G-8 summits where leaders of eight countries, comprising just 14% of the world population and representing 65% of the world’s economy, discuss macroeconomic management, international trade, and relations with developing countries.
From this, the agenda has now been broadened to include microeconomic issues such as employment and the information highway, transitional issues such as the environment, crime and drugs, human rights and HIV/AIDS. At every summit, G8 countries make certain commitments to various issues like health, education, energy security, climate change and so on.
A study on the compliance level of the various G8 countries to the commitments they have made, shows that general compliance levels have gone down. Compliance happens when a government alters its behaviour to meet a summit commitment such as budgetary allocation and new legislations or programmes.
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Commitments to the health and education sectors have the worst compliance record while that towards energy security shows relative success. Russia shows the best compliance record compared to most other G-8 countries along with Germany and US, which also show better performance.
4. What, are the criticisms levelled against the G-8 and why are protests organised at every G-8 summit?
G-8 summits have become as much a site for unique and creative protests, colourful street demonstrations and even terrorist bomb-attacks an a meeting of world leaders. Critics of G-8 have accused it of being an elite group of industrialised nations that push their own interests to the disadvantage of the rest of the larger less developed parts of the world.
G-8 is held responsible for poverty in countries in the grip of debt crisis, unfair trading policy, global warming, the medicine patent regime making drugs unavailable to the poor and so on.
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Hence, G-8 leaders are expected to take responsibility to combat problems that they are accused of creating. The group has no African or Latin American members or any member for the developing world. And the fastest growing economies with the largest populations, India and China are not represented.
G-8 pushing the agenda of globalisation has provoked much resentment resulting in riots and anti- globalisalian demonstrations at summit venues most notably in Genoa. Italy in 2001 where the protest turned violent resulting in the death of a protester.
G-8 summits have become high profile meetings held under fortress-like security outside major cities since then. Though G-8 has launched drives to counter diseases like HIV/AIDS and announced debt-relief schemes, critics are not impressed as they feel the spending is inadequate.