// JOHN KIRTON John Kirton is the director of the G7 Research Group, the G20 Research Group, the BRICS Research Group and the Global Health Diplomacy Program, under the umbrella of the Global Governance Program at the University of Toronto, where he is a professor emeritus of political science. He is co-author, most recently, of Reconfiguring the Global Governance of Climate Change , and is co-editor of G20 Brazil: The 2024 Rio Summit as well as a global health series, including the recent Health: A Political Choice – Building Resilience and Trust . X-TWITTER @jjkirton www.g7.utoronto.ca
Summit must also complete members’ compliance with the 34 accumulated commitments made by G7 leaders since 2015 that are due to be delivered this year. These are led by commitments on climate change and the environment with 19, energy with four, health with three, digitalisation and gender with two each, and Ukraine, food and agriculture, labour and employment, and development with one each. In response, G7 leaders will together address and act to advance security, prosperity and international partnerships, through several initiatives. The discussion on security includes Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery, its financial stability, business environment and economic growth, and the Ukraine Donor Platform, in addition to extreme weather events that threaten maritime port security and prosperity, ‘shadow fleets’ smuggling sanctioned materials, and sabotage attacks on undersea communication and energy cables.
pressures, through labour, productivity, market, governance and education reforms. It features AI, in particular promoting its adoption and benefits, while reducing its risks, through a possible G7 blueprint for AI adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises and AI’s diffusion throughout the economy. Partnerships feature private capital mobilisation for infrastructure, support for the G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, including the African Virtual Investment Platform launched by the African Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. On the environment, leaders are expected to address illegal fishing and biodiversity loss. The G7’s Kananaskis Summit thus promises to produce a productive performance. It could well be a significant one, due to the several severe shocks it faces, the many multilateral organisational failures in response, and the members’ still globally predominant and internally equalising relevant capabilities, due to the relative economic and soft power decline of the US inside the G7. But its members have unprecedentedly divergent political principles, practices and policies, with Trump now pursuing economic war against his fellow G7 members,
threatening to annex neighbouring Canada and the European Union’s Greenland, and at times supporting authoritarian Russia in its war against a democratic Ukraine. Nonetheless the leaders’ initially low domestic political support is changing, with Trump’s now declining and support for the Canadian host and some other leaders now rising. This should lead Trump to adjust to his colleagues’ united front at the summit itself. And as shown by the G7’s 24 February virtual summit, its pre-summit ministerial meetings and Trump’s public commitment to come to the Kananaskis Summit, all members remain committed to the G7, rather than the G20, as the core of an expanding network of global summit governance.
REBUILDING PROSPERITY, REIMAGINING PARTNERSHIPS
The priority of prosperity means making critical minerals supply chains resilient through investment and G7-G20 coordination, and structural reform to foster growth, competition and innovation. It also means reducing fiscal
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