As part of End Water Poverty, Tearfund delivered 80,000 messages to Downing Street ahead of the G8. Photo: Jay Butcher/Tearfund
The G8 Summit in the Italian city of L’Aquila finished with leaders failing to deliver agreements to help poor communities.
On climate change, Tearfund hoped that rich G8 countries would seize the opportunity to build momentum towards sealing a strong and fair climate deal in Copenhagen this December.
Though leaders did recognise the need to keep global warming below 2 degrees and commit to 80 per cent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050 for rich countries – a welcome sign of what can be achieved when leadership and ambition is demonstrated – details about what year they would base those cuts on were ambiguous.
To prevent a 2 degree rise in global temperature the world needs to reduce emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels.
Basing reductions on current levels is inadequate as emissions have grown substantially in the last two decades.
Leaders also left out goals for 2020 emissions targets which would be an important signpost towards the 2050 targets and neglected to deliver crucial climate finance to help poor countries respond to climate change. Without agreement of this money there will be no deal in December.
On water and sanitation, leaders were urged to sign up to a Global Framework for Action to reverse the current crisis that sees one in eight people go without clean water and 2.5 billion without a decent loo.
Instead of addressing this injustice, leaders offered nice words and vague references to plans for later this year.
The one glimmer of hope from the week was President Obama’s statement at the Major Economies Forum – happening simultaneously to the G8 – that challenged finance ministers to come back to the G20 negotiating table in September with finance proposals to support developing countries respond to climate change.
Tearfund will continue to press world leaders to make sure that they do.
For the full G8 2009 press release, click here.