But the G8 is not offering a hard commitment

New initiatives for the world's poor at the G8 Summit that ended today July 10, 2009.

Weak leadership by the Italian host, Prime Minister Berlusconi, has resulted in very few concrete new initiatives for the world's poor at the G8 Summit that ended today. Having cut its aid spending by 56% this year, Italy lacked the moral authority or will to address the challenges posed by the economic, climate change and food crises.

These crises threaten to reverse the progress that has been made in reducing global poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This is a shame because the change in the U.S. administration and President Obama's personal interest in global poverty issues had opened up new possibilities for the G8 to deliver more. We need to work to ensure that next year, when Canada hosts the G8, that our government provides strong leadership on initiatives to help the world’s poor.

A lot of worthy ideas from some G8 leaders didn’t amount to much. There were efforts to get an initiative on child and maternal health, where progress has been slowest in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. There was a push by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on a $100 billion fund to help poor countries deal with impacts of climate change and adopt clean energy. Negotiations were in process for new initiatives on child and maternal mortality, access to safe water and sanitation, and education for all. But they did not result in any tangible agreements.

The one positive outcome for the poor was a commitment by the G8 to work towards “a goal of mobilizing $20 billion over three years for sustainable agriculture development."

But the G8 is not offering a hard commitment, but an aspirational promise they hope to achieve with the help of other non-G8 countries. That means they want to meet the target, but don’t fully commit to making it happen. And it falls short of the $30 billion the Food and Agriculture Organization says is needed to deal with the food crisis. Canada will commit $600 million over three years to this effort, by shifting money already budgeted for aid to this purpose.

Some steps were also taken to improve G8 accountability with approval of an accountability framework that will try to better track past G8 commitments and the record of delivering on these promises. A full report using this framework is promised next year at the Canadian G8.

The lack of solid commitments to the poor is partly due to the weak leadership of Italy, the host country of this year’s G8.

We, as Canadians, need to work over the next year to make sure that there is strong leadership on poverty issues when Canada hosts the G8 next year.

Source:
http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca/en/blog/weak-leadership-italian-host-means-meagre-results-g8

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