Rome: It is a confident, resurgent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who will be discussing global issues with leaders at the G8 outreach meetings in Italy for three days. Earlier in April, when he attended the G20 summit in London, it was as a lame duck Prime Minister facing uncertain prospects of return to power in an election process that was already under way. If then his standing as an economist and originator of economic reforms in India still made the outside world hear him with respect, he can now speak with the authority of popular endorsement of his policies and the renewed mandate.
The G8 meetings provide an opportunity to discuss global issues in an informal setting and they are not a negotiating forum. Originally scheduled to be held in La Maddalena in the island of Sardinia, the venue was shifted to the austere setting of a military training school in L’Aquila in the middle of the Abruzzo region in central Italy that was hit by an earthquake on April 6. This move was Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s way of showing empathy and bringing the leaders closer to the people and their concerns.
The G8 that started out as an exclusive club of the industrial nations has over the years expanded its reach to bring in other countries into the dialogue process. The major dialogue partners are the G5 countries – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. In addition, Egypt has been invited to this year’s meetings. Australia, Indonesia and South Korea are being brought into the meetings to constitute the major economies forum along with the European Commission and the major multilateral organisations. In all, the leaders meeting in Italy represent 90 per cent of the world’s economy.
India sees the G8 as a useful and effective forum for discussing issues of the global economy and moving things forward in international institutions. The format of the meetings is a compromise between the original exclusivity and the broader expansion of the dialogue.
Parallel summits
On Wednesday, there will be parallel summits of the G8 countries (chaired by Italy) and the G5 (chaired by Mexico). Then on Thursday will follow the combined meetings of the G8 and the G5 along with the international organisations, Egypt and other major economies. The third day of the summit will bring the African countries into the dialogue with the G8 and the G5, with the focus on food security.
The Heiligendamm dialogue process between the G8 and the G5 was started at the summit in Germany in 2007 and focuses on innovation, including intellectual property rights, investments including ethical business conduct, energy and economic development. Four working groups have been appointed to study the issues and they will be submitting their reports at this summit.
The two major issues to be addressed at this summit will be economic recovery and climate change. The process of bringing about a greater coordination of policies to reverse the current downturn and making regulation more effective that was started at the G20 London summit in April will be taken forward now even as the G20 Pittsburg summit approaches later this year.
The discussions on climate change at the meeting of major economies forum — accounting for 80 per cent of the global carbon emissions — are considered critical in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit on climate change to be held in December.
Several unresolved issues remain in this area, with the industrial countries pushing China and India to move to a less polluting path to development while the developing countries, particularly India, want the developed world to cut back its emissions sharply — by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. While the meetings in Italy are not expected to resolve all the issues, a strong declaration of political commitment to move towards an agreement in Copenhagen is expected.
In addition to the summit meetings, Dr. Singh will be holding a series of bilateral meetings with the leaders who have assembled here.
