G8 summit: a global displacement activity

Western governments’ desire to globalise big issues - from poverty to climate change - is an attempt to escape real responsibility for policymaking. This year’s Group of Eight (G8) gathering in Toyako, Japan, has broadly been seen as a ‘back to the 1970s’ international summit, its agenda dominated by the threat of economic stagnation and rising commodity prices in the West. The centrality of these issues is said to undermine promises to address climate change and world poverty (1). The comparisons with the 1970s starkly reveal how much has changed in both international and domestic politics, while underlying economic problems appear to have remained much the same. The G8, made up of seven of the world’s leading industrialised nations, plus Russia, was set up as a forum for economic and trade matters. Its roots lie in the oil... [read full story]