Crib Sheet: G8

Africa aid and climate change on the agenda, and will Tony stop ♥ing George?

By Vilas Rao, Stanford University

HBO recently premiered the film “The Girl in the Café” about a delegate to the G8 summit who meets a girl in a café (hence the title) and on a whim invites her to accompany him. Their surprising romance throws our bewildered bureaucrat for a loop and shakes up his conception about how best to wield his power to help hundreds of millions of impoverished people. The movie’s tagline: “Love can’t change what’s wrong in the world. But it’s a start.”

How beautifully optimistic. Sadly, it’s not exactly my state of mind when it comes to the actual off-screen G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, running from July 6-8. Before describing my hopes for the G8, my expectations for the G8, and how my expectations are likely going to take a wrecking ball to my hopes, I figure a “Top Six” list would be appropriate.

6 Quick Things to Know About the G8

1. The eight countries that comprise the G8 are: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy.


2. Poverty alleviation and climate change will be the topics of the day.
   Never thought you’d see the day, huh?


3. The United Kingdom presides over the G8 summit this session. Russia, that great bastion of democracy, will be presiding over the G8 next session, in 2006.


4. The G8 revolves around consensus decision making. That means everyone leaves the table in agreement. (It also means major agreements are rare.)


5. Despite their power and wealth, the G8 nations can’t always impose their will on any given country. However, as a multilateral body, the conference is a forum for the richest nations to discuss pressing issues. Typically, these discussions become manifest in policies that have an enormous effect on both the developed and developing worlds. As a result, Tony Blair briefly considered making this year’s tagline “We’ve got the power!” (You’ve been zapped.)


6. You just can’t talk G8 without talking protests. In 2001, the G8 gathered in Genoa, and tens of thousands of activists crashed the party. The anti-globalization crew was out in full strength, with a so-called “black block” causing run-ins with police that resulted in the death of a protester. But there were plenty of non-violent concerned citizens, too, like those with the Genoa Social Forum, a major protest organizer.

“Will anything actually happen at the G8?”

That’s a tricky one. Let’s look at each of the two major issues:

Poverty and Aid:

Tony Blair has called for roughly doubling annual aggregate aid to Africa, from $25 billion to $50 billion, by the year 2010. The EU has already pledged an increase of $17 billion in aid, leaving the remaining $8 billion increase to the United States. President Bush recently announced the doubling of U.S. aid to Africa from roughly $4 billion to $8 billion over five years, undoubtedly a necessary and impressive step for the President, though it still falls $4 billion short of what has been requested.

The U.S. aid is to be disbursed by the MCC, or the Millennium Challenge Corporation, itself a controversial entity which ties aid and debt cancellation to good governance. This prevents several of the most populous countries in Africa from receiving any significant aid at all. This is a tricky issue, as aid to corrupt or dysfunctional governments frequently will not serve the people it is intended for and will further strengthen and legitimize the corrupt government. Take, for example, the recent news about armed pirates hijacking a food shipment in Somalia.

In the case of aid to Africa, I’m strangely optimistic about the prospects of real progress. The talk in the days and weeks before this summit is pointing to a notable improvement in our aid policy. What would I consider a success? If the $25 billion increase is totally met, I’ll be thrilled (and somewhat doubting the fabric of reality). If the U.S. holds to its pledge of an additional $4 billion in aid to Africa, I think we can consider that a pretty good day’s work.

Not to say that this isn’t a bit overdue—putting our aid in perspective: the OECD has called for member countries to allocate 0.7% of GNP to foreign aid—the United States currently gives 0.16% of GNP.

Climate Change:

Oh, but if African aid was the only issue on the table, the outlook on the G8 might be a happy one. Of course, it is not the only issue on the table.

Climate change, in the form of the Kyoto Protocol, is of course what kicked off the ever-growing rift between the United States and the international community. Indeed, the other seven countries of the G8 have ratified Kyoto, and six of the eight have already taken some measures towards climate change prevention. The EU and other developed countries have already agreed to mandatory emissions targets, which the United State rejects.

But the United States’ refusal to budge on this issue is just the beginning: Climate change is even more important for those countries not in the G8. In fact, developing countries contribute 60% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. A major item on the agenda should be discussion of clean energy production for those countries outside of the G8, namely China and India, both of which will be present at the summit.

See, back in ’92, Bush Senior signed and ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which put most of the climate change responsibility on developed nations. Developing nations, on the other hand, agreed to some loose, unspecified measures that privileged growth over pollution reduction, requiring them to slow emissions output without an overall reduction thereof. At the same time, developed nations would pick up the bill for the cost of developing nations adopting these expensive measures, in order to prevent emissions progress from obstructing much-needed development. Basically, this convention strove to safeguard the environment without impeding the growth of the developing world. In a word, the Kyoto Protocal sought to make binding the unspecified aspects of the earlier convention.

Bush Junior faults Kyoto for ostensibly letting developing nations off the hook, but really the treaty just solidifies what Bush Senior had already signed off on. The current administration insists on market-based solutions to climate change by continually highlighting its predisposition for pollution credits. While the initially controversial idea of pollution credits has gone more mainstream, the unwillingness of the Bush administration to even approach the table has been a consistent barrier to progressive initiatives on climate change.

So a major question for this year’s G8, then, is whether or not Blair will be able to get the Bush administration to engage on climate change. There has been talk of Blair standing up to Bush—thought I’d never see the day. But it could happen.

Despite being elected for an unprecedented third term as the leader of Britain’s Labor Party, Blair is incredibly unpopular at home due to his alleged deceit over the war in Iraq and cuddling a little too close with Bush. If there is one issue Blair can easily put some space between himself and President Bush on, it is climate change. Seems like the perfect opportunity for Blair to gain some ground. If he stands up for climate change and Bush supports him, Blair has won a startling victory. If he stands up for climate change and Bush does not, Blair can point to this point of departure between the two leaders.

I still have my doubts, though. Confronting Bush is not Blair’s style, and at the G8, leaders crave consensus and success, preferring to highlight the most unremarkable of achievements than honestly to acknowledge failure on a policy goal. It does look like this is Blair’s last shot, though. While “The Girl in the Café” claims that love is where it’s at, it seems like an injection of infidelity in the Bush-Blair love affair could go a long way for global climate change.

Multilateralism has never been Bush’s forte, so the chances he will adopt any sort of emissions agreement that Europe suggests approaches zero. And while there is already modest support at home for dealing with the prospect of climate change – see Sen. Lugar’s efforts to get the Senate to formally recognize the threat of global warming – President Bush will collect no political points if he just comes home with a plan handed to him. A strategy conceived at home emphasizing economic growth and environmental concerns will be better received stateside. At Gleneagles, don’t expect Bush to present a plan, but do expect Bush to reject what Europe suggests.

In the meantime, keep recycling – and don’t throw out your “I Heart OPEC” t-shirt quite yet. For regardless of G8 cocktail parties, our same ol’-same ol’ energy policies likely won’t budge at Tony Blair’s polite request. The chance of a shift on environmental policy here at home is slim to none, even with Europe showing a united front on climate change.

We will see what happens.