As the G7 summit comes to a wrap in England’s Cornwall, the first physical summit since 2019, the leaders challenged China’s rising power and talked of the need for a better response to COVID as well as the need to provide help to underdeveloped nations to combat climate change.

The G7 summit, which includes the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, elicited a response from China, which stated that a “small” group of nations no longer control the fate of the world.

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Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

World leaders gathered at the G7 Summit in Cornwall discussed the possibility that a laboratory leak in central China’s Wuhan city may have a connection with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) chief saying all hypotheses behind the origins of the deadly disease remain in play.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that officials “compared notes” over the theory that the pandemic may have originated from a leak from a lab in Wuhan, calling for further investigations. However, he asserted that the UK’s “best information” remained that it “jumped” from animals to humans but admitted they did not have “all the answers”.

“That’s why internationally we wanted the review to be able to go into China to get all the answers, so that we have the full picture rather than these possible, potential, plausible options,” Raab told ‘Sky News’ on Sunday when asked about the issue.

“But, on balance, we do not believe that it came from a laboratory. We think it is much more likely to have jumped from animal species,” he said.

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WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Saturday that the theory was raised during a formal session at the G7 summit in Cornwall dedicated to health matters and that identifying the source of the pandemic was a core part of showing respect to the millions of people around the globe who have died from the deadly virus.

The origins of the COVID-19 remain a widely debated topic, with some scientists and politicians maintaining that the possibility of a lab leak of the deadly virus exists.

China has been accused of withholding raw data and access to sites that would aid deeper investigation into how the virus came into being, and how it first spread.

Climate change targets

According to a UK government statement, the leaders will lay out the action they plan to take to slash carbon emissions, including measures like “ending all unabated coal as soon as possible, ending almost all direct government support for the fossil fuel energy sector overseas and phasing out petrol and diesel cars”.

They are expected to agree on plans to transform the financing of infrastructure projects in developing countries as part of a raft of measures at the summit to address the climate crisis and protect nature.

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In addition to taking action at home, G7 leaders will commit to increasing their contributions to international climate finance to meet the target of mobilizing USD 100 billion a year, which will help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change and support sustainable, green growth.

“Protecting our planet is the most important thing we as leaders can do for our people. There is a direct relationship between reducing emissions, restoring nature, creating jobs and ensuring long-term economic growth,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The G7 will also commit to almost halve their emissions by 2030 relative to 2010. The UK said it is already going further, pledging to cut emissions by at least 68% by 2030 on 1990 levels – 58% reduction on 2010 levels.

As part of Britain’s commitments, Johnson launched the UK’s Blue Planet Fund from the G7 Summit’s ocean-side setting in Cornwall. The 500 million pounds fund will support countries including Ghana, Indonesia, and Pacific island states to tackle unsustainable fishing, protect and restore coastal ecosystems like mangroves and coral reefs, and reduce marine pollution.

The G7 is also expected to endorse a Nature Compact to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 – including supporting the global target to conserve or protect at least 30% of land and 30% of ocean globally by the end of the decade.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the summit on the Building Back Better and Greener strands virtually from New Delhi.

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.

The leaders will publish further details on the B3W in the traditional end-of-summit communique, alongside issuing the Carbis Bay Declaration on health policy.

On other shared foreign policy challenges, on promoting “open societies”, Washington is pushing for a stronger stance on China’s alleged forced labour practices against its Muslim Uyghur minority.

Current tense relations with Moscow, in particular over its cyber activity, are also expected to feature before most present reconvene in Brussels Monday for a NATO meeting, and Biden heads to Geneva for talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

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The G7 Leaders’ Summit has been dubbed the first-ever net-zero G7, with all countries having committed to reach net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest with ambitious reductions targets in the 2020s.

The UK, as the host nation, has pitched it as a “stepping-stone” on the road to COP26, which also the UK will host in Glasgow in November.