By KUNA,
London : Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Britain’s G8 partners Saturday to handle the threats to the global economy which required speeding up efforts to fight poverty and climate changes.
Amid fears the credit crunch would cause the G-8 to backpedal on pledges to cut carbon emissions and increase aid to poor countries by USD 50 Billion a year, the Prime Minister used an interview with the Guardian ahead of the G8 summit to stress the need for united action in the west to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and boost food production in developing countries.
“My message to the G-8 will be that instead of sidelining climate change and the development agenda, the present economic crisis means that instead of relaxing our efforts we have got to accelerate them,” said Brown, adding “This agenda is not just the key to the environment and reducing poverty, but the key to our economic future as well.” After a year that has seen growth slow sharply in many G-8 countries, including Britain, and oil prices double to USD 145 a barrel, Brown indicated that the summit would be judged on whether it rolled back protectionism, supported projects for cleaner energy, and came up with blueprints for reducing global oil and food prices. Brown said that he would consider the summit to be a success if the G-8 showed unity, gave strong backing to a new global free-trade deal, and pushed ahead on climate change and development.
The Prime Minister stated that the state of the global economy meant the summit would have echoes of those in the 1970s. “But in the 70s, many of the problems we faced were national, not global. The problems we have today are global and they require global solutions.” On climate change, Brown said he was hoping the G-8 would make progress towards a new climate change deal in Copenhagen next year, agree to “turn the World Bank into an energy bank as well as a development bank”, and show a “clear understanding of the importance of renewable to our energy and environmental future”.
Britain believes that a stalling of progress on Africa in 2008 will make it impossible for the UN to hit its millennium development goals, set for 2015, but Brown said that fighting poverty was also in the best interests of the west. “Unless we help poor countries to become more prosperous through education, health and economic development, we will be piling up the problems of global inequality.” The UK is pressing the G8 to boost the number of health workers in poor countries, bankroll the expansion of education, and invest in higher farm production. “I’ll be telling people that the worst possible thing would be to drop the development agenda because it holds the key to the economic challenge. If we don’t produce enough agriculture, we are going to have food shortages, and Africa needs help to develop its agriculture. We can’t solve the problems of food and fuel shortages unless developing countries are involved.” The G-8 consists of the US, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Russia.