Trends of G7/G8 Influence on Global Climate Governance

This article reviews the changing priorities and commitments of the Group of 7 (G7) and Group of 8 (G8) on climate change and energy security and highlights the trends of their influence on the global climate agenda. The main research method is content analysis of the groups’ documents adopted from 2005 to 2023. The study reveals that, at all stages of cooperation, the G7 endeavoured to secure commitments from emerging market and developing countries to increase their contributions to emissions reduction and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy. As early as 2009, the advanced countries sought to prevent carbon leakages, regarding a comprehensive climate agreement in Copenhagen as a possible solution. The main principles, priorities, and tasks for attaining global energy security were defined in the 2006 leaders’ statement on global energy security and the St Petersburg action plan. The G7’s Rome and Hamburg initiatives on energy security, adopted after the G8’s suspension, in essence continued the course toward building competitive, diversified, sustainable, and low carbon energy systems, but without Russia. The new paradigm determined a different hierarchy of priorities: promotion of flexible gas markets, including more integrated liquified natural gas (LNG) markets, regulatory and public funding support of investment in energy infrastructure that cannot be built according to market rules, development of oil and natural gas resources from unconventional sources, and enhanced cooperation on critical infrastructure, transit routes, supply chains, and transport. This course was consolidated in subsequent years and entered a new stage in 2022. Since 2021, the G7 has been increasing efforts to renew the global rules and to shape new mechanisms and institutes of global climate governance. The establishment of the climate club, Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs), the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment (PGII), adoption of the principles of high integrity carbon markets, and the setting up of new engagement and containment platforms increase the risk of a fragmentation of the established climate governance system and its gradual substitution by a new order functioning in the interests of the G7 and its allies. In view of these risks it is necessary to deepen cooperation with the BRICS+ group led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and other emerging market and developing countries to coordinate and promote within the key multilateral institutions, including the United Nations (UN), the Group of 20 (G20), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), a concerted position on the inadmissibility of eroding the existing global climate governance system with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at its centre or the use of climate goals and regulation as protectionist and discriminative instruments, and to advance practical implementation of the principle of common but differential responsibility