According to Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper, the Group of 7 (“G7”) – Britain, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States – is considering whether to issue a statement on a global pandemic response at the 19-21 May G7 summit in Japan’s city of Hiroshima.
This article was originally published by Rhoda Wilson at The Daily Exposé.
Japan took over the G7 presidency in 2023 but the idea of a ‘Pandemic Treaty’ became a news item two years earlier.
In March 2021, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson together with other world leaders announced that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. “It would be rooted in the constitution of the World Health Organisation … Existing global health instruments, especially the International Health Regulations, would underpin such a treaty,” the announcement said.
The main goal of this treaty would be to foster an all of government and all of society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. This includes greatly enhancing international co-operation to improve, for example, alert systems, data-sharing, research and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health counter-measures such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.
It would also include recognition of a “One Health” approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. No government can address the threat of pandemics alone – we must come together, UK Government, 30 March 2021
Further reading: Peter Daszak, Jeffrey Sachs and Anthony Fauci Have Been Spreading the Nefarious “One Health” Ideology
Within a couple of months, it was on the agenda at the 74th World Health Assembly (“WHA”) in May 2021: “Strengthening WHO preparedness for and response to health emergencies.” During his WHA closing speech, Tedros the Terrorist said:
“[The WHA] approved a historic resolution on strengthening WHO preparedness and response for emergencies … the reports of the IPPR, the IHR [International Health Regulations] review committee, and the IOSC are unanimous in their view that the world needs a stronger WHO at the center of the global health architecture.
“The theme of this assembly, as you know, is ending this pandemic and preventing the next one … the challenges we face are profound and so must be the solutions we design. Strengthening WHO certainly means strengthening the secretariat but it also means strengthening the bond between member states … The one recommendation that I believe will do most to strengthen both WHO and global health security is the recommendation of a treaty on pandemic preparedness and response.
“We need … an overarching framework for connecting the political, financial, and technical mechanisms needed for strengthening global health security … The safety of the world’s people cannot rely solely on the goodwill of governments. Every government is responsible for and accountable to its own people but member states can only truly keep their own people safe if they are accountable to each other at the global level.”
As part of its G7 Presidency, the UK hosted the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall on 11-13 June 2021. It yielded many commitments to pandemic preparedness. The plan is to strengthen the role of WHO in pandemic preparedness and response in accordance with the resolution made at the 74th World Health Assembly in May.
The 2021 communiqué contained an endorsement of the G7 Carbis Bay Health Declaration, which goes into detail about the actions to “ensure all countries are better equipped to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from health crises”. First among these actions was strengthening the “One Health” approach to prevention and preparedness.
Read more: G7 leaders commit to greater pandemic preparedness (again), The Lancet, July 2021
The following year, during Germany’s G7 Presidency, a two-day G7 Health Minister’s meeting was held in Berlin from 19–20 May 2022. The result was that the G7 health ministers agreed on a “pact to fight pandemics” which strengthened the role of WHO and preparedness for future pandemics.
It is a great achievement that as the G7 we have succeeded in agreeing on a pandemic pact. The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin will serve as a central hub so that data can be faster and better analysed and used.
… we need a strong WHO, global pandemic monitoring and mobile, well-trained intervention teams on the ground. How these structures can be put in place is one of the topics ministers will be discussing during their two-day meeting, together with representatives of WHO and the EU Commission. Closing of G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting: Far-reaching decisions adopted, German Federal Ministry of Health, 20 May 2022
The following month, Wellcome Trust published an article praising the German G7 Presidency for progress made in facing pandemic threats at the G7 Summit held in Germany from 26 to 28 June 2022.
“Behind the headlines on the summit, the G7 leaders’ communiqué does mark some notable – at times hard-won – progress, a credit to the German presidency bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders,” Wellcome’s European Government Relations Lead wrote.
The [G7 2022] communiqué’s endorsement of the Pact for Pandemic Readiness marks a significant step in the right direction for building global response and resilience to the threat of escalating infectious diseases. This Pact will be crucial for monitoring and rapidly responding to novel pathogens which could cause the next pandemic.
With technical meetings on the agenda in autumn to develop the roadmap to implementation.
The Pact for Pandemic Readiness is not the first G7 initiative for pandemic preparedness. The 100 Days Mission, launched under last year’s UK Presidency, aims to reduce the impact of future pandemics through the ambitious target to develop vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics within 100 days from pandemic detection.
This communiqué is a marker of good progress but there is still a long way to go highlighting the importance of continuing these discussions during the handover to Japan for the next G7 presidency in 2023.
G7 progress against pandemic threats is promising – now they must act, Wellcome, 1 July 2022
We are now in 2023 and Japan has the presidency of the G7. The 2023 G7 Summit begins on Friday and the G7 is set to issue a statement on a global pandemic response.
Any guesses about what the statement from the upcoming G7 Summit might say? Do you get the impression the text of the ‘Pandemic Treaty’ is not being shaped, developed, and negotiated over the next year as Mark Fletcher, Member of Parliament for Bolsover, assured his constituent but rather that it has, for all intents and purposes, already been written? Do you get the feeling the Pandemic Treaty is, as far as they believe, a fait accompli? If so, why are they waiting until 2024 to approve the text as Fletcher indicated? Because, perhaps, not all countries are on board.
Initially, the US had opposed the inclusion of language that would have made the so-called pandemic treaty legally binding. However, in December 2021, the Biden Administration supported a draft resolution that was submitted to a special session of the WHA. But there could be further disruptions to the G7’s plans.
China and Russia may prove difficult for G7 to get on board with their agenda, albeit for reasons other than the ‘Pandemic Treaty’. The Financial Express suggested that the two countries are top problems for G7 leaders and highlighted some problems G7 leaders should focus on at their upcoming meeting:
- One of the biggest challenges for the G7 is to enlist nations outside the group, especially those in what is known as the Global South. These countries may attach themselves to the bigger power in their own neighbourhood, or to China.
- The penalties on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine are unprecedented in their breadth and depth. And yet, while diminished, the Russian economy continues to hold up. Conversely, there will be a unified show of support for Ukraine, which is gearing up for a counter-offensive.
- G7 leaders are grappling with the question of how to tackle China, the world’s second-largest economy.
- The Summit location of Hiroshima is a potent reminder that Japan was bombed twice with nuclear weapons by the US in the dying days of World War II. Now the architecture around the monitoring of nuclear arsenals is fraying.
- US President Joe Biden comes to the G-7 chased by a debt ceiling crisis at home.
- The leaders of France and Italy come to Hiroshima after a period of tussling between their governments.
- Turkey is facing a runoff election on 28 May with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faring better in the first round than predicted.
- The meeting coincides with a gathering of the Arab League leadership, where Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad may turn up following his reinstatement more than a decade after his crackdown on opponents started during the Arab Spring uprisings. For all the years of criticism by the US and others for his brutality in Syria, the Syrian leader is very much back at the table.
With all of the above going on behind the scenes, we can but hope the ‘Pandemic Treaty’ gets caught in the crossfire. Even if the Pandemic Treaty were shelved, it is only one string to WHO’s bow to become a global health dictator. The proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations would also achieve their aims. #ExitTheWHO
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.