No country devotes as much attention and resources to the G8 than Japan. For its last summit, hosted at Okinawa in 2000, the Japanese government assigned a budget of an about US$750 million for infrastructure upgrades, security measures and entertaining the worlds’ major leaders. This was a particularly lavish amount as it came in the middle of a banking crisis, but the hosts ensured that protocol was handled flawlessly.
This year will likely see the same sort of investment of effort and resources. The remoteness of the summit site – the beautiful lakeside resort in Hokkaido – eases issues of security and demonstrations management that have come to symbolize G8 summit imagery. Every minute detail seems to have been looked after. Gestures to mark the occasion range from the issuing of new 1000 yen coins to the formal recognition of the Ainu people – located mainly in Hokkaido – as indigenous.
Difficulties in meeting expectations appear, however, once we stretch the wish list to substantive achievements – easily exhausted by a wide set of pressing global issues. Many of these items are all too familiar to the G8, whether on security (Iraq, Afghanistan) and nuclear non-proliferation (North Korea, Iran) or African development and health issues (as rehearsed at the recent high profile Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development). But what is striking this year is the manner in which so many other concerns have jumped up so dramatically, notably the food crisis, soaring oil prices, or sovereign wealth funds.
Amidst this scattered agenda, a stubbornly persistent issue remains that of the environment generally and climate change specifically. For Japan to put this item at the top of the priority list is unassailably logical. The home-grown Kyoto Protocol remains the most tangible – if utterly unenforceable – global commitment to emissions reduction targets for key a group of countries. Technically and diplomatically, Japan has been hugely innovative in this area, bringing both the recent multilateral Kobe climate initiative and the clean technology fund concept prominently into play.
In advance of the summit, CIGI is sponsoring three conferences that will explore these themes in more detail. This blog will report on the research findings of these events, with special attention to how the Heiligendamm Process and G8 membership expansion can assist in enhancing the club’s legitimacy and efficiency.
