UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed Tuesday to rich nations not to backtrack on assistance to Africa and action against climate change at next week’s Group of Eight summit.
Leaks of the draft statement for the July 7-9 summit in Japan suggest that rich nations will water down commitments to help Africa and offer little new on cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.
Ban, in Tokyo on the first leg of an Asian tour, said that wealthy nations should lead the campaign on the “triple crisis” of climate change, poverty and rising food prices.
“They have the capacity, they have the resources and I hope the leaders will demonstrate their political will,” Ban told a news conference in Tokyo.
Reports have said that the draft statement of the G8 summit — which brings together Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US — will not cite a specific figure on development aid.
The 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, called for a doubling of rich nations’ foreign aid by 2010 to US$50 billion, half of it to Africa.
“What I would like to urge and emphasize is that the leaders of the G8 should implement their commitment which was made in Gleneagles,” Ban said.
British charity Oxfam denounced the current G8 draft as an “outrage.”
“At least there is still time for the Japanese presidency to show some leadership and turn things around at next week’s summit,” said Max Lawson, senior policy advisor at Oxfam.
Japan has said it hoped to focus on Africa at the summit and has invited eight leaders from the continent. At a separate summit with African leaders in May near Tokyo, Japan pledged to double its aid to Africa.
But aid budgets have been dwindling across much of the developed world amid rising concerns about a global economic downturn.
Ban later left for China, his second stop on a three-nation tour that will also take him to his native South Korea. He will return to Japan for the G8 summit in the northern mountain resort of Toyako.
Ban said that his main priority in China would be to press for progress in the fight against climate change.
“This is an issue on which all the international community must come on board,” Ban said. “Global warming doesn’t respect international borders.”
“The participation of the United States and China and India and Brazil ... will be crucially important,” he said.
Gordon Shepherd, director of international policy at the WWF environmental group, was sharply critical of the current G8 summit draft, which reportedly does not specify a long-term target for cutting carbon emissions.
“The science since [December’s UN climate meeting in] Bali has indicated that we need a better, stronger and higher target,” Shepherd said.
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