G7 leaders on Sunday vowed to start delivering one billion doses of Covid vaccines and to step up action on climate change, in a summit call to arms by a revived democratic alliance that also confronted China and Russia.

In a final communique issued at their first physical summit in nearly two years, the leaders of the elite club largely hewed to US President Joe Biden's push to regain the West's cohesion after the tumultuous era of his predecessor Donald Trump.

"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," the leaders said.

But the pledge on vaccines for poorer nations fell drastically short of the 11 billion doses that campaigners say are needed to end a pandemic that has claimed nearly four million lives and wrecked economies around the globe.

"I'm afraid there will be smiles (at the G7) but they are not solutions," former British prime minister Gordon Brown told Sky News, calling the summit "an unforgivable moral failure".

"Millions of people will go unvaccinated and thousands of people I'm afraid will die," said Brown, who helped coordinate international responses to the world's last major economic shock in 2008.

Likewise, the G7's pledges to deliver more aid for countries at the sharp end of climate change, and to phase out fossil fuel investments, were decried as too little, too late ahead of a UN summit in November.

"The G7 have failed to set us up for a successful COP26 as trust is sorely lacking between rich and developing countries," said Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan.

"We need authentic leadership and that means treating the pandemic and the climate crisis for what they are: an interconnected inequality emergency," she said.

- 'Green Industrial Revolution' -

Nevertheless, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the summit's host, said the G7 wanted to "drive a global Green Industrial Revolution to transform the way we live".

"There is a direct relationship between reducing emissions, restoring nature, creating jobs and ensuring long-term economic growth," he said.

Johnson also touted a G7 pledge to get 40 million more girls into schools over the next five years, as part of the post-pandemic reconstruction.

A White House official agreed the three-day gathering in Cornwall, southwest England, had been an "unusually substantive and productive G7".

Angela Merkel, attending her last G7 as German chancellor, said Biden had brought "new momentum" to efforts to tackle the world's problems.

India and South Africa, who took part in the G7 talks as guests, had pressed for the gathering to waive intellectual property rights on Western vaccines. But Britain and Germany were notable holdouts on that.

Campaigners also complained the G7 had failed to flesh out how it will pay for a newly agreed "Nature Compact" -- to protect 30 percent of the world's land and oceans from despoliation by 2030.

The leaders committed to nearly halve their carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 2010, and to phase out the use of "unabated coal" -- fuel whose emissions have not gone through any filtering -- "as soon as possible".

They vowed to end most government support for the fossil fuel sector overseas, and to phase out petrol and diesel cars.

The G7 had sharp words for Beijing and Moscow, in the buildup to a NATO summit in Brussels on Monday and Biden's first sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland on Wednesday.

They demanded China end abuses including forced labour in Xinjiang, where activists say up to one million people from Uyghur and other Muslim minorities are interned in camps, and in Hong Kong.

And they pressed China to let experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) investigate further how Covid-19 first emerged, amid suspicions that the coronavirus may have escaped from a Chinese laboratory.

The allies adopted a US initiative to counter China in infrastructure funding for poorer nations, promising to "collectively catalyse" hundreds of billions of investment.

The "Build Back Better World" (B3W) project is aimed squarely at competing with Beijing's trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which has been widely criticised for saddling small countries with unmanageable debt.

And the G7 demanded that Russia "credibly explain" the use of chemical agents on its soil, end its "systematic crackdown" on opposition groups and media, and "hold to account" criminals waging ransomware attacks.

- Royal blessing -

A lingering row between Britain and the European Union over post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland hung over the talks.

But London sought to bring all sides together using the "soft power" diplomacy of Queen Elizabeth II and her heir Prince Charles, at a Friday night reception for leaders and EU chiefs.

Joined Saturday by counterparts from Australia, South Africa and South Korea -- with India also taking part remotely -- they then enjoyed an evening beach barbecue around fire pits, featuring a sea shanty band and toasted marshmallows.

Campaigners criticise G7 pledges on virus, climate
Carbis Bay, United Kingdom (AFP) June 13, 2021 - Charities and campaigners were critical of the G7 pledges to tackle global crises including Covid-19 and climate change, as the summit ended in Cornwall, southwest England, on Sunday.

- 'Missed opportunity' -

"This summit will go down as a missed opportunity... when we needed 11 billion vaccines and we've only got offered a plan for one billion.

"We needed $50 billion allocated to the vaccination of the world and only $5 billion and I think this summit, I'm afraid, will also go down as an unforgivable moral failure, when the richest countries are sitting round the table with the power to do something about it.

"Now that we've discovered the vaccine, we have not set out the comprehensive plan that will deliver vaccination by the middle of next year...

"Millions of people will go unvaccinated and thousands of people, I'm afraid, will die."

- Britain's former prime minister Gordon Brown.

- 'Underwhelming'

"In the face of a once-in-a-generation pandemic that's raging across the world, this G7 will collectively be remembered in just one word: underwhelming...

"The collective ambition and action from the G7 failed to meet the urgency of the moment.

"The result of this uninspiring summit will be a prolonged pandemic that costs more lives and livelihoods, not only across the world but in the G7 countries themselves."

- Tom Hart, acting chief executive, The ONE Campaign.

- No IP waiver -

"The lack of urgent action to end the current crisis is unforgivable...

"To truly prepare against the next pandemic, we need a publicly funded and managed network of vaccine manufacturers around the world, free from the constraints of intellectual property."

- Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam

- Heads in the sand -

"This summit feels like a broken record of the same old promises. There's a new commitment to ending overseas investment in coal, which is their piece de resistance.

"But without agreeing to end all new fossil fuel projects -- something that must be delivered this year if we are to limit dangerous rises in global temperature -- this plan falls very short.

"The G7's plan doesn't go anywhere near far enough when it comes to a legally binding agreement to stop the decline of nature by 2030.

"And the finance being offered to poorer nations is simply not new, nor enough, to match the scale of the climate crisis.

"Boris Johnson and his fellow leaders have buried their heads in the Cornish sand rather than rising to the environmental challenge we all face."

- John Sauven, executive director Greenpeace UK

- Hollow words -

"This weekend has been full of hollow words with little more than spare change on the table to end support for fossil fuels and bring about the green revolution we desperately need....

"This could have been a springboard for successful climate talks in November, but without the cash, these promises are like writing in the sand and will do nothing to turn the tide of the climate emergency that is already devastating the lives of millions."

- Ruth Valerio, director of advocacy and influencing at Tearfund

- 'Partial plan' -

"We've heard warm words about a green Marshall Plan and ambitions to vaccinate the world, but this falls well short of what's needed.

"This is a partial plan not a Marshall Plan."

- Patrick Watts, director of policy, public affairs and campaigns, Christian Aid.

- 'Small clique' -

"There is only one kind of multilateralism, that is, the genuine multilateralism based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, and featuring equal treatment, cooperation and mutual benefits, not pseudo-multilateralism serving the interests of a small clique or political bloc."

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South Asian nations turn to China, Russia for vaccine help
Kathmandu (AFP) June 9, 2021
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