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G8: Rich countries retreat from action on climate change
G8 Action Network statement
July 9, 2008 -- The G8's communique regarding their action on climate is actually inaction being masked as movement. It is a great fraud being perpetrated on the global community that would significantly reduce its capacity to contain climate change. We fully agree with the statement of the Government of South Africa that "[W]hile the Statement may appear as a movement forward, we are concerned that it may, in effect, be a regression from what is required to make a meaningful contribution to meeting the challenges of climate change." [Click pic for BBC footage of G8 protests.]
Retreat from Bali
The announcement of the agreement among the G8 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally by 50 per cent by 2050 is actually a step back from the minimum action that was demanded by the global community during the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in Bali last December. In Bali, opposition from the US, Japan and Canada almost killed a developing consensus that should commit industrialised (Annex 1) countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. That developing consensus also projected the minimum cut needed by 2050 to be in the range of 80 to 90 per cent if the rise in global temperature was to be kept below 2 degrees centigrade in the 21st century.
The G8's 50 per cent formula is objectionable on several counts:
First, the G8 formula is a global cut, not one undertaken by the industrialised or Annex One countries, so big polluters like the US can actually free-ride on the rest of the world.
Second, the cut has no clear baseline. It was revealing that in announcing it, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda initially said it was from 1990 levels, then had to take back that statement and subsequently mentioned a 2000 baseline.
Third, this declaration of intent is not binding and there is no indication that the G8 want to bring their "commitment" fully under the United Nations climate negotiations framework that would bind its signatories. Indeed, the G8 announcement reinforces the G8 as a site for climate action that rivals the UN process and effectively subverts it. Not surprisingly, the G8 declaration emerged as part of a parallel process known as the "Major Economies Meeting." The Major Economies Meeting is a US initiative to wrest decision-making on climate from the United Nations framework and process.
All in all, the G8 announcement is one giant step away from meaningful mandatory reductions and significantly increases the chances of the planet slipping into uncontrolled climate change.
Supporting the wrong agency
Another setback to the cause of effective climate action was the G8's endorsement of the World Bank's Climate Investment Funds, to which the communique said certain countries had already pledged $6 billion. Civil society groups monitoring the Bank's environment program had already warned the G8 that there are very serious concerns that the funds would be heavily oriented toward funding large-scale coal plants. Without a clear definition of clean technology, the funds may be used to finance projects that do not clearly mitigate climate change or may take up resources that bring only minor or incremental change at a time that fundamental change is needed.
Just as the G8 undermines the UN as the site for climate action, so does the World Bank subvert an already established UN mechanism. An Adaptation Fund under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established in Bali by the Conference of Parties in December 2007 precisely to provide technological assistance to developing countries. Instead of funding this mechanism, the G8 countries may now divert their contributions to the World Bank Climate Investment Funds to maintain control of the process of technology transfer. Not surprisingly, the developing countries have criticized the World Bank mechanism as a threat to serious efforts to assist the global South to deal with climate change.
After failing as a development bank, the World Bank is now trying to create the image that it is the "climate bank''. This is indeed the height of hypocrisy. With $2 billion already spent on coal, oil and gas projects over the last year, the World Bank has broken its own record as the world's largest multilateral financier of greenhouse-emitting energy initiatives. Even as it pretends to deal with climate change with its Climate Investment Funds, the Bank is actually exacerbating it with its massive fossil fuel extraction lending.
We must call a spade a spade. The G8 declaration does not constitute an advance but a step backward in the global community's ability to deal with climate change. Saying that it is better than nothing or that it is realistic given the Bush administration's opposition to significant action is to lend legitimacy to a dangerous charade.
The G8 has once again lived up to its reputation of being an obstacle to the global community's efforts to come to grips with the challenges of our times. We repeat our call to disband this unelected body of rich country governments that acts as if it were the government of the world.
Partial list of endorsers: Attac Japan, CADTM, ESK-Basque Country, Focus on the Global South, Freedom from Debt Coalition, Friends of the Earth International, FSU-France, Institute for Policy Studies-US, Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, Via Campesina.
[Reposted from http://www.asia-pacific-action.org/node/92.]
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G8: Making the World Safe for Corporate Power
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog
The G8: Humanitarian Failure and Making the World Safe for Corporate Power
By Robert Weissman
July 9, 2008
It's hard to dismiss the temptation to write off the G8 meetings as a meaningless talkfest.
On the other hand, when the political leaders of the most powerful countries get together and issue joint statements, it may be worth looking at what these planetary stewards have in mind. This is particularly true at a time when new global crises -- skyrocketing oil prices, the spike in food prices, the impact of the U.S. recession and accelerating global warming -- are added to ongoing public health disasters and persistent global poverty.
Is it too much to expect the G8 leaders (the political leaders of the United States, Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia) to offer something meaningful in response to these problems?
With the G8 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan just concluded, the answer apparently is, yes.
G8 failures seem to fall into two categories: first, promise to do too little, and then renege on commitments made; second, promote harmful policies and projects.
In the first category comes the G8's statement on global public health. Following aggressive lobbying by public health groups, the G8 agreed to reiterate its commitment to provide universal treatment for HIV/AIDS. But the rich countries have not agreed to put the money on the table to achieve this objective. “The AIDS crisis in Africa is an emergency, and reaching universal access by 2010 will require a quadrupling of spending over current levels," explains Masaki Inaba of the Africa Japan Forum. "A restating of existing commitments is not a sufficient response by the G8."
The dominant public health need in the world's poorest countries is to restore the public health systems decimated by decades of International Monetary Fund and World Bank "structural adjustment" programs. The G8 leaders said only that they aim to "work toward" poor countries achieving the World Health Organization (WHO) target of 2.3 professional health workers per 1,000 people. (By contrast, according to WHO data, the United States has about 31 health workers per 1,000 people, and 56 per 1,000 if you include the category of "health management and support workers.")
Also in the first category is the pathetic G8 statement on climate change. Dragged down most of all by the anti-leadership of the United States, the G8 announced a commitment to a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Well, a sort-of commitment.
The best science says the world needs at least an 80 percent reduction from 1990 emissions levels by 2050, and very likely more, so the G8 commitment is totally inadequate on its face.
But the G8 position is even more lame than it first appears. A statement from an environmental coalition including Friends of the Earth International explained the key flaws. "First, the G8 formula is a global cut," not imposing particular responsibility on the rich, high carbon-polluting countries. Second, "the cut has no clear baseline. It was revealing that in announcing it, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda initially said it was from 1990 levels, then had to take back that statement and subsequently mentioned a 2000 baseline." Third, the statement is not binding, and "indeed, the G8 announcement reinforces the G8 as a site for climate action that rivals the UN process [for climate change negotiations] and effectively subverts it."
In the second category of doing direct harm come many of the G8 recommendations in the declarations on the global economy and on food security.
The G8 leaders call for opening and deregulating financial markets, even as it is clear that financial deregulation has helped create the current global financial crisis.
The G8 leaders call for stronger patent, copyright and trademark monopolies. Remarkably, in a document purporting to address the key issues in the global economy, they make space to encourage rapid negotiation and completion of an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a deal that may hinder or criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, require Internet Service Providers to limit consumers' web access, and interfere with parallel trade in goods (like Canadian drugs brought into the United States), among other problems.
The G8 leaders call for completion of the Doha Round negotiations at the World Trade Organization, aiming to further deepen reliance on a global food trading system that has driven the poorest people off their land and undermined developing countries' ability to feed themselves.
The G8 leaders also call for more aid for food-importing, poor countries -- to be delivered through IMF lending facilities that typically require countries to adopt more of the market fundamentalist mandates that have driven people off the land and undermined governments' capacity to assist the poor and pursue expansionary economic policies.
"I'm pleased to report that we've had significant success," said President Bush as the G8 summit concluded.
Not exactly.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor, and director of Essential
Action .
(c) Robert Weissman
This article is posted at:
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