G8 08 Interaction Policy Statement General

2008 G8 Summit Position Statement January 2008 InterAction applauds the United States’ critical leadership in advancing assistance to the developing world, especially in the areas of debt relief and HIV/AIDS. The administration’s initiatives have resulted in more than doubling of aid to Africa. In 2005 G8 countries made historic commitments to work towards ending extreme poverty, especially in Africa. The promises included: fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria while strengthening health systems; canceling unsustainable debt of the poorest countries; expanding access to education, clean water and sanitation; and supporting agricultural development. Although progress has been made on many of these commitments, InterAction urges the United States to exercise its leadership role to ensure both the United States and other G8 countries implement the commitments. If developing countries are unable to spend their aid on health care and education the commitments will be for naught. The International Monetary Fund’s macroeconomic policies too often restrict governments’ ability to scale up investments in health care, education, and other sectors. This is due to wage ceilings and unnecessarily risk-averse targets for deficit and inflation reduction. In addition to the specific requests below, we urge the G8 governments to call upon the IMF to adjust these policies and to ensure the IMF allows greater policy, monetary, and fiscal space within country budgets to meet health care, education, climate adaptation, agricultural development, and other needs as outlined in the Millennium Development Goals. During the lead up to the 2008 Summit we call attention to four specific areas where we believe the United States can once again play a leadership role. Two of the topics will be on the Summit’s agenda: global health care and climate change while education and agriculture would be welcome additions. Health Systems We commend President Bush for demonstrating leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS with the establishment of PEPFAR and last year’s commitment of $30 billion of additional funding over five years. InterAction urges the United States to continue its leadership by pressing the G8 Summit to approve new efforts and commit to reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under five. The United States needs to lead an international effort to significantly increase investments by the G8 countries, other donors, and the developing countries to achieve MDG 4. The achievement of MDG 5 to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters requires improving maternal health in a holistic manner by ensuring universal access to reproductive health care, expanding emergency obstetric care, and increasing skilled birth attendants. This work will depend on strengthening health systems and a significant increase in health care workers, especially in Africa.

Climate Change Climate change is becoming one of the major drivers of poverty around the world, contributing to economic destabilization, resource conflicts, and migration and refugee crises. The serious effects of global warming are already being felt and will increase in severity due to continuing rise in global greenhouse gas emissions. We applaud the recent attention by the US to human-induced climate change. This has helped increase international engagement on these concerns. Impoverished countries are being hit first and worst by the consequences of climate change and will have the least capacity to cope with increasingly devastating impacts, including water scarcity, droughts, sea-level rise, floods, disruption of agricultural production, and spread of disease. The G8 countries need to reaffirm the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Bali Action Plan as the central frameworks in which governments will address climate change. To achieve this the G8 countries need to commit substantially increased assistance to vulnerable developing countries for their needs to adapt to the existing and increasingly severe impacts of climate change. Global temperature increases need to be limited to no more than 3.6 degrees F above pre-industrial levels. To accomplish this G8 countries need to lead reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions to below 50% by mid-century, with deeper cuts by developed countries. G8 Summit Agenda We applaud the role of the United States in identifying education as one of its three top development priorities. We appreciate President Bush’s announcement in 2007of an Expanded Education Program that would provide an additional four million children with quality basic education, deliver technical training for 100,000 at-risk youth, and coordinate with child health programs that impact educational attainment. InterAction requests that the United States ensure education is included on the Summit agenda and within its communiqué statement. InterAction also urges the addition of agriculture to the G8 agenda. The United States has been one of the leaders in addressing global agricultural and food security issues. The President’s Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA), announced in 2002, seeks to cut hunger in Africa in half by 2015. IEHA's key principles include building alliances and broad-based political and financial commitments among public and private development partners in Africa and focusing investments on core activities designed to eliminate hunger in Africa. However sufficient resources have not been forthcoming. It is important for the G8 to significantly increase its support for agricultural development in the developing world and Africa in particular. InterAction InterAction is the largest alliance of U.S.-based international development and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations. With more than 165 members operating in every developing country, InterAction works to overcome poverty, exclusion, and suffering by advancing social justice and basic dignity for all. For questions or comments please contact: John Ruthrauff, Senior Manager of Member Advocacy InterAction 1400 16th Street, NW Suite 210 Washington DC 20036 [email protected], Telephone: 202-552-6523.

2