G8 Deal Falls Short of Expectations, Say Many Environmental and Aid Groups

Sat., Jul. 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jul 9 (OneWorld) - Leaders of the world's eight dominant countries drew mixed reviews after announcing an aid boost for Africa and pledging to address global warming at the conclusion Friday of an economic summit.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who hosted the summit in Gleneagles, Scotland of the Group of Eight (G8), termed the outcome an ''alternative to the hatred'' evinced by terrorist attacks on London that overshadowed the leaders' gathering.

Rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, self-styled Africa advocates, welcomed the announcements but African and Western aid and environmental groups looked askance at the pledges made by heads of government from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States. These, they said, delivered too little aid and debt relief and virtually nothing on trade and global warming.

''The G8 leaders have come not with bold actions but with more promises and empty words,'' African civil society groups said in a joint statement decrying the lack of specific commitments to concrete action in the official summit documents.

The G8 heads of government pledged to double aid to Africa from the current $25 billion to $50 billion by 2010.

The bloc failed to agree to boost foreign aid to an amount equivalent to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP or national income) by 2015, however. President George W. Bush refused to be bound by the target, agreed to by the wealthy nations themselves in 1970. The United States spends 0.16 percent of its national income on aid, the smallest percentage of any G8 country.

As expected, the leaders endorsed a deal, finalized by finance ministers last month, to cancel the multilateral debt of 18 of the world's poorest nations. And they pledged universal access to AIDS treatment, renewed their commitment to support peacekeeping efforts in Africa, and heard African leaders pledge to embrace democracy and root out corruption.

They also pledged to set a date for ending subsidies on farm exports. Blair said he believed the date would be set at the World Trade Organization's next ministerial meeting, scheduled for Hong Kong in December.

The G8 also agreed on an aid deal of up to $3 billion per year for the Palestinian Authority over the next three years.

On global warming, Bush thwarted other leaders' efforts to get the United States to make a firm commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the U.S. president--reversing a position that had pitted his administration against U.S. and international scientists, many businesses, and public opinion--agreed that industry and other human activity contributed to the problem and needed to be addressed.

''All of this does not change the world tomorrow; it is a beginning, not an end,'' Blair said.

The G8 pledges left Africa advocates cold.

''Our disappointment with this G8 statement cannot be more profound,'' said Marie Clarke Brill, education director at Washington, D.C.-based Africa Action. ''Summit after summit, the G8 has made hollow commitments to reducing poverty in Africa. The G8 leaves African countries with few options save the repudiation of their illegitimate debt.''

''The fact that the G8 paid scant attention to both the HIV/AIDS crisis, which poses the greatest threat to Africa's development, and the genocide in Darfur illustrates the superficial nature of their response to Africa's peace and development challenges,'' Brill added. She referred to the embattled region of Sudan.

Activists further said that without a firm target date for abolishing subsidies, the leaders' pledge rang hollow.

''The brutal failure to abolish the $350 billion in agricultural subsidies in wealthy countries while forcing African countries to lay their markets bare is complete hypocrisy,'' said Mvuselelo Ngcoya, program associate at Africa Action.

Developing countries long have demanded the abolition of farm export subsidies, saying these protect farmers in wealthy countries at the expense of those in poor ones and, as a result, distort international trade. Last year, the European Union said it would eliminate all such subsidies in an attempt to restart WTO talks but it has yet to set a date. Last week, Washington pleased developing countries by agreeing to eliminate a cotton subsidy program that the WTO had ruled illegal.

Friends of the Earth International stood among environmental groups condemning the lack of specific commitments on global warming.

''The Bush administration has again done its best to derail international action to tackle climate change, but this is by no means the end. There are many good initiatives happening in the USA to tackle climate change and it is only a matter of time before the president will have to follow suit,'' said Tony Juniper, the organization's vice chair.

''Even if there was no progress here, there has been a big impact on public awareness and that will make it easier to achieve more in future talks,'' Juniper added.

Africa Action, in a statement, said Africa would be affected earlier and more severely by global warming than most other parts of the world. ''The G8's disregard for the urgent need for emission reduction targets and timelines is yet another blow for Africa,'' it said.

Anti-debt campaigners at the Jubilee USA Network described the G8's debt plan as ''an important and precedent-setting first step but one that falls short of what is needed to conclusively address the crisis of debt faced by the world's impoverished nations.''

The plan would cancel all debt claims against 18 poor countries by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and African Development Bank but it would not cover what Jubilee termed ''odious and illegitimate debt'' owed to other creditors.

It would impose on beneficiary countries a series of policy conditions that Jubilee assailed as destroying budgets for health, social safety nets, and other domestic priorities while opening local markets to foreign investors. Creditors and some African countries have countered, however, that the policy changes are needed to balance national budgets and free up money to generate economic growth.

While the G8 plan covers 18 countries, 62 are in need of total debt cancellation if they are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, poverty-reduction targets agreed at the United Nations, Jubilee said.

Even those who expressed satisfaction with the G8 summit's outcome warned against self-congratulation.

''Commitment is important, but it is not the same as action,'' said David Nussbaum, chief executive of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. ''In order to prevent today's commitments from following previous Summit pledges onto the trash heap of history, a specific, well-conceived and transparent timetable will ensure that the G8 is held accountable for their promises.''

Nussbaum welcomed what he termed the G8's ''powerful embrace'' of anti-corruption. ''Its extensive and detailed proposals, if followed through, will establish milestones for confronting and stamping out the pervasive corruption that has ravaged the African continent for decades,'' he said.

Like many international and African organizations, Transparency International said that aid to Africa would be ineffective in the absence of good governance and political accountability.

Action to stamp out graft would be needed at both ends of the process: among the givers as well as recipients of bribes, the group said.

''The most serious cases of grand corruption afflicting Africa--especially in the communications, energy, and defense sectors--often happen with the participation of professionals and agents in the West,'' said John Githongo, Kenya's former anti-corruption tsar.

G8 Deal Falls Short of Expectations, Say Many Environmental and Aid Groups

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