On the final day of this year’s G8 Summit in Hokkaido Toyako, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda welcomed an additional eight leaders for a working lunch, under the auspices of the Major Economies Meeting (MEM) on Energy Security and Climate Change. This included the countries engaged in the Heiligendamm Process, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico, plus Australia, Indonesia and South Korea. The outputs from this meeting, however, are likely to be soon forgotten or at best ignored.
Bad Policy
The showcasing of Fukuda’s much hyped “Cool Earth” climate policy ensured that energy security – although in the meeting’s title – would not get time on this year’s agenda. The G8 has dealt with energy only in narrow, self-interested ways. One of its founding motivations was to collectively respond to the Oil Crisis of the mid-1970s and again in the early-1980s with the fall of the Shah of Iran in the interests of stabilizing their national economies. In the modern context, it has been Russia and Canada that have put energy on the agenda, however, both have done so to secure new oil contracts among the rich club. This dynamic played out once more at MEM, as the urgency of energy policy was crowded out by the popularity of climate policy.
Cool Earth – also known as the “50/50” strategy – advances that the G8 should cut emissions by 50% by 2050. However, as frequently identified, this proposal is severely flawed as it sets no start-date, no interim targets, no reporting mechanism, and no penalties for noncompliance. With a target date so far in the future, most of the G8 leaders are not likely to be alive in 2050 and certainly decades out of office. This initiative has proven that leader-driven climate policy is much more about image than substance. The policy implications of Cool Earth are few and far between, leaving most of the responsibility with the private sector to develop and implement new technologies while placing the much of the onus of reductions and energy efficiency on the MEM developing countries.
Growing Divisions
While many G8-watchers have made a persuasive argument for climate change as a functional case for G8 membership reform, the MEM certainly does not fill this role. While it brings a number of leaders from important countries into the G8 process, it does not provide a suitable forum to actively engage emerging powers in a two-way dialogue. At Toyako, the MEM took place as a “working lunch”, where prime minister Fukuda held court, taking up most of the session with an overly formal speech on Cool Earth. Any actual dialogue in the room was not going to change the wording of the declaration as all discussions took place pre-summit between officials. Even so, Fukuda failed to bring the full compliment of the MEM on-board.
Divisions between the G8 and its Heiligendamm Process partners – now calling themselves the “G5″ – had been present before the summit, but at Toyako they got pushed into the public sphere. The G5 leaders met separately in Sapporo a day before the MEM to discuss issues of mutual interest and delivered a joint G5 Political Declaration and press conference, responding to the G8’s declarations on the world economy, climate change and food security. When it came to climate, the G5 were particularly pointed, shifting the onus of emissions reductions squarely on the G8, claiming that they are the states most responsible for today’s poor climate conditions. Instead of Japan’s 50/50 strategy, the G5 called for 80-95% CO2 reductions below 1990 levels by 2050 with mid-term targets of 25-40% reductions by 2020.
These short paragraphs on climate change advanced a much more progressive strategy to combatting climate change, while also setting appropriate measures for developing countries. Paragraph 18 of the declaration reads;
We, on our part, are committed to undertaking nationally appropriate mitigation and adaptation actions which also support sustainable development. We would increase the depth and range of these actions supported and enabled by financing, technology and capacity-building with a view to achieving a deviation from business-as-usual.
While paragraph 21 welcomed the proposals of China (for an ODA-type financing structure for climate initiatives, 0.5% of GDP) and of Mexico (for the establishment of a World Climate Change Fund). The G5 showed a maturity in the way it addressed climate change and accordingly none of the G5 leaders supported Japan’s MEM declaration.
Poor Leadership
Although often considered a “steering committee” for the world, when it comes to climate change, the G8 faces great opposition. Looking ahead to the UNFCCC’s 2009 meeting in Copenhagen where a post-Kyoto agenda to engage developing countries will be discussed, the G8 will likely be urged by the vast majority of states to share the bulk of emissions reductions. Is this unreasonable? No, quite the opposite. Will this be accomplished? Again, no, the G8 perceive mandated emissions reductions as a threat to economic sustainability.
Following the G5’s ground-breaking meeting in Sapporo, with their declared “consolidation of bilateral interests”, it is likely that in upcoming climate change discussions (Poznan 2008; Copenhagen 2009) a new form of South-South cooperation may develop. G5 leadership among the G77 bloc of developing countries is not unlikely, having roots in the IBSA Forum, G20-Trade, and the BRICs foreign ministers meetings. The climate agenda outlined in their Sapporo declaration will likely gain traction among the G77; a group that will help dictate the terms of a post-Kyoto framework.
The MEM will soon be a distant memory, where the impractical and inadequate strategies advanced by out-going leaders will be eclipsed by new priorities of new leaders. However, what the MEM has done is lowered expectations of action on climate by the world’s wealthiest states, stalled any serious activity towards addressing the world’s pressing climate crisis, and has solidified political support among the leading developing countries.
Tags: climate change, Cool Earth, Energy, energy security, Fukuda, G77, G8, Heiligendamm Process, Hokkaido, MEM, MEM-16, rising powers, Toyako
