G8 summit: Disunited we stand

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By Swaran Singh (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-10 07:34

As the focus of international relations in 21st century shifted from state and physical security to civil society, trade and commerce, the center of gravity has moved from Europe to Asia-pacific.

It is here that the rise of new players like China and India has challenged the very fundamentals of international economics making non-industrialized states and purchasing power parity methods central to global economic discourse.

This has gradually eroded the credibility of the post-World War-II Bretton Woods regulators of international economic relations -World Bank and IMF - that increasingly appear to be dated and unrepresentative.

Meanwhile, the new forums like the World Trade Organization and the G8 have generated greater visibility and interest. Especially the G8 has clearly emerged as the winner in being one most informal and flexible forum, and it has co-opted new members and this allows it to constantly keep pace with metamorphosis in international economic architecture and agenda.

It is this adaptability of the G8 group that has made it a far more extensive network with series of ministerial meetings preceding and following their annual summits. However, this expansion and flexibility has also meant that their performance remains slow and uncertain.

Starting as a French initiative for an informal meeting of industrialized countries following the 1973 oil crisis, their membership has gradually increased from G6 to G7 to now G8 plus the Outreach-Five.

To this the 2008 summit has added a new feather, as heads of seven African states, described as Africa Outreach Representatives, flew all the way to Japan to have direct interactions with the G8 leaders and to bring Africa into the center-stage of G8 deliberations.

Meanwhile, trends of parallel summits by the poor of the world, and the colorful demonstrators from environmental and other NGO lobbies have also become integral to the G8 annual summits.

But what made this year's G8 summit in Japan most critical was the fact that it was convened in the midst of the global crisis from spiraling inflation caused by the sudden upsurge in oil and food prices resulting in the rise in most commodity prices around the world.

This has upset most economies around the world, pushing great powers towards recessionary trends and Africa to the very margins of human survival. This clearly provided tremendous challenge to the G8 leaders who met at the hot and sultry island resort at Hokkaido near the picturesque lakeside town of Toyako in Japan this week. Prima facie, these challenges have proved insurmountable.

One most visible outcome of the G8 summit was that Prime Minister Yasuo Fakuda managed to get all G8 leaders to endorse the long-standing Japanese proposal of reducing global greenhouse emissions by 50 percent by the year 2050. The final G8 statement, however, underlined that, during the nearer term, each nation will be free to set its own targets.

Also, US President Gorge W. Bush remains convinced that the rise of consumptions levels in China and India had something to do with the rise of greenhouse gas emission and is also the reason for this recent rise in prices of oil and food.

While this G8 Statement on Climate Change presents an improvement compared to last G8 summit that had simply agreed to "consider seriously" such long-term cuts yet, it has been denounced by both the Outreach Five as well as environmentalists NGOs as "regression" and a pathetic and toothless outcome.

According to World Wildlife Fund, the G8 countries alone account for over 62 percent of the carbon dioxide accumulation in the Earth's atmosphere. Despite this, the G8 Statement on Climate Change barely endorses what leaders of nearly 200 countries had signed up in the original UN Climate Change Convention during the 1992 Earth Summit. The Outreach Five countries have been urging G8 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 percent by 2050.

Amongst other new initiatives, the G8 launched a World Energy Forum to deal with rising oil prices as also other challenges flowing from the crisis of energy security.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, sharpened the pitch by expressing the fear that oil prices could reach $200. The G8 Statement also reiterated its earlier commitment to raise annual aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, of which $25 billion is intended for Africa.

However, there has been again widespread criticism of G8 for not having been able to keep to its earlier commitments made at Gleneagles in 2005. According to June 2008 report of the African Progress Panel that was set to monitor Gleneagles commitments, under existing plans of G8 spending it falls short of $40 billion of its promised $50 billion.

G8 also pledged to ensure biofuel policies are compatible with food security and call countries with sufficient food stocks to release reserves to other struggle to cope with rising costs.

But it failed to focus on issues of subsidies on grain and oil seed biofuels which has been tempting farmers to clear forests to grow ethanol and palm oil plants and to convert food into fuel. Similarly, the EU President, Jose Manuel Barroso, proposed for a one billion euro fund to alleviate poverty in developing countries but nothing is clear about its operational details.

Thus the G8 summit this year remained disunited and distracted and achieved only the bare minimum and a superficial consensus. While it had far too much on its plate in terms of global economic crises, it managed to show some positive outcome in flogging a political issue that has already achieved universal condemnation.

The author is associate professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

(China Daily 07/10/2008 page9)