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The G8 summit concluded with more empty rhetoric on the global fuel, food and climate crisis. The answer might lie in reforming the multilateral United Nations process rather than furthering the quasi-global governance posturing of G8 leaders, says John Samuel
The recent meeting of G8 leaders in Hokkaido, Japan, proved to be an exercise in escapism. The final communiqué of the G8 leaders is more recycled rhetoric of broken promises. This meeting, held in the midst of a financial, fuel, food and climate crisis, failed to recognise the gravity of the situation. It only accentuates the legitimacy crisis of the G8 as a credible forum for the development of viable solutions to global hunger and injustice -- partly perpetuated by the corporate and institutional interests of G8 countries. The original grouping of rich industrialised nations – the G7-- emerged in the context of the oil crisis of the 1970s. After almost 30 years, what is the balance sheet of the G8 -- which includes the co-opted Russia? It clearly shows that the G8 as an institutionalised venue has failed to provide any meaningful solutions to poverty, war, inequities and injustice. While they have managed to impose the neoliberal policy paradigm -- with the strategic use of World Bank and IMF conditionalities -- on the developing and poor nations of the world, they have not been able to do anything substantial to address trade inequities, aid diversion and debt traps. In fact, G8 leaders, instead of solving these issues, have often used the Summits to push forward the interests of rich countries, with lots of window dressing and rhetoric about poverty reduction and more aid for the poor countries. In 2005, they promised to write off the debt and double aid to Africa to address poverty, disease and sustainable development. After three years, these leaders stand exposed in the graveyard of broken promises. Though a new grouping of G5 countries, including India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, is being co-opted into the periphery of the G8 summits, the G5 countries too have failed to influence the agenda or outcome of the G8 process. It is high time the G5 countries pondered the very validity of being on the periphery of the G8 summit. Are they doing anything more than legitimising the agenda of the rich and powerful countries? Instead of playing second fiddle to the rich American-European axis and a co-opted Japan, the G5 should explore the option of reviving the G20 process as an alternative to discuss and adopt collective measures. This requires fresh imagination and political will from the G5 leaders. The Hokkaido summit happened in the midst of an international policy and political crisis. Though G8 leaders claim that it is a grouping of democratic and developed nations of the world, the irony is that it is one of the most undemocratic of global processes. The leaders discuss neither the key issues in their parliament nor involve citizens or civil society in setting the agenda for the meeting. The public rating of many leaders, including George Bush and Yasuo Fukuda, is at the lowest. The fact that G8 summits are held in faraway luxury resorts, fearing citizens’ and people’s action, shows that they are insulated from the people and processes of democratic culture. This year, an estimated US$ 250 million was spent by Japan for security alone. The leaders addressed the press through video conferencing facilities rather than facing the journalists. Why should the “leaders of the world” be afraid of people on whose behalf they are supposed to take decisions? Such a situation seems to indicate their lack of democratic credentials and legitimacy to represent the peoples of their countries or to take decisions on their behalf. Authority without accountability and transparency is essentially undemocratic in its very content and form. So the G8 summit itself failed to meet any standards of democratic or accountable governance. Only three short years after the G8 pledged to “make poverty history” at Gleneagles in 2005, spiraling food and fuel prices are making poverty in large proportions. The G8 has done nothing to stop it. The ranks of the hungry have swelled to 950 million this year and it is estimated that another 750 million are now at risk of falling into chronic hunger. As many as 1.7 billion people, or one of every four persons in the world, may now lack basic food security. In fact the so-called food crisis is a symptom of a deeper crisis of finance capital and speculative commodity markets. Over the last 20 years, most of the marginal farmers and small agricultural producers have been slow-poisoned through systematic withdrawal of support systems and subsidies, as a part of the neo-liberal structural adjustment programmes imposed on the developing world and poor countries by the G8 force and WB/IMF as their extension services. The climate crisis was used as an opportunity to subsidise rich farmers through biofuel subsidies. Rising food prices are driven partly by the new appetite for biofuel energy. The corn needed to fill a car tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year. This in effect makes biofuel the new poison that can undermine the food security of millions of people and steal their food and lives. It is imperative to stop all subsidies for biofuel, primarily by the US. It is important to declare a moratorium on the diversion of agricultural land for biofuel monocropping. However, it is appalling to see the evasive tactic of G8 leaders on the issue of biofuels perpetuating food insecurity and crisis. Though there has been lots of discussion about climate change, G8 leaders simply failed to walk their talk. The G8 countries’ failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is already wreaking havoc on agriculture through severe floods, droughts and rising temperatures. The carbon dioxide emissions from G8 countries make up 40% of the world’s total emissions. And yet only 13% of the world population lives in G8 countries. Not only are G8 countries responsible for large-scale pollution, they are also failing to compensate poor countries that are bearing the brunt of the G8 countries’ dirty emission. Though G8 countries have promised that they will reduce emission by half by 2050, that is too distant a commitment to meet the challenge. So the promise of 2050 is more an escapist stalling tactic than a real commitment to act upon the climate crisis. While the environmental and economic viability of nuclear power generation is increasingly questioned in their own countries, it seems G8 is once again pedaling nuclear power generation as a response to the climate crisis. When we locate this in the context of the proposed civil nuclear deal between India and the US, it is clear that many of the G8 countries seem more keen to market their old nuclear reactors to emerging markets such as India. The Hokkaido G8 summit was more regressive than progressive. The final communiqué thoroughly exposed the lack of policy or political imagination of the G8 leaders. The communiqué also signified their lack of political will and the deficit of moral and political legitimacy to act as the leaders of the world. So the pertinent question is whether G8 is a part of the problem or a part of the solution. The Hokkaido summit seems to suggest that G8 is more keen to remain a part of the problem. The world requires more accountable, imaginative and multilateral processes to address the issues of injustice, poverty and environmental crisis. The answer should lie more in reforming the multilateral United Nations process, rather than this quasi-global governance posturing of the G8 leaders. InfoChange News & Features, July 2008
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