President John Agyekum Kufuor and 13 other African Heads of State have interacted with leaders of the eight most powerful, rich and industrialised nations of the world at the ongoing G8 Summit. This year’s summit, which began yesterday in the hot and rainy mountainous resort of Toyako, Japan, ends tomorrow. A heated debate is expected on global warming, rising oil and food prices, as well as Africa’s development. On the first day, the G8 leaders held discussions with African leaders, expressing serious concern over issues such as the rising food prices which are impacting negatively on the continent, especially sub-Saharan Africa. President Kufuor recently announced subsidies on rice, diesel, fertilizer, marine oils and other essential goods, which had the potential of destabilising the economy and creating tension ahead of this year’s elections. Meanwhile, the G8 is considering issuing a statement to criticize Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe and his widely slammed one-man election run-off in which he declared himself winner, last month. But the highlight of the Summit comes today although President Kufuor is already back in Tokyo, en route to Accra, when leaders of Japan, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia, will talk about climate change. Japan and the European Union have agreed on a target of slashing global greenhouse gases to half by 2050, but the U.S. has so far refused to set any ambitious goal unless emerging nations, including China and India, agree to join the framework. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who is hosting the Summit, is hoping the G8 Leaders will come to an agreement. Tomorrow which is the final day, the G8 Leaders and the Heads of eight “outreach nations” including China, India and Brazil, will talk about climate change. These 16 nations produce about 80 percent of the world’s man-made greenhouse gases. Another hot matter at the summit will be the soaring crude oil and foodstuff prices where the leaders are expected to provide more transparency in the speculative investment agenda on those commodities. A total of 22 national leaders, including the heads of 14 outreach nations are attending the three-day summit, the highly participated ever. Among the G8 leaders, U.S. President George W. Bush is the dean, having attended seven previous summits. Three of the eight leaders, Mr. Fukuda, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, are new faces. Meanwhile, there have been heavy criticisms as to whether these countries actually keep to their promises to Ghana and Africa or if they just come to enjoy a day or two from home, a report from the Japanese Times which is circulated widely, stated. The University of Toronto’s G8 Research Group was set up to answer that question and to serve as the institutional memory of the G8 by identifying what its member nations have committed themselves to, and to what extent those commitments have been met. On June 30, the group released its final compliance report on the promises made at the 2007 Heilegendamm summit in Germany. The 310-page report looks at 23 different areas of commitment and evaluates the extent to which Japan, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Russia and the European Union have fully, partially, or have not complied with those commitments between the time they were made last June and May 31 of this year. As host of this year’s G8, Japan has announced an agenda that includes the world economy, climate change, development and Africa, and nuclear non-proliferation. Looking at what the G8 nations have done over the past year in 11 specific areas related to these three broad themes, reveals full or partial compliance in most, although some countries failed to comply in the areas of African debt relief and ODA, corruption, trade, and non-proliferation of nuclear materials. “Overall, compared with past years, it’s been an average year in terms of how the G8 nations have fared in complying with promises made at the 2007 summit in Heilegendamm,” said Jenilee Guebert, a Senior Researcher for the G8 Research Group involved in preparing the report. “This year, the U.S. has done the best. In the past, Canada and the European Union have always scored quite well, while Russia and Italy have traditionally done less well. Japan tends to fluctuate, scoring well on energy issues and less on Africa,” she said. The G8 Research Group’s analysis on the issue of climate change showed all countries were in full compliance with their commitments made at last year’s summit. The G8 promised to “actively and constructively” participate in the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, which was held in December, to come up with a post-2012 agreement that includes all major greenhouse gas emitters. All of the G8 members did participate in the conference. The resulting Bali agreement called for common but differentiated responsibilities from all nations to fight climate change. Thus, the G8 nations were judged to be in full compliance with their Heilegendamm commitment. As regards Africa, the Heilegendamm summit made a number of commitments in specific areas. The G8 noted the cancellation of some $60 billion in debt was well underway. There was a promise to increase official development assistance (ODA) to Africa by $25 billion a year by 2010. With the exception of Japan, all G8 nations were found to be in either full or partial compliance with their Heilegendamm promises. “Japan’s failure on this issue stems from its continued use of interest-bearing loans instead of grants to fund development assistance. Loans were approved for countries that already qualified for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative. “Furthermore, Japan lent ¥3.484 billion to Uganda, a state that qualifies for debt relief from both the HIPC and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative,” the report says. On aid to Africa, last year’s summit emphasized that the G8, along with other donors, was increasing ODA to Africa by $25 billion a year by 2010, using 2004 as a baseline. Here, all G8 nations with the exception of France were judged to have fully or partially complied. “France has been awarded a score of minus one (meaning failure to comply) for the sharp decline in ODA allocations to Africa, despite the promise of an increase in future years,” the report noted. North Korea’s recent report declaring its nuclear materials, which will lead to its delisting by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism, as well as Iran’s nuclear program will be the non-proliferation topics of great discussion in Hokkaido. At the same time, Japan is expected to push the other G8 nations to commit further to promoting new nuclear power plants as a viable way to combat global warming, a position that raises proliferation concerns. Last year in Germany, the G8 re-affirmed its support for an early commencement of negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty. Such a treaty, currently being debated at the UN Conference on Disarmament, would ban further production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and nuclear weapons technology; but would allow for the production of uranium and plutonium for use in nuclear power plants. Only Japan and Germany were found to be in full compliance with the commitment, with the report noting that Japan publicly voiced its support on two occasions at the UN in the past few months for treaty negotiations to begin. By contrast, Russia failed to comply because there had been no official public statements about treaty negotiations, although the report noted Russia had undertaken some actions to cut off fissile materials. Commitments to promoting trade liberalization and helping developing countries better integrate into the multilateral trading system, as well as providing support to the poorest countries to help them benefit from globalization, were made at the 2007 summit. Here Japan, the US the UK, Canada, Russia and the EU were all found to be in full compliance, while France was adjudged as having failed to comply because it failed to show support for, and made statements hostile to the Doha Development Agenda, which covers liberalization of agriculture. In the area of energy technology, the G8 said last year it would urgently develop, deploy and foster the use of sustainable, clean energy and climate-friendly technologies. Japan, the US, the UK and Canada were judged to be in full compliance, while other G8 members were only in partial commitment. To attain the goals, the G8 has set for itself, especially development-related goals in Africa, trade liberalization between developed and developing countries and also making sure the transfer of nuclear materials ostensibly for nuclear reactors does not end up in nuclear weapons, and curbing corruption. Last year, the G8 said it was committed to full implementation of its obligations under existing international agreements created to combat corruption, particularly UN and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development agreements. With the exception of Japan, all members were found to be in full or partial compliance with this agreement. Japan’s failure, the report said, was due to several factors, including a recent OECD review showing nearly all of Japan’s extradition treaties in the Asia-Pacific region are based on domestic legislation and not international treaties. While the University of Toronto paper is a valuable report card for progress over the past year, each year the bar is either raised or lowered, and this is reflected in the language of the final statements, which must be unanimously approved by all members. Generally, the G8 nations have kept their promises, but some summits do better than others. The 2000 summit in Okinawa got the highest compliance scores because it was a success. Perhaps this year it will follow a similar trend. Source: Daily Guide