31st G8 summit


The 31st G8 summit was held on 6–8 July 2005 at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland and hosted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The locations of previous G8 summits to have been hosted by the UK include: London ; and Birmingham. It is the first G8 summit to be held in Scotland. A sixth UK summit was held in Lough Erne in 2013; and a seventh UK summit was held in Carbis Bay in 2021.

Overview

The Group of Seven was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States starting in 1976. The G8, meeting for the first time in 1997, was formed with the addition of Russia. In addition, the President of the European Commission has been formally included in summits since 1981. The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the initial summit of the Group of Six in 1975.
The G8 summits during the 21st-century have inspired widespread debates, protests and demonstrations; and the two- or three-day event becomes more than the sum of its parts, elevating the participants, the issues and the venue as focal points for activist pressure.

Leaders at the summit

The G8 is an unofficial annual forum for the leaders of Canada, the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The 31st G8 summit was the last summit for Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Participants

These summit participants are the current "core members" of the international forum:

Priorities

Traditionally, the host country of the G8 summit sets the agenda for negotiations, which take place primarily amongst multi-national civil servants in the weeks before the summit itself, leading to a joint declaration which all countries can agree to sign.
As host, the UK stated its intent to focus this G8 meeting on the issues of global climate change and the lack of economic development in Africa. The British government set the priorities of supporting Africa's economic development and of moving forward initiatives to research and combat global warming.
Blair had planned to move beyond the Kyoto Protocol by looking at how to include key developing countries not included in it – principally by agreeing technology transfer of clean energy technologies in exchange for commitments on reduction of greenhouse gases. Other announced items on the agenda were counterterrorism, non-proliferation, and reform in the Middle East. The summit was overshadowed, however, by bomb attacks in London on the second day of the conference.

Aid to Africa and debt cancellation

The traditional meeting of G8 finance ministers before the summit took place in London on 10 and 11 June 2005, hosted by Chancellor Gordon Brown. On 11 June, agreement was reached to write off the entire US$40 billion debt owed by 18 Highly Indebted Poor Countries to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the African Development Fund. The annual saving in debt payments amounts to just over US$1 billion. War on Want estimates that US$45.7 billion would be required for 62 countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The ministers stated that twenty more countries, with an additional US$15 billion in debt, would be eligible for debt relief if they met targets on fighting corruption and continue to fulfill structural adjustment conditionalities that eliminate impediments to private investment. The agreement, which required weeks of intense negotiations led by Brown, must be approved by the lending institutions to take effect.
While negotiations have essentially taken place between the G8 member states, some of which are reluctant to endorse debt cancellation and aid increases, African governments, advocacy organizations and their allies have criticised the Blair-Brown plan as inadequate and argued that the continuation of structural adjustment policies outweighs the benefits of debt cancellation, while also pointing out that only a small proportion of the Third World debt will be affected by the proposal. In mid-July, objections by Belgium raised the possibility of the debt relief bill not being approved by the International Monetary Fund, a development that was harshly criticized by many activists.
Agreement was not reached on Brown's proposed International Finance Facility, partly because the United States said that its budget procedures meant it was unable to make the necessary long-term funding commitments. The event attracted much media attention.

Global warming

Development of a joint declaration on efforts to tackle global warming has been much less successful, principally because of the long-standing US opposition to emission targets as a solution to global warming. The other seven G8 nations – France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, and the United Kingdom – have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and have committed to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions by 2010. Hopes had been raised that the unprecedented by the G8 countries' academies of sciences on the need for urgent action on global warming would help moderate the US negotiating position.
On July 6, US President George W. Bush recognised "that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases is contributing to the problem". However, he said the Kyoto treaty was not the answer. Environment campaigners called the result of the summit "a very disappointing finale". "The G8 have delivered nothing new here and the text conveys no sense of the scale or urgency of the challenge. The action plan, without any targets or timetables, will deliver very little to reduce emissions, or to roll out renewables to the scale required", said a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth.
The US also pulled out of financial pledges to fund a network of regional climate centers throughout Africa which were designed to monitor the unfolding impact of global warming. Other schemes opposed by the US include the Clean Development Mechanism set up to help developing states develop economically while controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
To address claims that flying so many people around the world to talk about global warming actually contributes substantially to it, the entire G8 Presidency was designed to be carbon neutral, with calculated resulting carbon emissions being offset by purchasing Certified Emissions Reductions from a Clean Development Mechanism project. The Kuyasa low-income housing energy upgrade project located in Cape Town, South Africa, was chosen. The first CDM project to be registered in Africa, it involves the installation of solar water heaters, ceiling insulation and low-energy light-bulbs in hundreds of low-income homes in Khayelitsha township.

Issues

The summit was intended as a venue for resolving differences among its members. As a practical matter, the summit was also conceived as an opportunity for its members to give each other mutual encouragement in the face of difficult economic decisions. The United Kingdom aimed to confront the fundamental problem of conflicting domestic pressures among the G8 nations.

Citizens' responses and authorities' counter-responses

Activism

As with all recent G8 summits, the meeting was the focus of many advocacy campaigns, including the Make Poverty History campaign in the United Kingdom, and the anti-globalization movement. More than 220,000 people marched in support of Make Poverty History in Edinburgh on 2 July, the largest demonstration in Scottish history.
In addition to the Make Poverty History coalition's efforts, singer/activist Bob Geldof organised concerts in each of the G8 member states on 2 July, as well as a concert in Edinburgh on 6 July. Unlike Live Aid 20 years prior, whose primary aim was to raise money, Live 8 aimed to increase awareness among the citizens of the G8 countries, and thus force their leaders into increasing their focus on world poverty – though in fact Live 8 raised 400 times more than Live Aid simply in terms of the debt deal which the Gleneagles summit delivered; if the deal on aid is honoured it will produce an amount the equivalent of five Live Aid concerts every week. The London concert featured acts ranging from Sting and The Who to Annie Lennox, and most notably the reformation of Pink Floyd.
Thousands also mobilized through the G8 Alternatives and Dissent! networks to protest the G8 and discuss alternatives to the economic and political models they represent. These mobilizations have taken a more critical line towards both economic globalization and the G8 itself, which they generally regard as illegitimate and undemocratic.
The National Library of Scotland holds a collection of leaflets, posters and pamphlets collected during the G8 Summit.
Protest took a variety of forms:
  • Construction of a non-hierarchically organized, self-governing, eco-village near Stirling
  • 2 July – Make Poverty History march with 175,000 to 250,000 people
  • 3 July – Make Borders History tour of Glasgow, illustrating the presence of borders and immigration control measures inside of a metropolis
  • 3 July – Counter Summit organised by G8 Alternatives alongside a smaller event called G8 Corporate Dreams Global Nightmares
  • 4 July – Carnival for Full Enjoyment, roving anticapitalist street parties, 1,500 to 3,000 people
  • 4 July – Mass nonviolent blockade of Faslane, a Royal Navy submarine base, 2,000 to 10,000 people
  • 5 July – Demonstrations against Shell, Dungavel immigrant and refugee detention center, and the limits of Gordon Brown's debt cancellation proposal
  • 6 July – Blockades of roads and buses transporting ministers and support staff to Gleneagles.
  • 6 July – March and rally to G8 meeting site, approximately 5000 people
  • 6 July – Breach of the fence around Gleneagles Hotel by 200 people
  • 6 July – Spontaneous march in Edinburgh by a few hundred protesters hoping to take coaches to the Gleneagles rally, after police falsely informed them that the march was cancelled
  • 8 July – Street party in Glasgow in protest against climate change and the construction of the M74 motorway
  • 8 July – various decentralised small actions against climate change as part of a global day of action
  • 8 July – Small prisoner solidarity rally outside Saughton Prison, Edinburgh by around 50 demonstrators