G8: why should we care?
Updated on 06 June 2007
Does this week's G8 summit offer the prospect of real change in the world, or is it merely a talking shop for the wealthy and powerful?
How much we should care about what happens at G8 meetings depends on (a) the extent to which the main issues under discussion reflect our own preoccupations, and (b) the extent to which we believe the discussions can positively impact on our lives and the lives of other people.
If we look back at the key priorities from G8 summits over the past 10 years (the duration of Tony Blair's premiership), it is notable how many of those priorities appear to reflect an altruistic impulse on the part of G8 members and, one presumes, the national populations that they represent.
The summit goals do not read like political manifestos; rather, they appear genuinely to aspire to improving the lot of people in the world.
Africa, for example, is a theme at nearly every summit. In 1997 it was "sub-Saharan Africa"; in 1998 and 2000 it was subsumed into "debt relief for the poorest countries"; in 2002, 2004 and 2005 the priority was simply "Africa". And this despite the fact that no African nation is represented within the G8 (although South Africa, a leading developing nation, is part of the G8+5 group).
Similarly, the treatment and eradication of major diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria and polio have been regular summit goals since 1997.
Africa has been a theme at nearly every summit since 1997.
No less urgently, summit agendas reveal the growing need to respond to climate change. Barely mentioned as summit goals between 1997 and 2004, climate change has been a major priority in two out of the last three summits and will almost certainly continue to be so.
What is more, a focus on Africa and climate change were promises contained in the Labour Party manifesto issued only months before Gleneagles.
Those who voted for Labour in 2005 were voting, among other things, for a promise that a Labour government would work at the forthcoming summit to boost aid and for a commitment "to conflict prevention, good governance and zero tolerance of corruption" (Labour Party 2005 manifesto).
Get real
The problem with these lofty aspirations is that they are not easily realised. Arresting or stabilising the rate of climate change is a task to be measured in decades. It is not easy to point to an improvement in humanity's lot that has come about as a direct result of a G8 meeting.
Moreover, the idealistic tone of so much that comes out of these supranational talkathons is frequently at odds with reality.
It is not easy to point to an improvement in humanity's lot that has come about as a direct result of a G8 meeting.
Any call for action on climate change, for example, must be set against deforestation projects and coal-burning power stations sponsored by the World Bank.
Similarly, global warming is the result of carbon dioxide emissions for which the G8 countries are largely responsible.
And one reason why Aids continues to devastate the developing world is the patent policies of multinational drugs companies, based in the west, which restrict the cheap production of anti-Aids medication.
This touches on another common criticism of these international political jamborees. Leaders may come together in a spirit of cooperation to try to solve major global problems, but the fact is that any agreements that follow are non-binding. Objectives are set, but no country is obliged to meet them.
Bucking the trend
The 2005 Gleneagles summit, hosted by the UK, tried to buck this trend. The summit's conclusion appeared to realise Labour's manifesto commitment, with an agreement by G8 members to cancel debts to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank owed by the world's poorest countries.
In addition, G8 members promised to increase aid by £27.6 billion a year and to agree a trade deal to help African nations.
But with the exception of Britain, most of the other countries have failed to deliver on their 2005 promises. What is more, it transpired in the aftermath of Gleneagles that the promised increase in aid included money put aside for debt relief, reducing the pledges, in the eyes of some, to a mere exercise in creative book-keeping.
Writing in The Guardian the month after Gleneagles, Mark Curtis notes that "The debt deal is not 'in addition' to the aid increase, as Blair claimed, but part of it."
A charitable view would identify a "trickle-down" link between real change and G8 priority issues
Nonetheless, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting this week's summit in Heiligendamm, has agreed to put Africa on the table again to spur other G8 countries to meet their promises. And earlier this week Save The Children congratulated Tony Blair for his work on behalf of Africa at Gleneagles.
In summary, it is hard to point to a direct link between real on-the-ground change and the priority issues that have emerged from recent summits.
A charitable view would identify a "trickle-down effect" - that each summit's high international profile means that vital issues such as the state of Africa become part of mainstream debate in the rich countries and that, ultimately, this is translated into positive action.
A cynical opinion says that these meetings are, in the words of George Monbiot, merely a pretext for wealthy nations to "give with one finger what they take with both hands".
