The following op-ed feature was published in the Ottawa Citizen on July 5, 2008 in advance of the meeting of the G8 leaders in Japan from July 7 to 9. It was written by John Githongo, World Vision International's vice president for policy and advocacy.
As the G8 leaders travel to Hokkaido, Japan next week, high on their agenda will be the food and fuel crisis, not least because their own citizens are starting to feel the effects of higher prices for both.
It also helps that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the World Bank's Robert Zoellick have shone the spotlight on these issues, with Mr. Zoellick warning that the world is entering "a danger zone" in respect to food.
Food price riots have broken out in a range of countries on different continents demonstrating the growing political implications of these issues.
The flip side has been an unprecedented commodities boom that has filled the coffers of some nations while emptying those of other, mostly land-locked, resource scarce, poor nations.
Inequality Deepens Poverty
A crisis of inequality looms in this world that combines plenty with the deepening impoverishment of some who had actually made significant strides against poverty over the last two decades.
Unlike poverty per se, inequality lends itself to far more urgent political expression. Around it populists, fundamentalists and others whose objectives lead us further from a safer world are able to mobilize.
The defining issue that will confront nations such as Canada as they engage in the global South is the politicization of inequality.
It is commendable that the last two decades have seen more people lifted out of poverty than at any other time in human history. But in high economic growth conditions where poor governance attends, inequality becomes the most powerful defining characteristic of society, especially its most vibrant urban manifestations.
The world's young people will be at the sharp edge of these trends -- globalized, some liberated by unregulated commerce, others pushed to the periphery but with a full view of the beneficiaries, especially those in the growing service and commodity sectors. Global inequality, unmitigated by the efforts of the G8 against poverty, is easily domesticated in a variety of sometimes-untoward ways.
Change Requires All Nations
The coming together of the fuel and food crisis with a global economic slowdown shows the extent to which all the nations of the world are increasingly intertwined economically, politically and culturally. As Canadians pump $1.40-per-litre gas into their cars, for example, they are feeling the effect of the same price increases that are putting food out of reach for millions of citizens in the world's poorer countries.
Canadians are, by and large, generous people. Still, the challenges wrought by the global economic slowdown, increased commodity and food prices should not tempt too many away from this culture of generosity. Upon it future global stability will be ensured.
As the summit begins, it is important to note that there are global issues that require collective action of the kind the G8 musters for true effectiveness.
HIV/AIDS is a good example. Like smallpox and polio, it lends itself to co-ordinated global solutions. This virus does not discriminate but it often strikes in sections of society whose stability is essential for policy predictability, as well as national and even global security.
Canada Must Keep Promises
There is a real danger in this summit that leaders will back away from commitments made regarding universal access to care, prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS by 2010. This would be a tragic global error.
If our hopes for progress are to be realized at all during this G8 summit, then Canada and other countries need to keep their promises. Most have pledged, in Canada's case going back to the 1970s, to commit 0.7 per cent of our Gross National Income to aid.
But in fact, Canada has been moving further away from the 0.7-per-cent target.
Most recent statistics from 2007 show that the government gave only 0.28 per cent of GNI to overseas development -- down from 0.34 per cent GNI in 2005 and a far cry from the promise Prime Minister Stephen Harper made to raise Canada's aid commitment to the average of donor countries.
One hopes that the relatively low level of global geopolitical encumbrance Canada enjoys will serve to provide the moral authority to make a persuasive case in Hokkaido for continued commitment to keep the promises already made with regard to aid levels and HIV/AIDS commitments.
Canada's opportunity here is unique but temporary.
John Githongo is World Vision International's vice-president for policy and advocacy. He was formerly Kenya's top anti-corruption official before being forced into exile in 2005.
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