What Next for the G8?

Today, the leaders of world’s eight most powerful industrialized countries meet in L'Aquila, Italy, to discuss a range of pressing global issues. The economic crisis, global food security, poverty reduction and climate change are all set for the two-day agenda.

While the focus of the meetings will likely be dominated by concerns about the current recession, it is crucial that this does not detract attention from the need to take decisive and sustained action on global poverty and climate change.

A distinct reminder of this is the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2000, countries around the world signed onto the MDGs, a series of eight commitments to reduce global poverty, improve health and education, and promote environmental sustainability by 2015.

While some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go. And food insecurity, climate change and inadequate foreign assistance levels are threatening to undermine them just as some improvements are being made.

Global food prices skyrocketed last year, causing an additional 105 million people to fall into poverty. Strengthening global food security is crucial to reducing global hunger.

And while climate change threatens to have a disastrous impact on the global poor, action by the world’s worst polluting countries to reduce greenhouse gases has been dangerously slow. While the Obama administration has made positive new commitments on the environment, Canada has fallen behind. In fact, a recent report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that rated the actions of G8 member countries on climate change saw Canada placed last.

And with more than one billion people currently living on less than one U.S. dollar a day, there is desperate need for greater development assistance. International development and anti-poverty groups, including Oxfam Canada and Make Poverty History, have criticized the G8, and the Canadian government in particular, for not living up to its commitments to increase international development aid to the world’s most impoverished countries.

At the 2005 G8 summit, member countries pledged to aim to allocate 0.7% their GDP to foreign development assistance as a part of their MDG commitment. Currently, Canada contributes approximately 0.35% of GDP – or $4 billion – in development assistance, still far short of the U.N. target.

Much depends upon G8 governments keeping the commitments they have already made on poverty reduction. But their track record is not promising. A recent University of Toronto study found that while members of the G8 have been reliable in keeping their economic commitments, they have often fallen short with regards to their promises to increase foreign aid.

However, on a positive note, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has vowed that despite the attention given to the economy, poverty reduction and food security will remain high on the agenda.

This is crucial. Understanding the interconnectedness of the global issues being faced – particularly the devastating impact that climate change threatens to have on the global poor – is key to tackling global poverty and making progress on the MDGs.