The G7 heads of state or government meet in a few days at the small seaside resort of Carbis Bay, close to Saint Ives, in Cornwall.
A few months after the London bombings in 2005, we rented a motorhome to explore with two of our children this region of Land’s End, the extreme south-western tip of Great Britain.
My God ! The rain had been so abundant that week that we most often had the impression of taking a cruise on the high seas. But arriving in Saint Ives, in the declining sun of early November had been magical… a Guinness difficult to forget, and the first moments without rain!
I don’t know if the place will inspire the G7 leaders and their guest observers from South Africa, Australia, India and South Korea.
On the now closely linked issues of climate, biodiversity and human health, this meeting opens a very dense sequence of multilateralism which will culminate in the autumn with the summit of G20 leaders in Rome, October 30 and 31, and the conferences of the parties to the twin Rio Conventions: from October 11 to 24, COP 15 in Kunming for biodiversity, from November 1 to 12, COP 26 in Glasgow for climate.
It’s fair to say that multilateralism has taken a turn for the worse in recent years. But if we want to extract ourselves from ideological visions, we quickly understand that since it is obviously a question of “common goods”, we will have to learn to act again in concert on these three subjects (climate, biodiversity, human health).
According to the official doxa of 10 Downing Street, “the Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) will take advantage of this G7 Summit, the first to be held face-to-face for almost two years, to ask leaders to seize the opportunity to rebuild better ( the world) after the coronavirus, by uniting to make the future fairer, greener and more prosperous ”.
In fact, from Carbis Bay to Glasgow, the role of the United Kingdom will be crucial, at a time when it hopes to establish itself, according to the concept of “Global Britain”, as an inescapable power, after its departure from the European Union. .
Good luck friends! We are by your side!
Iconography: Godrevy ,Saint Ives, United Kingdom Keely Schofield
After working as an international banker for emerging countries, Laurent Lascols became global head of country risk / sovereign risk (from 2008 to 2013) then global director of public affairs (from 2014 to 2019) for Societe Generale. In 2021, he founded Aristote, an advisory firm and training organization dedicated to environmental economics, sustainable finance and impact finance.