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Look what's not on the
menu
By Julio Godoy
PARIS -
The summit of the Group of Eight (G8), to take place on
June 1-3 in the French Alpine city of Evian, will not
fulfill its own agenda, independent observers say. They
point out that it will, in fact, fail to address some of
the pressing issues of environment, development and
health facing the global economy.
The meeting,
which will bring together the heads of state and
government of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the
United States, Canada, Japan and Russia, was expected to
address all these issues. However, negotiations prior to
the summit have downgraded the agenda, which now will be
focused almost exclusively on the so-called "war on
terror", the observers said.
On environmental
issues, preparatory meetings held in Paris in late April
abstained from unequivocal statements that would enhance
maritime transport safety of dangerous chemical
substances, especially heavy oil. Under pressure from
Japan, the G8 environment ministers lifted the ban on
single hull frame oil tankers to serve as carriers of
chemical substances. Japan also opposed the
strengthening of legal responsibility of ship owners.
For Helene Ballande of the environmental
organization Friends of the Earth, Tokyo's opposition
"only reflects Japan's economic specific interests, such
as the defense of its ship manufacturing industry, and
its heavy dependence on imported oil. The Japanese
government wanted to weaken every commitment the G8
environmental ministers intend to take on maritime
transport," Ballande said.
Similarly, on health
issues, says the French daily Le Monde, "the original G8
plan of action to improve the access of the world's
poorest countries to medicaments has been downgraded."
The newspaper says the French government had prepared an
ambitious declaration for endorsement by the G8, drawing
attention to "the global hygienic crisis and the
critical situation" arising from the lack of low-cost
medicine in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The
initial French position also referred to the Doha
Declaration, issued during the World Trade Organization
(WTO) summit in November 2001 in Qatar. It called for
"an integrated framework to improve access to medical
treatment and medicine" in the poorest countries of the
world.
This integrated framework would include
the boosting of local medicine production in the
countries of the south, and the transfer of technology
from highly developed to developing lands. "But the US
government rejected this original statement, leading to
a downgrading of the health issue in the G8 agenda," Le
Monde claimed.
Instead, Washington came out with
its own proposal, which dismisses the notion that "the
price of medicaments may be the principal obstacle to an
improvement of health". The US proposal also underlines
the "importance of a powerful private sector's role" in
health questions.
According to Le Monde, the
French government accepted the US objections, "surely
aiming to avoid new tensions [between Paris and
Washington] as those provoked by the war against Iraq,
and which would endanger the summit of Evian".
The new so-called Plan of Action for Health to
be discussed by G8 "pays tribute to the pharmaceutical
industry, makes no reference to the Doha Declaration, to
the local production of medicine or to the transfer of
technology".
For Jean-Herve Bradol, president of
the French organization Doctors without Borders, the
downgrading of the health issue on the agenda of the G8
summit "is a very bad news". "Three years ago, the G8
meeting at Okinawa fixed ambitious objectives to reduce
the spread of AIDS," Bradol told IPS. "Since then, the
number of AIDS victims has increased."
The
accusations that private interests are misusing the G8
summit go further. The G8 will also boost the
privatization of water in the countries of the south,
critics of the summit claim. According to Corporate
European Observatory (CEO), a watchdog organization
based in Amsterdam, the European Union Water Fund, to be
presented at the G8 summit in Evian "seems more about
corporate welfare than helping the world's poorest".
Indeed, water will also be a top issue on the G8
agenda in Evian. French President Jacques Chirac is
preparing a Global Water Plan and European Commission
President Romano Prodi will launch the EU Water Fund.
The latter is based on proposals made by a panel mostly
financed by private multinationals managing water
resources all over the world, such as the French
companies Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, and Vivendi. It is
directed by former International Monetary Fund director
Michel Camdessus.
Last March, the panel issued a
report, titled "Financing Water for All", also known as
"The Camdessus Report", which openly advocates for the
so-called "full cost recovery" of private investments in
water.
This means that the governments in the
poorest countries of the world would guarantee the
private investments in water infrastructure, either by
means of rising water tariffs, or by subsidies, in case
users cannot pay the high water prices. Camdessus is not
only the chairperson of the panel financed by private
water multinationals, but also Chirac's personal
representative for development in Africa.
Olivier Hoedeman of CEO told IPS, "Confidential
documents show how the European Commission has worked in
tandem with Suez and other giant water corporations in
developing its international water initiatives."
Hoedeman recalled that EU officials had maintained
intensive communication with private water companies'
executives, so as to design a common strategy to force
countries in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia to
open their water services to privatization.
"In
early April, the European Commission released a first
proposal for a new 1 billion euro (US$1.17 billion) fund
for water investments in 77 developing countries in
Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), all former
colonies of EU member states," CEO says in a paper
analyzing the EU strategy for water privatization.
The EU claims that its fund "should be able to
give a very flexible answer to a variety of situations,
providing the missing link in the financing of
sustainable projects/activities. The need for a fund of
this kind is obvious, but the EU proposal seems heavily
influenced by the Camdessus report," Hoedeman said.
"While mostly shrouded in ambiguous wording, the
fund proposal clearly suggests providing public finance
to private water corporations wanting to run water
delivery in the south," he added.
Ballande also
called the Camdessus Report "a proposal to guarantee
private water companies that their investments in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America will always be
lucrative, despite the market situation". He said the G8
had abandoned plans for a "Charter of Principles for a
Responsible Market Economy", which would formulate the
basis for so-called ethical corporate governance.
According to Ballande, both the US and the
British governments opposed the charter, and pressed
instead for a new investment agreement under the WTO to
favor private multinationals. "This new investment
agreement would secure more rights to multinationals to
take developing countries to court if these countries
try to improve the situation of national enterprises,"
Ballande said.
The new investment agreement
reminds of the so-called and highly controversial
project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), the "Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI)" that aimed to enhance the legal rights
of private multinationals.
Discussed in secret
sessions at the OECD in 1997, MAI plans were unraveled
by non-governmental organizations in Canada and in
France. Bowing to public protests, both countries'
governments withdrew their support for the plan,
bringing it down.
(Inter Press
Service)
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