TMP Online

On the day the annual G8 summit begins, International development policy specialist, Chichi Umunna, looks at the challenges ahead.  

Today, the heads of state and government from each of the G8 countries, plus additional invitees from other states (the “emerging economy” countries of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa), the president of the European Commission and other key international organisations, are meeting in Germany for the 33rd Summit of the G8.

While using it’s presidency to highlight the increasing importance of the emerging economies and global governance, Germany, under the leadership of its Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has declared the “Leitmotif” of the summit to be “Growth and Responsibility”.  The summit will focus on the following key global challenges: the world economy; newly industrialised economies; global governance; and, Africa’s economic, political, and social development.

In the beginning, G8 Summits were used to discuss economic issues only; it wasn’t until the ‘80s that foreign policy issues were added to the summit agenda and later, in the ‘90s, that environmental and development-policy matters became of such importance that they were considered an international collaborative issue.

Chancellor Merkel explained in a pre-summit speech that “we…must shape globalisation through political action, at [an] international level.” But is the emphasis on emerging economies, to the detriment of the developing countries? This is a question that will be hot on the lips of the critics, who have started measuring G8 progress by looking at the advances made towards the achievement of the commitments made at the pivotal 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

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