July 6 2008. Recent G8 summits have not been kind to rabble-rousers. Ever since street violence marred the 2001 meeting in Genoa, Italy, and terrorists attacked the US that same year, summit organisers have swept their charges off to ever more remote locations. Islands, forests and highland retreats have been popular.

At the Windsor hotel in Hokkaido, G8 leaders will be shielded from anyone with a disruptive agenda – terrorists, sure, but also activist groups and legitimate protesters. Non-governmental organisations, which hold views on everything from climate change to landmine clearance, fear they will struggle to be heard.

“The giant heads are on their way, but we’re not sure what to do with them yet,” says Takumo Yamada of Oxfam, the UK-based anti-poverty group, referring to the papier-mâché effigies of world leaders that have become a staple of publicity events and street demonstrations.

Oxfam and other groups must reconcile limited access to G8 leaders with a growing list of demands, as emerging global crises pile new priorities on top of old ones. Among other things, activists want the G8 to tackle climate change, protect the poor from food and oil price rises, forgive developing countries’ debt, fight bureaucratic corruption, promote women’s rights, bring peace to Darfur, shun Burma’s ruling junta and press China to ease its grip on Tibet.

To help delegates and the media keep it all straight, 140 Japanese NGOs and their western counterparts have set up a central clearing house, the NGO Forum, whose representatives met Yasuo Fukuda, Japan’s prime minister, last month. By necessity, much of their lobbying has been limited to pre-summit events in Tokyo.

They can take heart that some of their most pressing concerns – climate change, poverty and soaring food prices in particular – have already secured a place on the G8 agenda.

For example, Mr Fukuda has proclaimed Toyako a “green summit” and last month committed Japan to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80 per cent by 2050.

On development, growing inflation in many poor countries has added new burdens on the poor. Some 290m people need immediate food aid, according to Oxfam, yet there is a sense that the G8 is already behind the curve after failing to fund commitments made at previous summits, in particular its poverty-focused meeting at Gleneagles in the UK three years ago.

“The G8 seem to be turning their backs on the promises they made in 2005,” says Oxfam’s Mr Yamada. Chief among them was a pledge to increase aid to poor countries by $50bn by 2010, but Oxfam foresees actual aid falling $30bn short of that mark. Likewise, the G8 appears to be edging away from a commitment to provide universal access to HIV drugs in Africa by 2010.

Some activists see recent food price rises as an opportunity to roll back rich-country agricultural policies that have made life tougher for farmers in the developing world, although there is little sign that farm protectionism is in retreat. Wealthy nations provide an estimated $4bn a year in agricultural aid to poor ones, but subsidise their own farm industries to the tune of $126bn.

“If we don’t address the root causes of the problems we won’t be able to deal with the symptoms,” says Arjun Karki of LDC Watch, which lobbies on behalf of the world’s least-developed countries.

One of the biggest problems for NGOs and G8 leaders alike is that the most pressing global crises are linked in awkward ways, with progress in one area creating potential setbacks in others. Activists worry that multi-billion-dollar funds being set up to help poor countries buy green technology will end up “robbing” aid budgets in other areas.

Many would also like to see China, India and other developing countries stop subsidising fuel consumption, but hasty policy changes would hurt the poor in the short term. Berating China over Tibet and its oil investments in Sudan, meanwhile, could make it tougher to woo Beijing on emissions reductions.

Such complications are bound to make an already frustrating summit for activists even more so.

Source: The Financial Times