Financial Times Editorial Comment: What the G8 must achieve

Financial Times Editorial Comment: What the G8 must achieve
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: June 3 2007 20:44 | Last updated: June 3 2007 20:44


“Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” This does not seem to be true on earth, however, at least if the penitent is George W. Bush and his repentance is over the administration’s past recalcitrance on climate change.

Yet his shift is important. The chances that the summit of the group of eight leading countries in Germany this week will prove a significant event have increased. Nobody expects much from this increasingly outmoded talking shop of the complacent rich. But the leaders have a chance to surprise the legions of doubters this time.

For the German chancellor and host, Angela Merkel, climate change is the focus of the meeting. But negotiating the communiqué with the US has proved painful to her government. The obduracy of the US on the topic makes this less than surprising. But last week the president bowed to reality, giving a pledge to “establish a new framework on greenhouse gases when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012” and agreeing to a “long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases”.

Yet agreement between Europe and the US is still some distance away. Mr Bush remains opposed to accepting a ceiling for permissible temperature increases. He wants, too, to start any new negotiations outside the framework of the United Nations. He also continues to emphasise technology, ignoring the need for strong market incentives to guide its development and adoption.

It may be impossible therefore to agree a meaningful communiqué this week. It may be necessary to record strong disagreements in stead. If so, so be it. Future historians may still say that this summit marked a turning point on climate.

Whether it will also be one on aid for the poorest countries is even less clear. At the Gleneagles summit in 2005, the G8 committed itself to increasing overall annual aid levels by $50bn by 2010 and doubling aid to Africa. Official figures for 2006 show that almost all these countries are behind their targets.

This is disgraceful – $50bn is a mere 0.15 per cent of the aggregate gross domestic product of the high-income countries. Yet this sum might make a huge difference to the poor. Aid is not a sufficient condition for development, but it is a necessary condition for the world’s poorest countries, particularly land-locked and resource-poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa. How can the rich demand that African leaders keep their promises of better governance if they themselves do not keep their side of the bargain?

Should the G8 members achieve substantial progress on a replacement for the Kyoto treaty and also meet their promises on aid, the body will have justified its existence for another year. But its time is running out. An informal global steering group is worth having. But one that includes an increasingly recalcitrant Russia, while excluding an ever more important China and India makes less sense each year. Let the G8 do something significant this year: achieve progress on the two big issues it confronts and embark on reform of its composition before it meets again in 2008.