Burning Issue: Do the G8 summit meetings achieve anything worthwhile?

Published on Monday 7 July 2008 22:15

Yes JUDITH ROBERTSON, Head of Oxfam Scotland

IT IS easy to be cynical about the G8 summit. Every year we hear talk of "empty promises" and an "expensive talking shop". So why is it that organisations such as Oxfam consider the annual meeting of G8 leaders to be one of the most important campaigning moments of the year?

The answer lies in the scale of what G8 leaders can achieve when the political will is right. Think back to the historic meeting that took place in Gleneagles in 2005, at the height of the Make Poverty History campaign. When leaders promised to increase global aid levels by around $50 billion per year by 2010 and to write off the debts of the world's poorest countries, it signalled a remarkable turnaround in the rich world's willingness to fund development.

Since then, it has become clear that these leaders are in danger of breaking their promises to the developing world. Oxfam's latest calculations show that G8 countries are set to fall short of their Gleneagles commitments by around $30 billion, over 15 billion.

Now the situation is worsening as rising food prices and the growing impact of climate change hit the poorest hardest. The progress made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals is in danger of being undone, as millions of people are at risk of being plunged back into poverty.

G8 leaders have the means to put this right, the trillion dollars they spent bailing out their banks at the onset of the credit crunch proved that. Our responsibility is to remind them in the strongest possible terms that, if they lack the political will to deliver on their promises, they will have to pay the political price.

No

JOHN HILARY, Executive director, War on Want

EVEN by its own standards, the G8 has failed to meet the challenge of tackling global poverty. Take aid, debt and trade – the three main demands of the Make Poverty History campaign which in 2005 brought a quarter of a million people on to the streets of Edinburgh.

On aid, the wealthiest nations lag far behind the target they agreed at the Gleneagles summit three years ago.

Official statistics reveal that British aid dropped by a huge 29.1 per cent in 2007. Much of this fall was due to the government's inability to "double count" debt cancellations as they have in the past. But UK aid even fell in real terms.

Nor is the G8 debt performance much better. In spite of the Gleneagles promises, at least $400 billion (over 200 billion) more in debt write-off is required to give the poorest countries a chance to escape poverty. For each dollar they get in aid, these countries still hand back five dollars in debt repayment. Much of the payback concerns debt geared to benefit western companies or crooked leaders. Why must the poor repay loans which gained them nothing?

And on trade, things have become worse. The G8 has failed to deliver anything like the development round pledged at the World Trade Organisation seven years back. This is perhaps the ultimate betrayal, destroying the prospect of long-term development in the global South.

The G8 has never hidden its main purpose – to further its own interests. Unless we are prepared to challenge the structures which perpetuate injustice, campaigners will forever be begging for crumbs of charity from the tables of power.