Janet CollinsG-8 No Longer Calling All the Shots
July 9th 2008 04:57
It seems to me pretty obnoxious for leaders from eight of the most thriving economies to trip out on junkets to an agreed spot, stay in luxurious accommodation and gorge on lavish food and wine in between discussing how to solve the world’s poverty.
That’s what eight world leaders have been doing this week in Toyako, Japan. They’ve been discussing other things that are of international importance, of course, such as plans for emissions trading schemes, sanctions on Zimbabwe and the current soaring food and oil prices.
The G-8 as we all know it (short for Group of 8) meets annually taking turns at hosting the summit. Members are the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia. This year it’s Japan’s turn to play host and the UK’s The Guardian and our own newswire AAP were quick to report back on the delicacies served to our world leaders and the extended G-8 family staying over in Toyako this week.
I say extended because it is not just the G-8 members and their various entourages at this year’s summit. Many leaders from other nations were invited along this year, not to join these world power figures in the main meetings but to have separate meetings on a range of issues that are affecting the world. These invitations reflect the global society as we now know it.
Representing emerging economies including India, China , Indonesia and Brazil, these leaders have as much to give as to gain in the international system. Plans for trading emissions schemes will need the co-operation of these nations in order for the scheme to work. So too will they want to see some definite action on the international soaring fuel and food prices.
Do these meetings really deliver what they promise though or are they just a publicity opportunity for all these leaders with photos and some grandstanding and not much more?
It’s true – many good things can come out of the meetings of these powerful leaders but it is difficult to believe that the ideas come out of the conference itself. You would only have to see that the draft Garnaut Report on Climate Change was released in time for our own Prime Minister to take its recommendations to Japan. Prime Minister Rudd doesn’t get to vote on any decisions but he gets a small hearing by our G-8s and can do a bit of diplomatic networking at the same time. Agendas and papers are prepared well before the meetings and I expect communiqués go back and forth for weeks before they meet.
Perhaps one of the strongest criticisms about the G-8 – and any other international grouping of leaders – is its lack of accountability. Pledges and agreements can wither away until appropriate pressure from other members of the group or international organisations or even protestors can shame the group to make good these promises.
This week In the lead up to this summit, the Pope, other religious leaders, Oxfam, the United Nations and Medicines Sans Frontiers and many others did just that. The group had fallen far behind on its aid commitments promised at the Gleneagles summit in Scotland in 2005. $US50 billion in extra aid had been promised by 2010 but the additional aid to date had only amounted to $US7 billion.
This did have some effect. Prior to the summit, Japan committed an extra $50 million making its contribution since earlier this year $200 million and only yesterday, President Bush urged France, Canada and Italy to meet their obligations. We can only trust that the promised money will make it to Africa.
On the carbon emissions trading scheme, Kevin Rudd’s favourite international issue of the moment, plans to address climate change were met with a lot more enthusiasm by President Bush than had been expected. That’s not to say that he will go ahead and sign the Kyoto Protocol which excludes the developing economies and big polluters to commit to cutting greenhouse gases and developing clean technologies until much later – a major objection by President Bush.
The leaders of these countries will be meeting him in a separate meeting today and depending on their co-operation, action finally seems imminent. Of course, many would dispute it is not being driven fast enough but at least it is going somewhere.
If nothing else, the summit has highlighted the pressure on all nations to co-operate in addressing all the issues relating to global poverty and climate change, all of which are now interlinked. It is today’s global village. What actually does happen following the summit is anyone’s guess. I just wish the summit could be organised without all the extravagance.
That’s what eight world leaders have been doing this week in Toyako, Japan. They’ve been discussing other things that are of international importance, of course, such as plans for emissions trading schemes, sanctions on Zimbabwe and the current soaring food and oil prices.
The G-8 as we all know it (short for Group of 8) meets annually taking turns at hosting the summit. Members are the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia. This year it’s Japan’s turn to play host and the UK’s The Guardian and our own newswire AAP were quick to report back on the delicacies served to our world leaders and the extended G-8 family staying over in Toyako this week.
I say extended because it is not just the G-8 members and their various entourages at this year’s summit. Many leaders from other nations were invited along this year, not to join these world power figures in the main meetings but to have separate meetings on a range of issues that are affecting the world. These invitations reflect the global society as we now know it.
Representing emerging economies including India, China , Indonesia and Brazil, these leaders have as much to give as to gain in the international system. Plans for trading emissions schemes will need the co-operation of these nations in order for the scheme to work. So too will they want to see some definite action on the international soaring fuel and food prices.
Do these meetings really deliver what they promise though or are they just a publicity opportunity for all these leaders with photos and some grandstanding and not much more?
It’s true – many good things can come out of the meetings of these powerful leaders but it is difficult to believe that the ideas come out of the conference itself. You would only have to see that the draft Garnaut Report on Climate Change was released in time for our own Prime Minister to take its recommendations to Japan. Prime Minister Rudd doesn’t get to vote on any decisions but he gets a small hearing by our G-8s and can do a bit of diplomatic networking at the same time. Agendas and papers are prepared well before the meetings and I expect communiqués go back and forth for weeks before they meet.
Perhaps one of the strongest criticisms about the G-8 – and any other international grouping of leaders – is its lack of accountability. Pledges and agreements can wither away until appropriate pressure from other members of the group or international organisations or even protestors can shame the group to make good these promises.
This week In the lead up to this summit, the Pope, other religious leaders, Oxfam, the United Nations and Medicines Sans Frontiers and many others did just that. The group had fallen far behind on its aid commitments promised at the Gleneagles summit in Scotland in 2005. $US50 billion in extra aid had been promised by 2010 but the additional aid to date had only amounted to $US7 billion.
This did have some effect. Prior to the summit, Japan committed an extra $50 million making its contribution since earlier this year $200 million and only yesterday, President Bush urged France, Canada and Italy to meet their obligations. We can only trust that the promised money will make it to Africa.
On the carbon emissions trading scheme, Kevin Rudd’s favourite international issue of the moment, plans to address climate change were met with a lot more enthusiasm by President Bush than had been expected. That’s not to say that he will go ahead and sign the Kyoto Protocol which excludes the developing economies and big polluters to commit to cutting greenhouse gases and developing clean technologies until much later – a major objection by President Bush.
The leaders of these countries will be meeting him in a separate meeting today and depending on their co-operation, action finally seems imminent. Of course, many would dispute it is not being driven fast enough but at least it is going somewhere.
If nothing else, the summit has highlighted the pressure on all nations to co-operate in addressing all the issues relating to global poverty and climate change, all of which are now interlinked. It is today’s global village. What actually does happen following the summit is anyone’s guess. I just wish the summit could be organised without all the extravagance.
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Comment by Tapsearch Com Editor
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It is also nonsensical to talk about saving the ecology when the overhead of Free Trade is long haul ocean shipping, rails, trucks and air that consume loads of energy. See dark side of energy saving light bulbs and the darker story behind them at Free Trade dark side
This is only one small example of the Free Trade contradictions.
We also suggest reading The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. See Confessions for history Perkins reveals the dark side of global greed.
Comment by Janet Collins
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The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
I don't disagree with you at all. Much of the damage has been done over decades of shipping out industries to where labour is cheapest and then shipping
the end products back.
I guess the point of my post was that it is a mess that has been driven by our "world leaders" but now they too recognise they can no longer merely dictate terms to the rest of the world. The economies that have boomed from it all are now real players on the global scene.
We can't however just pretend the problems now facing the world environment are not there.
Janet
Comment by tapsearch
Thanks for your perceptive post and comments.
Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement which was a major cause of the fall of the Soviet Union , says - I am only a consumer and know very little about economics and business but I do know something is very wrong when 10 percent of the population controls 100 percent of the flow of wealth - .
Walesa rose from the working class to become President of Poland and guided Poland through their first parliamentary elections after breaking away from the Communist block. We need more leaders to rise from the working class and the small independent business class.
We need a new Solidarity movement throughout the world where workers finally have a voice in their destinies. I never met a union person who was rich and yet, in the USA, unions are blamed for our economic problems even though the private sector production union workers have been virtually been gone for years. The AFL-CIO now is primarily a union for public government workers and the production workers are still blamed for our economic conditions .
Only local value added economies will work where there are about 5 to 7 levels of added value from raw product to the retail or end user stage. The Lend Lease program and the Marshall Plan both indicated Free Enterprise depends on duplicating success from the grass roots and not chopping up economies and sending them around the world based on the cheapest labor markets. This is an endless spiral downward.
Alan Greenspan, the former Director of the Federal Reserve Bank does not even have the term Free Enterprise in the index of his book - The Age of Turbulence. Raw Capitalism now includes all other "isms" including Communism and Totalitarism for the sake of money while the Free Enterprise system is continously degraded.
Comment by Janet Collins
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The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
I don't know much about ecoomics either. What I do know though is that over the past few decades so many jobs have either gone overseas, been contracted out or become casualized. This has further diluted any power a labour force had in the first place and I think been one of the major causes of union membership decline. This is never mentioned.
Thanks again for your comment.
Janet