16th July, 2005
DAVID ADAMS

Billions tuned in to Live8, thousands joined in rallies around the world and in Scotland, the leaders of the G8 spoke of “a moment of opportunity for Africa”. Then came the London bombings and the world’s eyes focused once more on the ugly spectre of terrorism.

Yet progress was made.

ON THE MARCH: People walk through Edinburgh's old town at one of the rallies organised in Scotland earlier this month. PICTURE: Courtesy of the Make Poverty History campaign, Australia.

While British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons earlier this week that an agreement among G8 nations to double aid for Africa to $US50 billion by 2010 was a “mighty achievement”, in Australia there seems to be some level of consensus among aid agencies and related organisations that while the G8 meeting at Gleneagles was a welcome step forward, much more still remains to be done to truly address the issue of global poverty.

James Ensor, policy director at Oxfam Australia, says that the “world’s richest countries have delivered welcome progress for the world’s poorest people” but that the outcome had still fallen short of a momentous breakthrough.

In particular Ensor says that while the doubling of aid to Africa - which is being phased in over the next five years - could save the lives of five million children by 2010, “if the increase had kicked in immediately, it could have lifted 300 million people out of poverty in the next five years”.

Ensor says that while confirmation of the decision made earlier this year to cancel the debts of 18 of the world’s poorest countries was expected, it was disappointing the G8 didn’t go further to include a number of other highly indebted poor nations such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

He says the least progress was made in the area of trade.

“There is some positive language in the communiqué about poor countries being able to export their products to the rich world, but the communiqué stopped short of setting an end date for scrapping export subsidies.”

(His point echoes that made some days before by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan who, while welcoming the aid increase and debt cancellation agreements, said he had hoped for the G8 leaders to commit themselves to a “clear unambiguous date” for ending export subsidies. “They will have other opportunity to do so in December at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) meeting in Hong Kong,” he said.)

Amanda Jackson, national coordinator of the Micah Challenge - a global campaign aimed at mobilising Christians to tackle poverty, says that one of the major benefits of Live 8, the Make Poverty History campaign and the focus on the G8 meeting at Gleneagles has been to push the issue of global poverty to the forefront of people’s minds.

“It was wonderful to have all that attention, to have people talking about the issue, to have it on the front page of newspapers, to have it talked about on radio - that was fantastic,” she says.

But she adds that while, with the exception of the announcement surrounding the doubling of aid to Africa, “nothing really new came out of the G8 meeting”, it was nonetheless a positive step forward in the fight to combat global poverty with the confirmation of the decision to cancel the debts of 18 nations.

“A lot commentators from the campaigning side were very critical of the decision (to double aid), saying that ‘Oh, it was only a tiny bit, it’s not enough’ and you could take that line but, on the other hand, it’s just amazing that the G8 were even discussing these issues...” she says. “It’s a huge step forward.”

All eyes are now turning to the United Nation’s World Summit in New York in September where progress toward the Millennium Development Goals - eight goals approved at a UN Summit in 2000 aimed at tackling such issues as extreme poverty, disease and environmental sustainability by a deadline of 2015 - will be one of the issues up for discussion by world leaders.

Jack de Groot, the chairman of the Make Poverty History campaign in Australia, said the summit represents an important opportunity for Australia to join with other OECD developed countries by announcing a timetable under which it will increase aid to .5 per cent of the gross national income from the current level of 0.28 per cent.

Commenting in the wake of the Gleneagles summit, he said that Australia stood out now as the only one of the OECD’s developed countries which hadn’t made any new aid commitments in a bid to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

“At the UN Summit in eight weeks time, Australia has the chance to demonstrate that it will rise to this global challenge,” he said.

What further action Australia, the G8 nations and the remainder of the developed world takes to tackle the issues associated with poverty remains to be seen. But Gleneagles, according to most, was another step in the right direction.

Perhaps the last word - for now - should be left to one of the Live8 organisers, Sir Bob Geldof. While warning that it was perhaps too early to call the G8 summit "historic", he said: “What is true is that never before have so many people forced a change of policy onto the global agenda and today that policy has been forcefully addressed.”