34th G8 summit
The 34th G8 summit was held in the town of Tōyako, Hokkaido, Japan, on July 7–9, 2008. The locations of previous summits hosted by Japan include Tokyo and Nago, Okinawa. The G8 summit has evolved beyond being a gathering of world political leaders to become an occasion for a wide variety of non-governmental organizations, activists and civic groups to congregate and discuss a multitude of issues.
Overview
The Group of Seven was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada starting in 1976. The Group of Eight, 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.In discussions regarding Africa during the 34th G8 summit, the G8 leaders set a five-year deadline to commit US$60 billion in funding to help fight disease in Africa and renewed a commitment made three years earlier to double aid for Africa to $25-billion by 2010 and to consider pledging further assistance after 2010. On the topic of global warming, the G8 leaders agreed on the need for the world to cut carbon emissions blamed for global warming by at least 50 percent by 2050. Environmental activists and leaders from the developing countries described the statement as a "toothless gesture". Results of discussions on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement were not known. The G8 leaders made statements regarding their relations with Zimbabwe, Iran and, North Korea. The responses of the G8 leaders to the "Challenge to the G8 Governments" of over 100 NGOs and other organisations and individuals requesting them to "cancel all illegitimate debt", to "end the practice of using loans and debt cancellation to impose conditionalities" and to "facilitate the return of stolen assets kept in the banks in the G8 countries" are not presently known. Regarding the 2007–2008 world food price crisis, the differences between the G8 leaders and the citizens' groups' approaches to solving the crisis appeared unresolved. The G8's communiqué said that it was "imperative" to remove export restrictions, in contrast to requests of the signers of the "Challenge to the G8 Governments".
The G8 summits during the 21st-century have also involved widespread parallel debates and protests by citizens and claimed human rights violations against some of them during massive police/military operations. Over 40 dissidents were arrested before the summit started and nineteen or twenty Koreans critical of the G8 leadership were detained at New Chitose Airport for at least 24 hours. During a "non-violent demonstration where no acts against property or people took place" according to a legal observer, at least four people were arrested, including a Reuters cameraman. At this venue, amongst the reasons cited for demonstrations and protests were that a G8 summit is merely an arbitrary meeting of national leaders and that it is also a nexus which becomes more than the sum of its parts, elevating the participants, the event 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 34th G8 summit was the first summit for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and was the last summit for US President George W. Bush. It was also the first and only summit for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. Fukuda resigned as Japan's Prime Minister on September 1, and he being the first of the G8 leaders at the summit to leave office.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy observed, "I think it is not reasonable to continue to meet as eight to solve the big questions of the world, forgetting China -- one billion 300 million people -- and not inviting India -- one billion people." Japan and the United States announced opposition to Sarkozy's implied suggestion.
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. This year, leaders of the G8 hoped to find common ground on climate change, the global economy, and a host of political crises.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.Africa
The G8 leaders were in a position to discuss the "full range of issues relating to African development". The need to address long-term planning for African development has been a G8 agenda item for a number of years. In 2008, Japan hosted both the G8 summit and the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development -— a pentannual meeting for African leaders and their development partners. This meant that Japan had the opportunity to help Africa into the spotlight of international attention. Africa, which has been on the G8 agenda since 2000 when Japan last chaired the G8, has continued to lag behind on progress towards meeting Millennium Development Goals while Asia has made considerable strides during the same period. Unanswered questions remain about why what has happened in Asia has not happened in Africa.After discussions, the G8 leaders announced new measures on improving education, health, water supplies and sanitation and increasing the number of doctors and nurses in Africa. However, the Times says that it will be by the presence, or absence, of a headline figure on overall African aid that their talks will be judged a success or failure. Fukuda and Brown are reported to be pressing for the fulfillment of pledges made at the 2005 Gleneagles summit, but Sarkozy and Berlusconi are seen to be for pulling back from those commitments.
The G8 leaders set a five-year deadline to commit $60-billion in funding to help Africa fight disease, including pledging 100 million mosquito nets by 2010 which will prevent thousands of deaths from malaria. They also renewed a commitment made three years ago to double aid for Africa to $25-billion by 2010 and to consider pledging further assistance after 2010.
Climate change
The G8 leaders claimed that they would discuss the "full range of issues relating to climate".A package of proposals has been developed for further discussion including "a new framework that will ensure participation by the United States and China, the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitters." The G8 conference is claimed by G8 organisers to be "an important platform to firm up commitments" based on the initial framework agreed upon at the December 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Bali, Indonesia.
In the "Challenge to the G8 Governments" by over 100 NGOs and other organisations and individuals, critics of the G8 claimed that the G8 states are themselves responsible for the climate crisis. They called for the G8 governments to "stop financing projects and policies that contribute to climate change".
G8 leaders agreed on the need for the world to cut carbon emissions blamed for global warming by at least 50 percent by 2050 and for each nation to set its own target for near term goals. The communiqué represents a small step forward from last year's call to "consider seriously" such long-term cuts; but environmental activists and leaders from the developing countries were disappointed, describing the statement as a toothless gesture.
The impact of climate change on small Pacific Island nations will also be an "unofficial theme" of the G8 summit, according to a report by the Asahi Evening News. Japan had unveiled a plan called the Cool Earth Partnership in June 2008 in order to help small Pacific states and other developing nations cope with the challenges of climate change. An official for the Japanese Ministry of the Environment stated that it wanted to unveil the new aid package before the G8 Summit in order to further dialogue on the subject. Tavau Teii, the Deputy Prime Minister of Tuvalu, a recipient of Japan's aid package against rising sea levels, toured Japan in the run up to the G8 Summit to raise awareness on the impact of climate change on his small island country.