G7 Development Ministers (Berlin, 18-19 May) agreed to strengthen their cooperation to jointly mitigate the effects of the war in Ukraine on global food security, in the framework of a ‘Global Alliance for Food Security’ officially launched at the G7, and to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, in a context of ‘multiple crises’.
In their final declaration adopted, on Thursday 19 May, the ministers of the seven richest countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) document this commitment.
The day before, the World Bank announced up to $30 billion in investments to address the food security crisis over the next 15 months, with $12 billion in new projects in the pipeline to support agriculture, social protection to cushion the effects of rising food prices, and water and irrigation - with the majority of resources going to Africa and the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Central and South Asia.
The EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, who represented the EU in Berlin, said she was ready to cooperate with the World Bank. The EU has already taken steps to mitigate the short- and long-term consequences with €2.5 billion in nutrition support for 2021-2024, including €1.1 billion in humanitarian aid, she said.
According to her, “the EU must remain fully committed to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, including food security. Thanks to the G7, we can deal with the consequences of multiple crises in a more focused and coordinated way”.
In both the final Communiqué and their statement entitled ‘Achieving the SDGs in times of multiple crises’, the ministers stated that they were “ particularly concerned about the global impact of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine on the rise in hunger and malnutrition, poverty and other inequalities within and beyond the region”.
They welcomed the creation of the UN Global Crisis Response Group and supported the launch of the Global Alliance for Food Security.
They affirmed that their commitment to the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement remains strong.
Global health governance is also high on the agenda, with the future WHO global agreement on future pandemics, a ‘One Health’ approach to health and the goal of vaccinating “at least 70% of the world’s population” against Covid-19.
EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides and Ms Urpilainen participated in the joint meeting of G7 Development and Health Ministers (see Health news in this newsletter).
The G7 communiqué: https://aeur.eu/f/1pu
Statement on the SDGs: https://aeur.eu/f/1pv (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)