India’s focus at G-7: Health challenges; climate Change

As an invitee to the June 11-13 G-7 virtual summit, India is likely to outline its approach on global health challenges and climate change issues. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will represent India at the summit.

This is the third time since 2019 that India has been invited as a guest to the summit. While in 2019 Modi was in Biarritz (France) to be part of the summit, Trump had invited India to the 2020 summit but it could not be organised due to the surge in Covid-19 cases in the US. India, along with Australia, South Korea and South Africa have been invited to the summit.

In the run-up to the summit, the health and environment ministries are fine-tuning India’s role ET has learnt. India firmly opposed the adoption of Covid-19 vaccine passports at the G-7 meeting of health ministers on Friday, saying such an initiative would be “hugely discriminatory”. Health minister Harsh Vardhan raised concerns about the availability of vaccines and low rates of inoculation in developing nations.

The goal of this year’s G-7 summit is to “help the world fight, and then build back better from coronavirus and create a greener, more prosperous future”. The UK will also host COP-26 later this year and would prefer the G-7 summit to lay the foundation for it, according to persons familiar with the process.