As heads of state meet for the annual G7 Leaders meeting in Cornwall, UK. The Planetary Emergency Partnership has written to the G7 Heads of State and Government calling for urgent financial reforms to fully align public and private finance with our planetary emergency calls, the Paris Agreement and 2030 Biodiversity goals.

The G7 has an important role to play – the political signal from the G7 will inform the level of ambition strived for during CBD COP15, UN General Assembly, G20, UN Food Systems Summit and COP26 this year alone.

The letter attached outlines our vision, has since gathered a long list of signatories from distinguished individuals from science, policy, business, youth and civil society representatives.

“We don't expect more miracles; but we demand urgent action commensurate with the scale of the challenges facing the world. Two years ago, we published the Planetary Emergency Plan in an attempt to provide a science-led roadmap on how to emerge from this emergency. The post COVID recovery presents an opportunity to truly bounce forward to build hope and drive action to respond to the human health, economic, climate and biodiversity crises with long-term solutions that will build resilient and regenerative societies.

Professor Johan Rockström, Director Potsdam Institute Climate Impact Research (PIK)

“We call on G7 Leaders to adopt targets and timetables comparable to the planetary emergency at hand and predicted economic impacts from future climate, health and environmental crises. Research released just this week shows that G7 countries will lose 8.5% of GDP a year, if temperatures rise 2.6°C, the temperature expected if existing climate pledges are met. This is around twice the economic shock of Covid-19.
As a minimum G7 leaders must show leadership by shifting hundreds of billions of dollars out of perverse subsidies for fossil fuels and agricultural practices that increase GHG emissions and biodiversity loss and agree to shift capital to low carbon and nature based economic activities over this decade.”

Sandrine Dixson-Declève Co-President, The Club of Rome

“The moment has truly come for our leaders to show their scale of ambition by adopting meaningful finance and economic reform by all G7 countries. G7 leaders must back the UK COP Presidency’s calls for a Paris-compliant finance sector by 2025. This is not radical but is a necessary and practical step towards achieving the collective climate and biodiversity goals of 2030 for the resilient future of all people, our planet and our collective prosperity.”

James Lloyd Director of Nature4Climate

We are asking them to take the following five key decisions where leadership is most urgently needed:

* Commit to slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030

This is the most realistic pathway to stabilize temperature at around 1.5°C. Due to historic emissions, G7 nations must commit to at least this level of ambition to reduce the colossal risk of catastrophic climate change.

* Back the G7 Climate and Environment Ministers’ Communique.

This explicitly called for the world to become nature-positive by 2030 by reversing biodiversity loss. A key plank of this strategy must be to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. But also, increasing finance for climate action, including for nature-based solutions, to meet the $100 billion commitment from rich nations, agreed in Paris in 2015, that never materialized.

A percentage of the windfall to G7 countries from a global corporation tax should be allocated to the Green Climate Fund for adaptation to climate change. Now is the opportunity to make good and help developing countries transform their economies.

* End perverse fossil fuel and agricultural subsidies by 2025.

Incredibly, in the midst of a planetary emergency governments are shovelling money to fossil fuel companies and large industrial agricultural companies. Indirect subsidies for fossil fuels amount to $5.3 trillion, and agricultural subsidies amount to $700 billion. We are literally crowdsourcing catastrophe.

* End new fossil energy investments by 2021.

The recent International Energy Report providing a pathway to 1.5°C made clear that investment in new fossil fuel production and unabated coal power needs to end this year. However, between 2017 and 2019, the G7 provided $86 billion in public finance for fossil fuels, of which 88% went to oil and gas – three times as much support compared to clean energy.

* Require mandatory due diligence and transparency

Governments must move faster to ensure the finance sector incentivises disclosure of investments that undermine the resilience of Earth’s life support system. This is critically needed if we are to identify, assess and mitigate climate-related risks, including deforestation, and help finance sustainable supply chains. Progress is being made, but this must accelerate.