July 9: Leaders of the world’s five leading emerging economies, among them India, who club as the Goup of Five (G-5), have firmly placed the ball in the court of the leaders of the world’s eight biggest powers (G-8) to nurse the planet back to health. The biggest economies, they say, are the biggest culprits, so they must not only walk the talk by executing promises made at the larger G-20 forum earlier in Washington and London, but pay for cleaning up the planet as well.

The G-5 countries also refused to negotiate on climate concerns at any other forum other than the UN platform UNFCC that is meeting in Copenhagen in December. What’s more, the G5 leaders said, climate change issues and food security concerns should not be discussed in isolation, but the entire gamut of social, economic and livelihood concerns must be discussed together and acted upon as they are all interlinked. The G-5 also called for a complete overhaul the global regulatory institutions, including the UN, IMF and World Bank.

The message of the G-5 leaders came across loud and clear at the end of their huddle hours ahead of the big talk on climate change here where nearly 30 heads of state and government, including several outside the G-5 and G-8 groupings, met on Thursday.

The final statement of the major economies forum issued in the day represents the concerns of both G-5 and G-8 nations. India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa make up the G-5 club, while the US, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and Japan make up G-8.

In their press conference ahead of Thursday’s discussions, G-5 leaders enumerated five clear agendas for fixing the world’s ailments. Elaborating on these, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the G-5 leaders were agreed that all previous resolutions, particularly those made at the G-20 summits, must be implemented to restore the global financial and economic order.

Second, developed countries must cease to adopt protectionist measures in trade and services and must participate in the timely completion of the Doha Round. Statements made by developed countries and their actions did not meet the ground realities to suggest timely completion of the multilateral trade talks, he said.

On the important issue of climate change, that has held centrestage at this Alpine town, President Calderon reiterated India’s and other member countries’ stand that the G-5 was "committed to shared responsibilities of meeting their commitment on climate change". In essence, he said, the developed countries must may up for the past sins of scarring the earth. He said the emerging countries were fully committed to working for the environment and finding a way out of the current logjam provided the developed countries meet their historic liabilities.

On the other important issue of food security being discussed at G-8, but somewhat pushed to the background with the climate debate in limelight, the G-5 leaders said, food security issues were of immense concern to the poor countries, but should be resolved without surrendering the sovereignty of nations.

The G-5 has also agreed to meet once more to thrashing out their agendas ahead of the next round of G-20 talks at Pittsburgh, President Caderon said.

The G-5’s concerns were also voiced by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South African President Jacob Zuma, Prime Minister Manomohan Singh (whose statement was already reported by this newspaper on Thursday) and the Chinese deputy prime minister who represented the country’s President, Mr Hu Jintao.

President Lula said the leaders meeting here were managing to consolidate the consciousness of the G-5 and G-8 leaders, hinting that a resolution was far away. "We know where the economic crisis originated. We know who pollutes more and, therefore, is responsible. We are also concerned about food security that involves sovereignty of nations." President Lula said the issues being discussed at L’Aquila were extremely important and cannot be discussed in 300 committees. "We cannot discuss food crisis and climate change independent of the economic crisis," he said.

Expressing solidarity with his teammates, Prime Minister Singh reiterated the need for rich countries to pay up for their historic sins. Later, briefing the Indian media, foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon said Prime Minister Singh emphasised in his talks with global leaders that the green shoots of economy were still fragile and the imbalances of the structure of the world economy would have to be rectified for a meaningful recovery to happen.