The Nigerian Village Square - Now G8 Leaders Must Follow up their Words

Now G8 Leaders Must Follow up their Words

Tuesday, 12 July 2005

Leaders of the Group of Eight countries have a sorry track record of backtracking on the lofty promises they regularly make at their annual summits. So this year's host, Tony Blair, wanted to mark a break with the past. But he did so in a way - getting his seven G8 counterparts to personally to sign the final communique of their Gleneagles summit that ended yesterday - that also underlined the very risk of backsliding he seeks to avoid.

But with that vital caveat, the UK prime minister deserves credit for getting significant progress on some of the broadest issues ever tackled by the G8 - aid to Africa, climate change and world trade - with participation appropriately widened to include leaders of the world's five biggest developing countries as well as those of several African countries. This week's terrorist atrocities in London slightly foreshortened discussion at a summit where leaders barely touched on the worrying imbalances in the global economy and how they might solve them. But those tragic events may also have helped jolt leaders into concessions.

The G8's commitment to double aid to Africa will not be enough to please all aid campaigners. The latter were already questioning the amount of genuinely new money in the extra $25bn (?20.9bn) (ï½£14.3bn) a year promised to Africa by 2010. But at least the sums of money pledged at Gleneagles are not predicated on any funding gimmick as proposed by the UK itself. Showing some institutional memory, however short, the Gleneagles summit also reconfirmed the commitment it made last year to train up to 75,000 African peacekeepers in a continent where conflict is so destructive of development.

However, the G8 would have served the struggling farmers of Africa better had they come up with a more precise commitment than a promise to end subsidising the exports of their own rich farmers "by a credible end date". For a moment, it seemed as if the summit might show a breakthrough here. But even, for instance, as President George W.?Bush, US president, was talking in Scotland about cutting US farm subsidies, his negotiators in Geneva were slowing progress inside the World Trade Organisation by quibbling over food aid. Mr Blair said he would have preferred Gleneagles to have set an actual date for subsidy abolition, but expressed confidence that agreement on this would come at WTO ministerial talks in December. That, however, would still be too late to ensure a successful end to the Doha negotiating round next year.

If the commitments on aid and trade may be worth less than they appear, the opposite is, arguably, true of the Gleneagles outcome on climate change. The communiquãƒ»did not in any way oblige the US to adopt anything remotely resembling the reduction in greenhouse gases to which the seven other G8 members are committed through the Kyoto protocol. But there never was the remotest chance that it would do so, contrary to the mistaken belief of many environmentalists. What it did do, however, is get Mr Bush to acknowledge that climate change is a serious, urgent and largely man-made problem and - more important - to agree to join other G8 countries as well as China and India in talks about a possible successor regime after Kyoto expires in 2012. For up to now, the US has blocked all discussion about a follow-on to Kyoto, and this has given developing countries the perfect excuse to do the same. The latter argue that they will never join anything like Kyoto in the future until industrialised countries, the US very much included, take the lead in cleaning up the global pollution mess primarily they have created.

Gleneagles' achievement, therefore, is, as President Jacques Chirac, French president, put it, to "re-establish a dialogue" that has been totally lacking between the US and other G8 members since Mr Bush took office. We shall have to see what this dialogue produces. But the very fact that it can be hailed as an achievement is a measure of how far down the wrong environmental road Mr Bush has taken the US in the past five years. Pulling him back even some of the way will not be easy. But Mr Blair appears to have made a start. On this, and the aid and trade issues, he is probably the only one to be able to persuade the US president to bend a little.

Leaders of the Group of Eight countries have a sorry track record of backtracking on the lofty promises they regularly make at their annual summits. So this year's host, Tony Blair, wanted to mark a break with the past. But he did so in a way - getting his seven G8 counterparts to personally to sign the final communiquãƒ»of their Gleneagles summit that ended yesterday - that also underlined the very risk of backsliding he seeks to avoid.

But with that vital caveat, the UK prime minister deserves credit for getting significant progress on some of the broadest issues ever tackled by the G8 - aid to Africa, climate change and world trade - with participation appropriately widened to include leaders of the world's five biggest developing countries as well as those of several African countries. This week's terrorist atrocities in London slightly foreshortened discussion at a summit where leaders barely touched on the worrying imbalances in the global economy and how they might solve them. But those tragic events may also have helped jolt leaders into concessions.

The G8's commitment to double aid to Africa will not be enough to please all aid campaigners. The latter were already questioning the amount of genuinely new money in the extra $25bn (?20.9bn) (ï½£14.3bn) a year promised to Africa by 2010. But at least the sums of money pledged at Gleneagles are not predicated on any funding gimmick as proposed by the UK itself. Showing some institutional memory, however short, the Gleneagles summit also reconfirmed the commitment it made last year to train up to 75,000 African peacekeepers in a continent where conflict is so destructive of development.

However, the G8 would have served the struggling farmers of Africa better had they come up with a more precise commitment than a promise to end subsidising the exports of their own rich farmers "by a credible end date". For a moment, it seemed as if the summit might show a breakthrough here. But even, for instance, as President George W.?Bush, US president, was talking in Scotland about cutting US farm subsidies, his negotiators in Geneva were slowing progress inside the World Trade Organisation by quibbling over food aid. Mr Blair said he would have preferred Gleneagles to have set an actual date for subsidy abolition, but expressed confidence that agreement on this would come at WTO ministerial talks in December. That, however, would still be too late to ensure a successful end to the Doha negotiating round next. Paul I. Adujie is a Nigerian Lawyer and an Information Technology Professional. He can be reached at Lawcareer@msn.com

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	# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot\| 12.11.2005 14:08

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