The G8 summit in Japan earlier this month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation. The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world’s leaders.
The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders that went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership. They are weak individually, and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action.
There are four deep problems. The first is the incoherence of US leadership. While we are well past the time when the US alone could solve any global problems, it does not even try to find shared global solutions. The will to global cooperation was weak even in the administration of former US president Bill Clinton, but it has disappeared entirely during the administration of US President George W. Bush.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
The second problem is the lack of global financing. The hunger crisis can be overcome in poor countries if they get help to grow more food. The global energy and climate crises can be overcome if the world invests together to develop new energy technologies. Diseases such as malaria can be overcome through globally coordinated investments in disease control. The oceans, rainforests and air can be kept safe through pooled investments in environmental protection.
Global solutions are not expensive, but they are not free, either. Global solutions to poverty, food production and development of new clean energy technology will require annual investments of roughly US$350 billion, or 1 percent of GNP of the rich world. This is obviously affordable, and is modest compared to military spending, but is far above the pittance that the G8 actually brings to the table to solve these urgent challenges.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made a valiant effort to get the rest of Europe to honor the modest aid pledges made at the G8 Summit in 2005, but it has been a tough fight, and one that hasn’t been won.
The third problem is the disconnection between global scientific expertise and politicians. Scientists and engineers have developed many powerful ways to address today’s challenges, whether growing food, controlling diseases or protecting the environment. And these methods have become even more powerful in recent years with advances in information and communications technology, which make global solutions easier to identify and implement than ever before.
GLOBAL ORGANIZATIONS
The fourth problem is that the G8 ignores the very international institutions — notably the UN and the World Bank — that offer the best hope of implementing global solutions.
These institutions are often underfinanced, deprived of political backing and then blamed by the G8 when global problems aren’t solved. Instead, they should be given clear authority and responsibilities, and then held accountable for their performance.
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