U of T’s G8 Research Group (G8RG) is ending an intense, but rewarding, few days at the Hokkaido Summit here in Japan. The Japanese hosts had hoped to centre the Summit around Climate Change, but was overshadowed by increasing food and oil prices, as well as the political violence in Zimbabwe. Nonetheless, the G8RG think something came out of the summit, and the analysts are all hastily finishing their final assessment reports on the countries and issues…well, most analysts, not this blogger…

The G8RG is the world’s leading independent research group which specializes in providing expert analysis and interpretation on the G8 countries, issues, and institutions. There are 22 U of T students compiling reports on this year’s summit. All of our findings can be found on the student website here or our other official site here.

The progress on climate change has received mixed responses. The G8 leaders have fully committed to reducing CO2 emmissions by 50% in 2050. The advocates of the agreement say that this is the first time G8 leaders have all committed to reducing CO2. Yet its critics say that the lack of mid-term and short-term targets almost make the agreement meaningless. There is tension between developing and developed countries on who should be reducing what in order to achieve their targets.

While the G8 leaders have committed more money to health, education, and development on the continent, discussions were dominated on Zimbabwe. G8 leaders called on the African Union to put pressure on the “illegitimate” regime of Robert Mugabe. Furthermore, the leaders have agreed on targed sanctions on 14 top Zimbabwe officials which include freezing their assets and prohibiting their travel abroad.

The G8 have also committed to help mitigate the pressures of increasing food prices in the developing world. Furthermore, the G8 are urging for an increase in world oil production, as well as the development of more renewable energy sources. Biofuels were also another contentious issue for the G8, as a leaked World Bank report suggested that sometimes of the renewable energy sources were contributing to the rising food prices.

While we are all sad and relieved that the Summit is over, with all of us having mixed reviews on the performance of the G8 leaders, and the G8 institution as a whole. Yet we have had some fun getting interviewed by masses of Japanese media. We were asked everything from the issues of the G8, to questions of the leaders’ wives, to questions about the local cheese (which I must admit is quite good). We were also quite impressed with the ‘eco-friendly’ media centre (although amazed at the cost), as well as the awesome media, eco swag that we got.

Many of us are looking forward to the Summit next year in Sardinia, Italy, but many are very confused as to why the 2010 Summit is being held in Dearhead, Muskoka. Once again, if you fancy reading any of our reports, you can find them here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 7:40 am and is filed under Events, Wish You Were Here. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.