Quad Summit Highlights

 

The global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, cybersecurity, technology and climate change were at the forefront of discussions during the historic meeting in Washington, involving leaders of the Quad countries— which includes India, Australia, Japan and the United States.

Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and his counterparts Scott Morrison from Australia and Yoshihide Suga from Japan have gathered in Washington for the Quad summit at the White House, at the invitation of President Joe Biden.

The Quad leaders have proposed bold efforts to strengthen the bonds and enhance practical cooperation on issues faced by all four countries in this 21st century.

The leaders vowed to ensure a “free and open” Indo-Pacific, in the backdrop of China's increased military manoeuvring in the region. They also agreed that the strategically important region must be "inclusive and resilient".

According to PIB, a senior “Quad infrastructure coordination group” will meet regularly to share assessments of regional infrastructure needs and coordinate respective approaches to deliver transparent, high-standard infrastructure.

The group will also coordinate technical assistance and capacity-building efforts, including with regional partners, to ensure that our efforts in meeting the significant infrastructure demand in the Indo-Pacific are mutually reinforcing and complementary.

Climate Change

The Quad leaders highlighted many new pacts to address the climate catastrophe in its joint statement.

As the world leaders are concerned about the environmental issues, Quad countries said that they will focus their efforts on the themes of climate ambition, such as working on 2030 targets for national emissions and renewable energy, clean-energy innovation and deployment, as well as adaptation, resilience and preparedness, to address the climate crisis with the urgency it requires.

The leaders have agreed to take more aggressive efforts in the 2020s to satisfy anticipated energy demand and decarbonize at a faster and larger scale to keep our Indo-Pacific climate goals within reach. Working collaboratively on methane abatement in the natural-gas sector and developing responsible and resilient clean-energy supply chains are two more initiatives according to the news release.

The initiative includes the formation of a “Green-Shipping Network” and the establishment of a “Clean-Hydrogen Partnership”.

“Quad partners will organize their work by launching a Quad Shipping Taskforce and will invite leading ports, including Los Angeles, Mumbai Port Trust, Sydney (Botany), and Yokohama, to form a network dedicated to greening and decarbonizing the shipping value chain.

The Quad Shipping Task Force will organize its work around several lines of efforts and aims to establish two to three Quad low-emission or zero-emission shipping corridors by 2030,” the press release added.

The Quad countries will also launch a clean-hydrogen collaboration to reinforce and cut costs across all aspects of the clean-hydrogen value chain. It includes technology development and efficiently scaling up clean hydrogen production—hydrogen produced from renewable energy, fossil fuels with carbon capture and sequestration and nuclear for those who choose to deploy it—as well as the identification and development of delivery infrastructure to transport, store and distribute clean hydrogen for end-use applications safely and efficiently.

Technology, Cybersecurity And Space

Quad leaders are committed to collaborating to create a technological ecosystem that is open, accessible and secure.

As per the press release, Following months of work, the Quad leaders will release a declaration of principles on technology design, development, governance and use, which is believed to steer not only the region but the entire world, toward responsible, open, high-standards innovation.

The Quad will form contact groups on Advanced Communications and Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a focus on standard-setting and foundational pre-standardization research. Additionally, the news release stated that the partner countries will undertake a cooperative endeavour to map semiconductor capacity, identify weaknesses and strengthen supply-chain security. This effort is expected to assist the countries in ensuring a diversified and competitive market that generates secure key technologies that are critical to global digital economies.

“To support the critical role of Quad governments in fostering and promoting a diverse, resilient, and secure telecommunications ecosystem, the Quad has launched a Track 1.5 industry dialogue on Open RAN deployment and adoption, coordinated by the Open RAN Policy Coalition. Quad partners will jointly facilitate enabling environments for 5G diversification, including efforts related to testing and test facilities,” the release noted.

Moreover, starting with advanced biotechnologies, such as synthetic biology, genome sequencing, and biomanufacturing, the Quad countries will also track trends in essential and emerging technologies.

The Quad partners will undertake new initiatives to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience against cyber threats by bringing all four countries' expertise together to drive domestic and international best practices.

The leaders have decided to launch “Quad Senior Cyber Group”. The press release stated that “leader-level experts will meet regularly to advance work between government and industry on driving continuous improvements in areas including adoption and implementation of shared cyber standards; development of secure software; building workforce and talent; and promoting the scalability and cybersecurity of secure and trustworthy digital infrastructure”.

In addition, it was also said that with the formation of a new working group, the Quad partners will undertake “space cooperation” for the first time.

As reported, the collaboration will focus on sharing satellite data for climate change monitoring and adaptation, disaster preparedness and reacting to challenges in shared domains. The countries are expected to begin conversations on exchanging Earth observation satellite data and analysis on climate change concerns and ocean and marine resource sustainability.

According to the news release: “Sharing this data will help Quad countries to better adapt to climate change and to build capacity in other Indo-Pacific states that are at grave climate risk, in coordination with the Quad Climate Working group. Enable Capacity-Building for Sustainable Development: The Quad countries will also enable capacity-building in space-related domains in other Indo-Pacific countries to manage risks and challenges.”