The tensions between the practicalities of consensus, including accommodating certain members’ views, and the principle of addressing current, global crises based on shared values have been particularly clear at the G7 this year.
As a Y7 representative of UK youth on ecological crises to the G7, I was responsible for representing the views of young people from the UK about ecological and climate crises to G7 leaders. Thus, I was surprised to learn, not from the G7 or Y7 organisation themselves but from a Reuters article, that climate change had been removed from the G7’s agenda. This was justified in an official press conference given by Monique Barbut, the French Environment Minister, as a ‘practical’ change, or as a way to stop ‘certain partners’, meaning the US, walking away from negotiations. Though several statements mentioned issues such as ocean protection and biodiversity, climate change is not mentioned. It was particularly ironic to me that the G7’s youth engagement group dedicated to ‘fighting the polycrises’ is met by a G7 conference that has removed a key global crisis from discussion.
To understand this decision, it is important to also understand the origins and intentions of the G7 conference. Originally formed for non-communist, like-minded nations to discuss their shared problems during the Cold War, the current G7 is an international conference between 7 countries; the UK, France, the US, Canada, Italy, Germany, and Japan, as well as the EU. Shared ideology and values was, and still is, the unofficial criteria of G7 membership.
Crucially, the G7’s final communiqué is a joint statement, based on consensual agreement by all members. I can speak from my own Y7 experience on the stress placed on consensus. Presenting a consensual stance to world leaders was stressed as paramount, so serious that the entire negotiating table was awake until 3am trying to agree on a few bullet points. Any proposal that is not affirmed by every member, regardless of how well-written, is watered down or scrapped.
For these reasons, the removal of climate change from the G7 agenda follows logically. The Trump administration has been rolling back environmental protection, including the 2009 endangerment finding which underpins much of the USA’s environmental legislation. President Trump has further labelled carbon footprints a ‘hoax’ and green energy a ‘scam’ before the United Nations Assembly. If the G7 must cooperate with the US, then removing climate change appears as a logical concession. Here we clearly see the clash between the practical need for all members to be present and agreeable, and the principle of shared concerns and ideology. Though practicality is prioritised, the decision to remove climate also speaks silently on politics, particularly telling of the G7’s relationship priorities centering the US and the status of climate in international negotiations.
The influence of the Americans in negotiations is unsurprisingly substantial. It is clear with the expulsion of Russia in 2014 that the G7 is not above removing members who, though a core player in several global issues, are politically misaligned. Indeed, excluding the US from a separate ‘G6’ meeting has been previously suggested. However, maintaining at least a working relationship with the US is perceived as ‘must’ among G7 participants even over crucial, widely-accepted problems. The significance of the US to the G7’s real legitimacy to coordinate and suggest solutions takes precedence.
In addition, the removal of climate change not only relegates the logistics of climate policy to another player, but contains a clear political message. The US has disagreed with its allies for many reasons, one example being the recent conflict in Iran. As a result of allies’ supposed lack of support during the American campaign, President Trump has publicly criticised and threatened other nations. However, discussions of Iran remain on the table, climate does not. On the other hand, climate change, along with trade, public health and poverty, was also removed from the agenda last year, in which a final G7 communiqué wasn’t even agreed, and with countries’ representatives described by the French Environment Minister as ‘traumatised’. The US will certainly not be represented by Trump forever, and to the credit of G7 sherpa teams, impacts and solutions have been implied without explicit mention of climate change. However, it remains unchanged that the Trump administration has now used the US’s leverage to severely limit international alignment on climate change, twice.
The removal of climate change from the G7 agenda is as much a political statement as a practical necessity, and one which raises particular questions on the relevance of the G7. The legitimacy and efficiency of the G7 has been under scrutiny for years. One major criticism is its lack of representativeness and European leaning. The decline in geopolitical weight of some of the G7’s major players, including the UK, and gap in wealth and organisational capabilities between the US and other members is too large to discount. This dynamic, as evidenced before, is felt keenly. Due to this, scholars have repeatedly questioned the G7’s ability to steer global issues.
A multitude of alternate conceptions of a G-type conference have been put forward as a result. A G6 organisation, excluding the US, has been floated as one such idea, although it’s understandable that no country would want to be seen leading such an alliance. Other possible rearrangements into a G2, G3, or even a G-zero in which no country has any political or economic leverage, have all been suggested, or the complete takeover of the G20.
What solutions may not consider is that it is the structure of the negotiations, consensus itself, that is causing faults to appear. At the point where coming to a complete consensus means eliminating core global issues, it seems to become less worth it. If the practicalities of achieving complete consensus begin to work in opposition to the purpose of consensus, which is to unify on shared concerns and policy, it severely questions the effectiveness of consensus diplomacy in this context. In other words, if the G7 is at best contingent on and at worst destabilised by its most essential player, consensus is, shown in the 2025 lack of communiqué, impossible.
The G7 should not disappear entirely. There’s an equally strong counter-argument that the G7 will continue to be relevant, especially as other rising partners such as South Korea are brought in. It seems that a system based on shared values is limited to organisations that have checks on power, such as the EU. Without binding agreements on the conduct of members, organisations such as the G7 can be forced to compromise their principles to retain their most powerful players, and thus produce genuine outcomes at all.