Peter Draper is a research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).
From a South African perspective, the G8 Summit passed without much coverage in the print media. This lack of publicity seems to be indicative that the G8 Summit was not as significant as the G20 Summit. Most of the coverage on the G8 Summit in SA’s print media was sourced from international news agencies, like Reuters or AFP, and simply re-printed. One journalist indicated to me that the reason for this is simple: SA publications do not have the funding to dispatch journalists to cover the summit in detail. Only once the summit concluded did several publications offer editorials.
Public Engagement
Given the lack of coverage it is difficult to tell the level of public engagement. The issues that received some airtime here were the obvious ones (climate change; food security; world trade talks) and the African agenda. This demonstrates some commitment on the part of the publications concerned to do some justice to the issues, but given that the articles were sourced from foreign newsfeeds, coverage was necessarily not critically filtered from a South African perspective. This leads to the conclusion that the wider agenda tends rather to diffuse public attention – as mediated by the South African media.
Public Focus
According to one opinion piece, the significance of the G8 Summit for South Africa is that by the second day the G8 “effectively ceased to meet on its own, joining up instead with the G-5.” It was more a summit of inclusiveness and represented a new dimension of world politics. This manifested in the permutations and combinations beyond the original G8 membership that discussed various issues: climate change was discussed by both the G8 and the Major Economies Forum on energy and climate change; for the first time there was a joint G8-Africa Statement; and particular countries were included on particular issues – for example Australia, Korea and Indonesia were part of talks on global trade. Hence the G8 Summit was also labelled a “summit in waiting, rather than a summit in itself.” Many of the issues tackled by the G8 were viewed to be decisions that feed into further, focused meetings. For example, climate change targets discussions were viewed as feeding into the December Copenhagen meeting; and the G8’s discussion of the economic crisis seemed minor in comparison to that of the G20 leaders in their April London Summit and who are due to meet this September.
G8 Relevance
In a report released by the Mail and Guardian, the G8 is described as “increasingly unrepresentative of the world and it lacks both legitimacy and power...the G8 cannot tackle the world’s most urgent problems...the only solution out of this mess is to cast petty politics aside and to democratise the G8 and expand it to the G14.” While acknowledging that replacing the G8 with the G20 would have practical constraints because the intimacy and informality of discussion would be lost, there were still calls for a reconstituted G14 (or a variation thereof) to signify that global distribution of power is not set in stone. The present construction of the G8 was deemed a “farce, where declining and self-important Western nations celebrate themselves and believe that the West can still fix the world.” The same article asserted that to remain effective the G8 must regain three attributes: the ability to address global problems, legitimacy and practicality. Inclusion of the increasingly powerful G5, would help the G8 regain its ability to address global problems such as climate change. The example cited in the Mail and Guardian was that any agreement to reduce emissions that did not include China, India and Brazil would not contribute to lasting change.
Global Leadership
Generally the G8 was praised for its recognition of new emerging powers in the international order. But the relevance of the G8 as a decision-making body was questioned, largely because it represents a construction of the world as it existed in 1980 and not 2010. Managing the economic crisis did not receive much airtime, no doubt because the G20 is regarded as a more effective forum for this. While some advances were made in terms of climate change, increased commitment in the allocation of aid money and food security for Africa, these commitments were diluted by a lack of specificity as to how these objectives would be achieved. The announced increases in aid were welcomed with caution since these utterances were made at Gleneagles in 2005, with some states not honouring those commitments – not least the hosts.
From a South African perspective, it is significant that the G5 countries were able to be the voice for developing countries in the global arena. This was partly due to their consensus on key issues: they agreed on the agenda and goals for the summit, they hold similar views on the representivity and focus of multilateral institutions such as the Security Council and World Bank on several issues such as climate change. However, one article in the Sunday Independent cautioned that it may take a while for the G8 to become the G14 by including the G5 (plus Egypt) because some leaders in the G8 countries which do not have permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council fear that such a move would dilute their clout in world affairs.