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Japan Press Weekly
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Does G8 Summit live up to its name? Akahata editorial
The Group of Eight Summit on July 9 closed its three-day sessions at Toyako Town in Hokkaido.
The G8 members, including Japan and the United States, discussed some issues with some African nations as well as emerging economies, including China and India. Major issues facing the G8 were pressing global challenges: the increasing poverty rate and economic disparities, soaring prices of oil and food, global warming, and regional peace initiatives. However, measures listed in the G8 Declaration are inadequate and short of being effective. The “major counties” must be held accountable for such defects.
Japan, US dragging feet on international efforts
Their failure to give the effective answer to the most pressing issue of global warming was conspicuous. The need now is to take steps before it is too late to deal with the extraordinary climate changes, to stop further destruction of the global ecosystem, and to reverse global warming. In order to prevent further damages caused by global warming, the world’s scientists are strongly calling for a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The G8 Declaration just expresses the desire that the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change will give “serious consideration” to and will “adopt” a 50 percent cut in world emissions by the year 2050. However, it stopped short of setting a clear goal of reducing the emissions with the G8 countries taking the lead by establishing a set time frame. Meeting fierce criticism from developing nations, the G8 members, as a matter of course, failed to reach an agreement on long-term targets in the meeting of major emitter countries.
The developed countries, including the eight major counties, alone emit more than 40 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Clearly, these nations should be aware of their historical role in fulfilling their responsibility to address the issue. But they have evaded their responsibility on the grounds that emission reduction should be a common international resolve.
The G-8 summit has failed to set up a goal appropriate to its role because the United States insisted that developing countries also have the obligation to set long-term goals. Japan, the host of the Summit, supported the United States in this demand. Thus, the United States and Japan were obstacles to progress at the G-8 summit. In the Japan-U.S. summit talks just before the G-8 summit, the Japanese government extraordinarily reconfirmed that its alliance with the United States has deepened as it chaired the G-8 Summit. The governments of Japan and the United States bear heavy responsibility for the poor outcome of the G-8 Summit.
The G-8 Summit has also failed to put forth any effective measures on the crucial task of controlling speculative money ventures, a major factor causing the soaring prices of crude oil and grains that are now shaking the world economy. The summit’s economic declaration expresses anxiety that the sharp increase in crude oil and food prices might increase inflationary pressure throughout the world. However, as regards speculation on futures markets, which are the major cause of the rising prices, the declaration calls for nothing more than increased transparency.
Against a background of the weakening dollar and financial instability throughout the world, speculative funds have turned away from dollar assets and have flowed into commodities markets. This is a major cause of the soaring prices of crude oil and grains. A conference between oil producing countries and oil consuming countries, held in late June in Saudi Arabia, agreed on the need to improve transparency and tighten regulations on the financial market to bring speculative capital flows under control.
By failing to propose measures to control speculative activities of hedge funds, most of which are U.S.-based, the G8 Summit has betrayed people throughout the world who are suffering from the rising oil and food prices.
Broader-based agreement on global tasks
Whether in dealing with global warming or in controlling market speculations, the G8 should not be the only forum to manage such global tasks. To urge the G8 and other developed countries to take their due responsibilities and move global tasks forward, it is necessary to broaden the basis of the agreement to include the United Nations and international civil society organizations. - Akahata, July 10, 2008
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