Poor pickings

Last week's summit of the world's eight richest countries, along with five key developing nations, at Heiligendamm in Germany, was supposed to lend fresh impetus to the global fight against poverty, ill-health, hunger and illiteracy besides, of course, the hot button issue of climate change. But if anyone had great hopes about what would emerge from the summit, these would have been belied, though the issues themselves were not ignored. The declaration of financial assistance of $60 billion for attaining the United Nations' (UN) millennium development goals is virtually a rehash of earlier pronouncements, and most of the significant developments on the issue of global warming took place prior to the Heiligendamm meet and not during the summit.

What defies explanation is the invitation to the five leading developing countries, including India and China, to attend as part of an outreach programme, without giving them any voice in what the summit would declare as the outcome. From this viewpoint, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done well to criticise the G-8 for issuing the final communiqué a day ahead of the confabulations with the five invitees. He is entirely justified in maintaining that there is no point in attending such meetings in future, if the developing countries' views are not to be reflected in the final outcome. Indeed, if these five leaders were invited so that pressure could be put on them to accept greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets, that objective too has not been served. As could be foreseen ahead of the summit, none of these countries, despite being dubbed by the US and other industrialised nations as large polluters, has succumbed to the pressure.

Having conceded these limitations and disappointments, the two gains from the summit on the climate change issue are the US willingness to consider seriously a European proposal to slash GHG emissions by half by 2050, and recognition of the UN's role in negotiating a new global agreement on climate policy by 2009, with US participation. This will serve as the basis for working out a successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. But it is also true that advance notice of both developments had been given by the US President, George Bush, some days before the summit.

Where the other points in the G-8 final communiqué are concerned, most of it is familiar rhetoric, such as promoting protection of the rights of women and girls, supporting initiatives on primary education, promoting energy efficiency and the use of domestic renewable energy sources, and facilitating access to cheap drugs. The financial package for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria is nothing but a mixture of old promises garnished with some additional funding. Also, there is no time frame during which this money is to be disbursed. The only commitment worth its while is to spend between $6 billion and $8 billion by 2010. That half of this economic package will go to Africa is, of course, understandable. On the stalled global trade talks, the G-8 has merely observed the ritual of stressing the need for swift and successful conclusion of the Doha round of negotiations. Given the lack of real conviction in much of this posturing, the only side show of some interest was the power play between the US and Western Europe, on the one side, and Russia's President Putin, on the other.