We have also begun facilitating and we encourage G7 leaders to join us in promoting intergenerational dialogue on climate change and environmental degradation. Moreover, leaders from 21 U7+ Alliance universities have developed a framework for taking inventory of how higher education institutions are doing their part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are actively working to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions from 2018 levels by 2030–while leveraging technologies to provide solutions to complex issues.

3. Championing global shared values: Universities have a distinctive and leading role to play in confronting differences and divisions in society, and in working for equality and inclusiveness. The U7+ Alliance will host an intergenerational roundtable discussion on the global gender gap and encourages G7 leaders to actively foster intergenerational dialogue on this and other issues of inclusiveness and equality. We are committed to working with the G7 to promote and facilitate routes to higher education for youth from underrepresented groups, support their success and insist that freedom of speech, academic freedom and open and respectful dialogue are critical to a well-functioning democracy. ◆

We are committed to working with the G7 and leaders across the public and private sectors to create new opportunities for mutual understanding and equitable resource sharing across generations.

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The new genius is a collaborative genius

At Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, we believe that relationships among individuals and institutions—globally and locally—are what generate new knowledge that sparks solutions to global challenges.

Learn more at buffett.northwestern.edu.

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W U7+ ALLIANCE

Bridging Generations to Address Global Challenges

By U7+ Alliance of World Universities Student Leaders Board

To many young people, this pandemic has felt very much like being locked in a box with the walls closing in. One’s university years are depicted as the time when students are meant to be at their freest, a period of endless wonder and wandering, a time to explore both what the world has to offer as well as to discover what/who we want to become.

Yet, as each country closed its doors to the outside world, it dawned on most that their time in the sun would be spent indoors.

Some may point out that we should be lucky that we have the technology around to be able to communicate with one another electronically. Yet, the sedentary life, lived behind the tepid glow of a computer screen, is, while

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better than nothing, unsatisfying.

With clouds of uncertainty, negative energy reached its peak over the course of the pandemic.

Under these conditions, Northwestern University hosted 85 students from 22 universities in 12 countries for the U7+ Worldwide Student Forum as a precursor for the 2020 U7+ Alliance of World Universities Summit. Originally convened in 2019 by French President Emmanuel Macron, the U7+ Alliance of World Universities was created as a network for university presidents to derive concrete action plans collectively, to address global challenges in coordination with government leaders in G7 countries and beyond.

During this forum, students from all corners of the world were able to

connect with one another, share their own experiences related to the pandemic, reflect on how their universities were meeting global challenges, and prepare video messages for their institutions’ leaders. With recommendations on U7+ Alliance Commitments, Principles and Actions, these messages were compiled by the team at Northwestern and presented at the November summit of U7+ Presidential Delegates.

These messages gave students a platform by which to inform university leadership of the issues they faced, ranging from a call for more mental health support to improving digital learning pedagogy. Yet, to many of the students at the forum, the brief threeweek conference and 5-minute videos seemed too limited to keep university leaders accountable to their commitments.

A cadre of highly motivated individuals from four continents formed the U7+ Student Leaders Board to bring student voices to the decision-

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making table. The objective was to advocate profusely for more student representation and participation within the U7+ Alliance framework.

To accomplish these goals, the U7+ Student Leaders Board worked handin-hand with Northwestern to organize and host a series of three Intergenerational Roundtables. These events started with two keynote presentations, jointly presented by a faculty member and student activist, which gave participants an overview of the topic. After the initial presentations, students joined faculty members and university administrators from around the world, in candid conversations moderated by a select number of 2020 Forum alumni, on how universities could better respond to the pressing issues in the current climate. Finally, all participants gathered to share a summary of the discussions.

The first Intergenerational Roundtable in May focused on one of the significantly pressing challenges to participants of the 2020 Student Forum: “Climate Change, Inequities and Intergenerational Justice.” The event was co-hosted by Georgetown University and the University of Cape Town, in which the presence of University of Cape Town was especially significant.

On the 18th of April 2021, a massive wildfire engulfed the area of Cape Town, namely the beloved university library.

This event and many others across the globe were a clear indication to our 80+ students, faculty, and staff, that the issue of climate change and environmental sustainability must not be taken lightly. As Professor Joanna Lewis (Georgetown University) pertinently stated during the first presentation: “2020-30 is the pivotal decade to tackle climate change” and that requires an intergenerational, action-oriented approach to identifying solutions.

In line with the U7+ Alliance’s goal in championing global objectives, the second Intergenerational Roundtable on June 16th was co-hosted by Sciences Po and Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique and focused on how the social sciences could be leveraged to tackle the global gender gap. The roundtable began with a fascinating speech on gender inequality and gender

rights during the COVID-19 pandemic from special guest speaker Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a preeminent political figure and former minister of women’s rights in France. Discussion questions centred on the roles of education, the market economy and international organisations to purposefully achieve gender equality.

Students and faculty members also discussed the ways in which we as a community can build a women’s leadership narrative, prioritizing the crucial role of higher education decision-makers. Throughout the presentations and conversations, intersectionality appeared to be a recurring theme.

The role of intersectionality was also crucial for the third intergenerational roundtable focused on “Science and Technology Innovation for a Sustainable Future,” hosted by Ecole Polytechnique and Osaka University. The aim of the roundtable was to highlight the importance of technological innovation for environmental stability and ways students must be prepared for the technological transition, especially when entering the workforce. As Shayan Khan, a panelist representing Ecole Polytechnique and a member of the U7+ Student Leadership Board noted, “The starting point for growth is students. Social and environmental implications have become a prominent talking point when leveraging technology and students will play a leading role to combine these critical topics to further global development.”

Discussion questions revolved around the type of society we should aim to build to allow for the growth of new forms of science and technology and collectively survive the planetary crisis.

At the close of the third roundtable, the world looked much different than it had when the initial U7+ Worldwide

Student Forum first convened in 2020.

Vaccines, created by the best and brightest scientists and doctors, had been developed and rolled out. The world had started to awaken from its slumber and business had started returning to a certain level of normalcy.

Yet COVID-19 has unquestionably atomized entire sections of existence, and underscored the urgent need for intergenerational dialogue.

With faculty and students presenting science-based perspectives on global issues, the U7+ intergenerational roundtables provide a model for discussing the shared beliefs and responsibilities that are the bedrock for robust prosperity and expert-driven leadership. They can also help reinforce the enduring ideals of the G7 by highlighting the power of democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights with a diverse set of stakeholders.

The roundtables are a mere drop in the bucket when it comes to protecting future generations from the impacts of climate change, for example. Yet by including different levels of stakeholders—from starry-eyed youth to seasoned scientists—they can contribute to a culture of empathetic listening and collaboration that helps us better respond to crises.

Intergenerational collaboration is our only way forward. The pandemic has forced us to reevaluate our siloed problem-tackling mindset and reconsider the links among current global issues—together and with science at the center. ◆

U7+ Student Leaders Board Valeria Dimitrova, Shivona Fernandes-Köhler, Shayan Khan, Rachel Leistra, Oliver Ngong, Justin Potisit, and Marco Rupp

With faculty and students presenting sciencebased perspectives on global issues, the U7+ intergenerational roundtables provide a model for discussing the shared beliefs and responsibilities that are the bedrock for robust prosperity and expert-driven leadership.

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Is the G20 meeting expectations?

Read the latest highlights from IOE-DeloitteB20 monitoring report on G20 performance.

The G20 in its current form was set up to coordinate an international response to the 2008/2009 global financial crisis.

The Covid-19 pandemic and its health, employment and social impacts challenged the G20 and its members even more than the crisis 12 years before. It has posed new challenges to policy makers and business and at the same time has aggravated many existing gaps in policy frameworks,

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such as informality, insufficient social protection floors, rigid labor markets and skill-building systems that do not reflect labor market needs. The G20 has tackled many of these issues in the last 12 years, developed policy priorities and created commitments, targets and goals.

Findings from a joint International Organisation of Employers (IOE)Deloitte-B20 monitoring report1 in 2018, however, highlighted that the G20 in its first ten years did not fully

realize its potential. The report suggested that it would be critical to strengthen the implementation of G20 commitments at the national level to evolve and modernize labor markets, skills and education systems, and actions that enable a better environment for business.

Even before the Covid-19 crisis, G20 countries were not on track to reach the targets of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 of the Agenda 2030 (Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all).

In 2019, an IOE-Deloitte-United States Council for International Business SDG monitoring report2 stressed that “the rate of global progress has, so far, not kept pace with the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda.

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In the latest 2021 monitoring report, the impact of Covid-19 has drastically highlighted the need for bold and ambitious reforms. The performance of labor markets during the crisis were the result of policy choices. A swift and sustainable recovery will depend on proper labor market and education frameworks. This is even more important as many employees are in danger of losing their jobs permanently to rapid automation, digitization, and structural changes accelerated by the pandemic.

There is no need to re-invent the wheel. In many ways, “building back better” means to undertake the actions already identified long before the onset of the pandemic.

The G20 has agreed in the past on important policies, such as the G20 Entrepreneurship Action Plan, the G20

Structural Reform Agenda and the G20 Skills Strategy. These commitments need to be turned into concrete actions in all G20 countries. The impact of the G20 at the national level has been noticeable in the last three years (6.8 out of 10 points). This is progress, but this monitoring report highlights that the G20 is not a driver of reform for job creation and economic growth.

Looking ahead, as the world recovers from the employment and economic impact of Covid-19, the G20 must fully exploit its potential by setting out more ambitious and relevant commitments and strengthening follow-up at the national level. If this is successfully done, the G20 could undoubtedly have its most impactful decade to date. ◆ Read the full report here on: ioe-emp.org

There is no need to re-invent the wheel. In many ways, “building back better” means to undertake the actions already identified long before the onset of the pandemic.

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Myanmar, a Beautiful Country Envisioned by the Next Generation

By Khual Lian Kam

Is the 21st century a century of hope?

When you think of it as one of the people of Myanmar called the “last frontier,” you would answer Yes to that question. The G7, the front-row nation of the world, has made great strides from World War II to the present.

I am involved in multiple businesses such as energy, banking, and mine development. We believe that we can contribute to the prosperous future of this country through these projects.

I have a dream since I was a kid. Now it should be called a goal, not a dream.

That is “creating a beautiful country.”

Myanmar is blessed with a variety of nature. Over 50 million people live

Tradition

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under magnificent mountains, abundant seas, flowing rivers, and blue skies. I grew up surrounded by smiling people surrounded by abundant nature. Of course, I haven’t forgotten that some people still suffer from poverty. I want all of these people to experience a prosperous society that makes the most of Myanmar’s individuality.

Myanmar is full of beautiful natural landscapes. The majority of the people are diligent. And the heart is kind. They are the beauty we are proud of. The future of Myanmar is to become a country recognized in the world while maintaining the beauty of both the

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land and the spirit. It’s a very difficult but grand business.

Myanmar is now at the time of an opportunity to make a big leap in the economy. The internationalization of the world’s industrial structure is accelerating. At the same time, Myanmar’s development is progressing and business investment is also active.

One of the major reasons is the good labor force of Myanmar citizens.

It is a treasure trove of human resources that have a positive impact on international division of labor. In addition, abundant natural resources are also attracting attention as a large asset.

The world has now entered an ethical era. With traditional values, it is difficult to design the future of the nation. It is becoming indispensable to balance environmental conservation and development, to pay for worldclass standards, and to create an equal, safe and secure working environment.

Such an environment should not just

be given. Each of us needs to be aware. A sense of responsibility for labor is important. If the international community is the driving force behind Sustainable Development Goals, Myanmar must keep pace.

There are many issues to be tackled, such as improving social infrastructure, equal opportunity for education, and improving medical care and welfare.

We will solve them through our business activities. The road to that realization will be steep. Even if we stumble, we stand up immediately.

Never complain, never make excuses.

Never complain and never explain.

At the beginning of the sentence, I stated that the goal was to create a beautiful country. I’m just getting started. However, that feeling only gets stronger. I have a friend who talks about dreams. I have a companion who can help me. Offers to businesses from overseas are also increasing. I believe that the future of Myanmar is bright. ◆

KHUAL LIAN KAM Citizenship: Myanmar EO of: C KL AMAZING Co., Ltd. KL AMAZING CONSTRUCTION Co., Ltd. KL AMAZING POWER Co., Ltd. KL AMAZING TRADIG Co., Ltd. KL AMAZING TRAVEL AND TOURS Co., Ltd. AIDA AMAZING Co., Ltd. HACK AMAZING INTERNATIONAL Co., Ltd. CHIN COMMERCIAL BANK KL AMAZING JAPAN Co., Ltd. AMAZING ASIA ASSOCIATION.

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W A RT I S A N G R O U P B R A N D E D S T O RY

Creating a New Ecosystem Valuing Peoples Quality of life When you and your dear family are faced with the topic of death, how do you prepare yourselves for it, and how do you hope to live during the last chapter of your life? One common issue in Japan, China and Southeast Asia is the aging of the population.

In this context, the most important thing is to ensure that the place where elderly people live is holistic, sustainable and ensures happiness and a high quality of life.

Everyone desires to be respected as an individual and to live a life as he would like to, until the end of his life.

Even in illness, even in need of nursing care, even in a state of dementia, we all have that same need. To fulfill this need, we seek a place where people can live a rich life with dignity and joy, achieved through a combination of expertise in people and technology in an environment that integrates both. The mission of the Artisan Group is to realize this.

Artisan Group is a company with a mission to produce these environments. Through a network of seasoned artisans who share our vision, aspirations, and values, we create the following experiences for clients to live comfortably in short and long term, providing an atmosphere of joy and dignity: › A beautiful place to experience nature and assimilate into it, cultivating a more attuned mind › Peace of mind by utilizing advance medical treatment in Japan and overseas, such as gene therapy › Support for the recovery of capabilities through care and rehabilitation facilities for the elderly › Safety and security for each client utilizing digital data at medical institutions and care rehabilitation facilities › Coordination and mutual support with universities and educational GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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institutions in Japan and overseas, enriching learning, activity, and experiences › In-person and remote learning opportunities in collaboration with domestic and international cultural facilities and educational programs › A luxury hotel to accommodate clients and their family for the stay › Spas at our hot springs for health and body treatment › Fine dining experience with specially selected ingredients sourced from partner producers throughout Japan › Realization of a sustainable society through cooperation from a nursing facility, hotel, medical facility and local community partners.

Artisan Group is actively in collaboration with seasoned and visionary leaders in various fields in Japan and overseas: academic institutions, medical and health care institutions, the nursing care rehabilitation sector through generous donations by capitalists, and strategic investors. We welcome any inquiries. ◆

Nobuhisa Kishi › Representative Director and Chief Executive Officer of Artisan Group nkishi@artisan-group.jp www.artisan-group.jp › Founder & Organizer, First Wednesday Management Club › Chief Executive Officer of Kishi & Associates K.K. › Nobuhisa Kishi started his career in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs, Japan. Thereafter, Mr. Kishi set up and has run his own management consulting company, Kishi & Associates K.K. for more than 18 years. In addition, he is the founder and organizer of a membership management club called First Wednesday where executives of top Japanese global corporations share and learn from each other. The management club has The Wall Street Journal support as its media partner.

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W USCORE

Uscore mission is to raise the standard of living for foreigners living in Japan by providing the first cross-border credit scoring system.

Uscore Mission is to Raise

Uscore corp. https://uscore.credit CEO TAKETO NAKANISHI

the Standard of Living for Foreigners Living in Japan by Providing the Uscore corporation, A Japanese venture company, has developed Japan's first cross-border credit scoring engine. The application will roll out to Japan's top listed real estate companies by January 2021.

First Cross-Border Credit Scoring System Uscore corp.'s mission is to create an environment with the cross-border credit scoring engine to enhance academic and business activities regardless of the color of passports.

Living in a foreign country has never been easy. Lacking of credit information and references, foreigners face many obstacles for Living in a foreign country has never Uscore’s scoring information is living abroad especially in renting an accommodation.

Uscore corp. been easy. Lacking of credit information not just scoring information, it is a https://uscore.credit and references, foreigners face many combination of credit information Uscore initial market is Japan. obstacles for living abroad especially and guarantees. in renting an accommodation.

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W UNIFY B R A N D E D S T O RY

The World’s First Open Platform for Entrepreneurial Researchers “UNIFY” Opens in 5th May 2020 UNIFY Platform AG is established in Zug, Switzerland in December 2019 by the support of Swiss business hub office for attracting foreign companies at embassy of Switzerland in Japan.

They are R&D and management company for UNIFY. UNIFY is a ground breaking global platform that for the first time provides researchers in low and middle income countries with equal opportunities to succeed when compared to excellent health research from high income prestigious academic centers. Based on principles

of connecting e-money, popularity and artificial intelligence linked to well established bibliometric values, the UNIFY platform allows academic research across the world to compete on equal terms, supporting the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). UNIFY works by channeling research incentives to authors of research publications and projects based on their popularity judged by the UNIFY audience using the principles of “throwing money” in combination with bibliometrics and

an accredited credit system. By being sensitive to public demand, research incentives can be aligned with research challenges and research performance by the researchers.

Mr. Atsumi Kaburagi, Co-founder & CTO (CEO of Chemiteras Inc. Japan)

Mr. Takahisa Karita, Co-founder, CFO & COO (Advisory board member of Tsang’s Group UK and Hong Kong)

unify21.com They plan to do the beta closed test of UNIFY before full launch in 11th January 2021. If you join the beta test, please visit below URL. ◆

unify21.com/contact

Management Team

Mr. Tokinori Terada, Founder & CEO (CEO of Chemiteras Inc. Japan)

Dr. Torkel Falkenberg, CRO (Member of the Board of Karolinska Institute, Sweden) GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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Mr. Lukas Wadsack, Domicile Director (Partner of Wadsack Zug Switzerland)

Mr. Alan Malcolm, Senior advisor (Head of Asia of Pearson)

Dr. Nigel Clarke, Senior advisor (Chair of the GPhC (General Pharmaceutical Council) UK)

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT R E V I E W UNIFY

Platform Scheme

Research database and community of researchers The main service of this platform is to gather research information on science as an open platform. Research databases are accumulated by using the community to announce specific research themes and original research. The results will be viewed by companies, universities, and foundations to increase trust and authority of researchers.

Live video distribution and billing Distributing the researcher’s own research and thoughts as a live broadcast or an edited video can present the researcher to students, researchers, companies, etc. who are watching it.

With this distribution, it is possible to earn points from viewers and convert them to money.

Researcher activity support scheme

Credit rating for researchers A function to automatically rate research credit information of researchers from various angles using AI, and display them as a score. If this score is high, the quality as a researcher is high, and many benefits such as offers and grants from companies and universities can follow.

Unique incentive A mechanism that allows researchers to receive fair incentives that are not influenced by a country’s situation and inflation, through research presentations and video distribution on the platform. There are various methods such as cash or debit from electronic money. This will attract the attention of researchers in developing countries and optimally allocate research funds to scarce funding situations.

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G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT SHIGERU GMBH B R A N D E D S T O RY

Europe based Japan biotech venture capital fights for human equality

They provide three services as follows.

Shigeru is a Japanese PE based venture capital company located in Basel Switzerland. They were established in January 2020 by the support of Swiss business hub office for attracting foreign companies to the embassy of Switzerland in Japan. That is why the head office is located in Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area. Their purpose is to support the promising technology ventures in the medical, healthcare, environment and digital health across the world. And their R&D and international technology transfer office is located in AWL, Solna campus in Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

1. Oversea technology transfer support › Formulation of overseas business plans › Introduction and mediation of major companies with partnership potential and external partners such as light persons. › Formulation of R&D plan › Building IP (Intellectual property) licensing schemes › IP licensing and marketing activities › Dispatch of directors to customers and your affiliates › Introduction of the government and its related institutions for technologies and products with high social contribution.

2. Financial support › Financing used for R&D and market development › Investment for third party share issuance › Introduction and negotiation of major audit companies and full sponsors (securities companies, investment banks, audits and so on) and other listed related companies. › Building an international tax structure

3.Overseas business bases support › General market research on the country you wish to expand into › Establishment of local subsidiaries through our affiliated law and accounting firms (Subsidiaries, branch offices, liaison office, etc.) › Opening a corporate bank account at local bank › Introduction of specialized companies for local HR procurement

shigeru.ch

Message from Shigeru Shiraki

Shigeru Shiraki

“All the people in the world has the right to live a healthy and happy life. It has not been realized for all people in the world to have equal and happy rights depending on the various challenges including lack of essential medical services, financial security and early detection of disease. This results in people unnecessarily lose their life. For solving such problems and improving global health, I have established SHIGERU GmbH to meet these challenges and provide the necessary change with the latest and most effective health care solutions including innovative pharmaceuticals, medical services, healthcare environment improvements. We are committed to ensuring that worldwide people live a healthy and happy life.”

A serial entrepreneur who has extensive business experience related to advertising, environment improvement, R&D pharmaceuticals over two decades. With the experience of losing a family member due to cancer, he has established WinMedics Co. Ltd for the development of remote diagnosis system and R&D of anticancer agents in 2016. In 2019 he has established both Win-Medics Holdings and Medics Kingdom at address of well-known audit company “BDO” (150 Aldersgate Street, London, EC1A 4AB, United Kingdom) in London, UK. as the base for international expansion.

To be close to and support cancer patient and their families, he has written the book “The man who saved a terminal cancer patient”. With this book, he supports many families with cancer patients.

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Fertilizer is the food of grain. It directly affects our agricultural safety, food safety and national security. The excessive use of chemical fertilizers and the abuse of chemical hormones have resulted in deterioration of the ecological environment, and as a result, unsweet melons, fragranceless fruits and tasteless vegetables. Problems threatening public health such as declined quality of agricultural and sideline products, increase of foodborne diseases and so on have become the focus of social attention.

Based on the concept of“To innovate marine biotechnology and providing safe‘food’ for terrestrial plants”, SHIDAI Marine has overcome key technologies in algae bio-catalysis and conversion, and has earned multiple invention patents. The “Application technology for Enzyme-method Production of Organic Kelp Liquid Fertilizer” was evaluated by Beijing (Xiangshan) International Science and Technology Conference and included into the national agricultural science and technology development strategy. Our product has obtained organic certification of European Union’s ECOCERT, as well as the certification of China Green Food Production Means. What’s more, it has been awarded with the honor of Excellent Product of China International High and New Technology Outcome Fair, and has been sold to the United States, Japan, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions.

WeChat

Website

www.shidaihaiyang.com

Our organic kelp liquid fertilizer production line has an annual output of 100,000 tons, with over 85% of its equipment independently innovated.

As the raw material, freshly harvested kelp from our national level sea farm is quickly transported to our dockside processing facility where its algal cells are broken through the biological wall-breaking technology, macromolecules split into micromolecules, which results in a product that is rich in a variety of amino acids, alginate, kelp polysaccharides, kelp oligosaccharides, mannitol, iodine, calcium, boron, magnesium, selenium and other dozens of organic and inorganic active nutrients, as well as cytokines and other plant factors, with intact preservation of kelp essence as the criterion for each of its work process.

Kelp Breeding Base Kelp nutrients are affinitive to terrestrial plants and are kinetic energies for them. they can regulate the ratio of solid, liquid and gas in the soil and reproduction and growth of crops, eliminate soil hardening, enhance crop resistance, inhibit bacteria and prevent diseases, increase drought and frost resistance, strengthen roots and enlarge fruits, and reduce pesticide residues. In addition, it can accelerate carbon and nitrogen metabolism and energy cycle, improve organic nutrient conversion rate and storage capacity, promote early maturity, increase production and lift quality, improve taste and flavors, resist oxidation and extend shelf life.

Kelp Harvesting As a national high and new technology enterprise leading in the field of marine biotechnology, SHIDAI Marine aims to continuously improve technology chain and innovate value chain in order to bring ocean’ s nutrients to all our lands and cultivate high-quality agricultural products, and in the process achieve our goal of healthy soil, healthy crops, and healthy people!

Fresh Kelp Enzyme-hydrolyzing Plant

Kelp-fertilized Fruits with Oxidation Resistance & Extended Shelf Life Soil-improving Fertilizer

Foliar Drip Irrigation Fertilizer

G L O B A L B R I E F I N G R E P O RT S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y B R A N D E D S T O RY

Pioneering a sustainable future for paints and coatings AkzoNobel’s commitment to People. Planet. Paint.

Human activity has left an indelible mark on the planet. While centuries of growth and advancement have come at a cost, we have the insights, knowledge and expertise, along with collective responsibility, to limit our negative environmental impact and contribute to a sustainable future for all.

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Just as people, companies, and industries have contributed to increased global warming and its resulting environmental impact, the same people, companies, and industries can lead the change to a circular economy and a more harmonious coexistence with mother nature.

As a leader in our industry AkzoNobel is committed to playing our part in pioneering a world of possibilities to bring surfaces to life while empowering people and minimizing our impact on the planet through the launch of People. Planet. Paint. our approach to sustainable business.

A TRACK RECORD OF SUSTAINABILITY Sustainability is one of our core values and is integrated in everything we do.

Whether it’s coatings that protect against bacteria, save energy usage or transform spaces through color, we’re experts in looking beyond the surface in order to bring them to life. Sustainability is integrated in everything we do, and it’s been in our DNA since 1792.

Over the years we’ve invested in a broad range of sustainability initiatives and practices designed to reduce our impact on the planet. From being the first company to remove lead compounds from our products to being the first in our industry to commit to the Science-based Targets Initiative that sets carbon emission reduction targets for scope 1, 2 & 3 we are determined to lead the way.

We believe that driving the sustainability agenda cannot be done by ourselves and this is why collaboration is important. It plays a key role to move things quicker. We engage and collaborate proactively with our stakeholders to identify opportunities to create shared value.

Our key stakeholders, as reflected in People. Planet. Paint. are customers, employees, suppliers and communities, as well as society, industry associations and investors.

We’ve become a member in various associations and organizations, which align with our sustainability approach, namely, the World Green Building Council, United Nations Global Compact, Together for Sustainability, RE100, The Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition, the Ocean CleanUp, SOS Children’s Villages and more.

Our efforts have also been recognized

by Sustainalytics (assessed as low risk, the best possible rating in our industry), EcoVadis (Platinum rating placing us in the top 1% of all companies studied), MSCI (AAA rating for six consecutive years), Vigeo Eiris (first in our industry), Corporate Knights Clean200 and more.

PEOPLE. PLANET. PAINT: THE KEY TO SUSTAINABILITY People: We act with integrity and respect human rights across our operations

and value chain, embracing diversity and inclusion, to transform the communities in which we operate. It’s about ensuring a safe and diverse work environment, developing our talented workforce, embracing our values and our approach to human rights.

AkzoNobel supports the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work of the International Labor Organization.

Through our AkzoNobel Cares and Let’s Color programs we ran over 1000 projects around the world and trained over 15,000 people in 2019.

As an employer, AkzoNobel has been recognized as a Top Employer in multiple countries including the UK, China, Brazil, the US, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland.

By 2025, AkzoNobel expects over 30% of the company’s executives to be female and to have trained over 35,000 community members globally.

Planet: Our Planet ambitions are tangible and will enable us to continue making an important contribution to addressing the sustainability challenges faced by our company, customers and broader society. As well as working to cut carbon emissions and reduce waste to minimize impact, we’re also taking proactive steps to improve our ways of working to build better processes for the future.

For many years, we’ve been working to operate in a more sustainable way, and we continue to take steps to reduce our environmental impact through reformed value chains. We focus particularly on reducing energy use, carbon emissions, VOCs and waste, while increasing our use of renewable energy and materials.

Our aim is to reduce carbon emissions in our own operations by 50% by 2030 and by 42% across the whole value chain of a 2020 baseline, reduce energy consumption by 30% by 2030, and use 100% renewable electricity by 2030. We also have an ambition to produce zero non-reusable waste and to recycle wasted water at our most water intensive sites. These ambitions are not only achievable but we’re on track to get there.

Lastly, we’re always looking for new ways to drive sustainable innovation that brings tangible benefits, delivers a positive social and environmental impact, and enables our customers to reach their own sustainability goals.

That’s why we focus on developing our portfolio of paints and coatings with sustainability benefits in our value chain and offering our customers one of the largest portfolios of sustainable solutions in our industry.

Paint: We are committed to creating impactful sustainable solutions that bring interior and exterior surfaces o life while also empowering our customers to achieve their own sustainability objectives. From buildings to ships and everything in between, sustainable, highperformance paints and coatings are our lifeblood.

Currently, AkzoNobel generates approximately 40% of our revenue from sustainable solutions, which is the highest in the industry. However, it is not enough. AkzoNobel continues to focus on innovation and pioneering new products that have a sustainability benefit. By 2030, AkzoNobel aims sustainable solutions to make up more than 50% of the company’s revenue A team of 3,000 scientists works closely with customers to develop innovative, sustainable solutions to →

We believe that driving the sustainability agenda cannot be done by ourselves and this is why collaboration is important. It plays a key role to move things quicker. We engage and collaborate proactively with our stakeholders to identify opportunities to create shared value.

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→ real-world concerns and challenges.

All sustainable solutions are developed with four innovation drivers in mind, productivity, asset protection, surface enhancement, and environmental protection.

In order to measure the positive and negative sustainability characteristics of our product portfolio we have the developed our Sustainable Product Portfolio Assessment (SPPA) framework together with several leading chemical companies in the world and the WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development).

This SPPA framework takes a holistic view of product portfolio sustainability, with a focus on developing sustainability advantages that AkzoNobel can offer to customers. The SPPA was instrumental in developing a broad range of sustainable solutions (products and services) that deliver sustainability advantages downstream and now account for 40% of the company’s portfolio. Prime examples are the Eco-premium solutions that offer clear sustainability benefits and outstrip competitors, leading to best-in-class designations.

Within our SPPA framework, products are characterized as sustainable for their ability to bring sustainability benefits in one of the following areas: • Health and well-being • Reduced carbon and energy • Less waste • Longer-lasting performance • Reduce, renew and reuse.

These sustainability criteria are embedded in our innovation programs.

Based on these criteria we focus on creating innovative paints and coatings to reduce fuel consumption, limit heat transfer, amplify light emission, and more, all with minimal VOCs, waterbased products, and other carbonreduction methods.

Waste reduction throughout the company’s production cycle is also vital. Waste and water can be reused and recycled, including overspray.

High-solid products help reduce packaging waste while powder coatings have a 99% reclamation efficiency rate. Of course, all of these goals must be reached while still GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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ensuring the best possible performance and durability for customers.

To ensure that we’re able to anticipate changes in legislation and remain at the forefront of pioneering innovative solutions we’ve developed our priority substance program. This multi-award-winning priority substance program is focused on proactively removing hazardous substances from existing products and formulations ahead of legislation, as was the case with removing lead compounds from our products.

AKZONOBEL’S SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS We take our responsibility as an industry leader seriously and we are committed to applying these lessons throughout the supply chain to address both energy use and air quality.

We have made an ongoing commitment to invest in sustainability, innovation and society. The foundations of our work are built on a review of the risks and opportunities within the context of our key market segments to 2030.

This has demonstrated to us the need to leverage the latest knowledge across science and society, identify and mitigate our challenges, and develop strategies to make the future better.

For example, South East & South Asia is a market experiencing robust economic and population growth. This

demands high levels of construction to meet the demands of a new middle class and rapid urbanization. However, as our research identified, this also means that there is a vast opportunity to pioneer new solutions.

Today, AkzoNobel has committed to tackling climate change and helping the company’s customers reduce their own carbon emissions through intelligently designed products and solutions. These include the following: Reduction of Urban Heat Island effect: Cities experience the “urban heat island effect”, especially those cities that are subject to temperatures of 35°C and above throughout the year.

This results in growing energy consumption, which is needed to cool down buildings. What many people are unaware of, however, is the fact that the materials used on exterior façades can have a significant impact on the temperature inside a building.

When infrared radiation from the sun strikes the surface of a building, some of it is reflected and some is absorbed in the form of heat. This causes the exterior wall of the building to increase in temperature, and this heat is subsequently transmitted to the interior of the building. Thanks to innovative technology and smart formulation modelling software, our researchers have developed strategies to increase the solar reflectivity of our coatings. We’ve carefully managed the pigments we use in our paints to

in a variety of decorative paints, coil coatings and powder coatings within the AkzoNobel portfolio.

We have made an ongoing commitment to invest in sustainability, innovation and society. The foundations of our work are built on a review of the risks and opportunities within the context of our key market segments to 2030.

create striking colors while at the same time significantly increasing the amount of infrared radiation which is reflected by building façades. The result is a difference of up to 5°C between a façade coated with a normal exterior paint and one coated with our Dulux Weathershield Keep Cool products. Computer simulation modelling has also demonstrated energy cost savings of up to 10 to 15 percent, depending on the type of building. And this is achieved simply as a result of less energy being required to cool the inside of the building.

This type of cooling effect is available

Cleaner Air: In our work to purify the air around us, we can now use photocatalysis to trigger chemical reactions. In this process, photoactive titanium dioxide absorbs sunlight and reacts with oxygen and moisture to generate highly reactive free radicals, which in turn can contribute to the abatement of noxious emissions from motor vehicles, and decompose harmful gases like nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and VOCs. We closely monitor the cradle to grave lifecycle of our raw materials and finished products to reduce Volatile Organic Compounds, the impact of transportation and other environmental fallout.

Reducing Environment Footprints: Reducing the environmental footprint of our coatings is a clear focus of our research programs. We are striving to increase the use of renewable materials and optimize our use of lower carbon footprint raw materials.

Another, and perhaps less obvious, way to reduce footprint is through increasing the durability of exterior wall paints. Enabling longer maintenance and repainting cycles helps to reduce building maintenance costs and environmental impact. This is achieved by lowering the use of resources for the paint itself (which will last longer), as well as reducing water use due to less need for cleaning.

Both climate and human activities alter the appearance of building façades through UV- driven color fading, erosion, cracking, flaking, dirt and dust pick-up, fungal and algal growth. In tropical urban environments in particular, most exterior wall paints currently last around five to eight years. We are developing solutions to extend this durability to at least ten years and beyond. Our research programs are focused on developing new polymer technologies to best balance weatherability and softness to create products with a longer durability than standard products used on building façades. In

combination with durable pigments that do not fade under strong UV, and smart formulation modelling, we can deliver extended repainting cycles.

Resource Use: In addition to encouraging the use of renewable materials, AkzoNobel offers wood coatings that increase manufacturing efficiency.

Reduced Temperature Curing: Powder coating traditionally requires baking at very high temperatures to cure.

Achieving those temperatures requires immense amounts of energy. However, AkzoNobel’s specially engineered powder coatings can cure at much lower temperatures, reducing energy consumption significantly.

Marine Products: AkzoNobel manufactures solvent-free, VOCcompliant, universal primer designed specifically for marine environments.

These are critical as international shipping relies more and more heavily on cargo ships and sea-bound trade continues to grow.

COMMITMENT IN ACTION AkzoNobel takes the lead in sustainability initiatives While AkzoNobel has invested in a robust range of sustainable solutions and products, the organization is also committed to creating change across its own operations and broader society.

Solar Power Projects To achieve our ambition of 100% renewable electricity by 2030 AkzoNobel is investing in solar energy generation. Recent significant installations include over 1600 panels in Garcia (Mexico) and Barcelona (Spain) as well as more than 5,000 at the Shanghai site and almost 3,000 in Guangzhou (China). Two major projects in China will see the company accelerate its ambition of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.

We currently use 100% renewable energy (RE) in several different countries, including the UK, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Columbia, Ireland, and Estonia and will complete the transfer to 100RE in Europe by 2022. → 121

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→ Green Building Projects AkzoNobel is a proud member of the World Green Building Council (WGBC).

According to that organization, 38% of global energy related to carbon emissions comes directly from buildings – 27% of operational emission from heating, cooling, and powering buildings and 11% of embodied carbon in the form of construction materials and activities.

As a solution to this challenge, AkzoNobel is focusing on green building design and construction.

According to the WGBC, “a green building is a building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or eliminates negative impacts and can create positive impacts, on our climate and natural environment. Green buildings preserve precious natural resources and improve our quality of life.”

AkzoNobel promotes the development of the green building market through its membership in the WGBC. The organization provides multiple solutions to increase sustainability in the sector, including the use of reflective coatings for building envelopes to reduce heat GROUPOFNATIONS.COM

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transfer and drive down climatecontrol-related energy use. Longerlasting paints and coatings for building interiors and exteriors further reduce energy and resource consumption, as well as the need for repair, cleaning, and repainting. Biobased pollutantabatement paints for air purification as in Dulux Better Living Airclean and primer-cum-topcoat 2in1 paints, Dulux Professional Express, promotes productivity via increasing efficiency by 30%.

AkzoNobel is also dedicated to reducing the amount of embodied carbon in the company’s products. It will achieve this through low-bake/UV/ ambient cure coatings, low-VOC/ water-based products, and the use of renewable materials in decorative interior wall paints, metal coatings, and liquid protective wood and coil coatings.

Some impacts occur beyond the scope of our processes, with our suppliers and customers. For example, in paints and coatings, more than 98% of our carbon footprint comes from upstream (supplier) and downstream (customer) activities.

According to the WGBC, “a green building is a building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or eliminates negative impacts and can create positive impacts, on our climate and natural environment.

Upstream, we know that the emissions from raw materials such as pigments, resins and solvents are our greatest impact, so we have joined forces with suppliers to drive the use of bio-based materials, recycled content, or raw materials produced with renewable energy.

Through these initiatives, the company will work towards achieving the World Green Building Council’s three primary goals, which are climate action through the proliferation of net-zero buildings; health and wellbeing to provide healthier places for people to live, work, and play; and resources and circularity to better manage natural resources.

Smart Application: Applying paints and coatings should require less energy and (when possible) rely on innovative techniques and technology.

AKZONOBEL’S PAINT THE FUTURE CHALLENGE In 2019, AkzoNobel launched the Paint the Future Global Startup Challenge. The mission is simple – to change the world of paints and coatings. The challenge features five themes that paints and coatings should embody, including:

Smart Manufacturing and Supply Chain: Paints and coatings should be manufactured, distributed, and applied through an intelligently designed process and robust supply chain. ◆

Enhanced Functionality: Paints and coatings should provide more than basic protection and aesthetics. They should also be more durable than previous formulations.

Customer Experience: Paints and coatings should deliver an excellent end-customer experience, including better adhesion, protection, colorfastness, and more.

Circular Solutions: Circular solutions help manage resource use and consumption while focusing on renewables/reusables.

About Akzonobel We’ve been pioneering a world of possibilities to bring surfaces to life for well over 200 years.

As experts in making coatings, there’s a good chance you’re only ever a few meters away from one of our products. Our world class portfolio of brands – including Dulux, International, Sikkens and Interpon – is trusted by customers around the globe. We’re active in more than 150 countries and have set our sights on becoming the global industry leader. It’s what you’d expect from the most sustainable paints company, which has been inventing the future for more than two centuries.

About the Author Pamela Phua has more than 20 years’ experience in Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) in the coatings industry. In her current role as Director of RD&I for AkzoNobel, she drives new technology development and product implementation across the South East, South Asia and Middle East regions.

Ms Phua was instrumental in setting up the global research and laboratory operations for AkzoNobel Decorative Paints (Global Exterior Wallpaint Expertise Group) in 2011. In her global capacity, Ms Phua implements the functional and product innovation strategy for Exterior Wallpaint.

She spearheads the RD&I functional excellence, standards and capability and the efficient delivery of processes as the approved Standards & Processes across the globe. Her efforts enabled AkzoNobel’s businesses to roll out new products and services across the region in a fast and coordinated manner, supported by an agile supply chain, efficient sourcing and robust quality control.

Some leading innovations launched by Ms Phua and her team included interior and exterior emulsion paints such as Dulux Weathershield Powerflexx, Dulux Pentalite, Dulux Wash & Wear / Easyclean, and Dulux Catylac / Inspire. Her expertise and experience has been instrumental in the setting up of industry standards in Singapore. She is the Technical Chairperson for the Singapore Paint Industry Association and a committee member in the Chemical Standards Council of Singapore.

She has helped to set up several Singapore Standards, including SS345, SS150, SS500 and SS494. She is an industry consultant to regulatory bodies such as Spring Singapore, Singapore Green Label, the Housing and Development Board, Singapore Green Building Council, National Environment Agency and the Singapore Institute of Architects. She is also an A*Star certified auditor for accredited testing laboratories in Singapore.

Pamela took part in various series of United Nation Climate Change Conferences, last being COP23 in Germany Bonn in 2017 where she shared innovative solutions to combat challenges around Climate change and contributing to developing smart cities for better tomorrow.

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