PARIS, May 28 (IPS) - The summit of the Group of Eight, to take place June 1-3 in the French Alpine city of Evian, will not fulfil its own agenda, independent observers say.
They point out that it will, in fact, fail to address some of the pressing issues of environment, development and health facing the global economy.
The meeting, which will bring together the heads of state and government of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada, Japan and Russia, was expected to address all these issues.
However, negotiations prior to the summit have downgraded the agenda, which now will be focused almost exclusively on the so-called war on international terrorism, the observers said.
On environmental issues, the preparatory meetings held in Paris in late April abstained from unequivocal statements that would enhance maritime transport safety of dangerous chemical substances, especially heavy oil.
Under pressure from Japan, the G8 environment ministers lifted the ban on single hull frame oil tankers to serve as carriers of chemical substances. Japan also opposed the strengthening of legal responsibility of ship owners.
For Hélène Ballande of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, Tokyo's opposition "only reflects Japan's economic specific interests, such as the defence of its ship manufacturing industry, and its heavy dependence on imported oil."
"The Japanese government wanted to weaken every commitment the G8 environmental ministers intend to take on maritime transport," Ballande said in a statement.
Similarly, on health issues, says the French daily Le Monde, "the original G8 plan of action to improve the access of the world's poorest countries to medicines has been downgraded."
The newspaper says, the French government had prepared an ambitious declaration for endorsement by the G8, drawing attention to "the global hygienic crisis and the critical situation" arising from the lack of low-cost medicine in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The initial French position also referred to the Doha Declaration, issued during the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in November 2001 in Qatar. It called for "an integrated framework to improve access to medical treatment and medicine" in the poorest countries of the world.
This integrated framework would include the boosting of local medicine production in the countries of the South, and the transfer of technology from highly developed to developing lands.
"But the U.S. government rejected this original statement, leading to a downgrading of the health issue in the G8 agenda," Le Monde claims.
Instead, Washington came out with its own proposal, which dismisses the notion that "the price of medicines may be the principal obstacle to an improvement of health."
The U.S. proposal also underlines the "importance of a powerful private sector's role" in health questions.
According to Le Monde, the French government accepted the U.S. objections, "surely aiming to avoid new tensions (between Paris and Washington) as those provoked by the war against Iraq, and which would endanger the summit of Evian."
The new so-called 'Plan of Action for Health' to be discussed by G8 "pays tribute to the pharmaceutical industry, makes no reference to the Doha Declaration, to the local production of medicine or to the transfer of technology."
For Jean-Hervé Bradol, president of the French organization Doctors without Borders, the downgrading of the health issue on the agenda of the G8 summit "is a very bad news."
"Three years ago, the G8 meeting at Okinawa fixed ambitious objectives to reduce the spread of AIDS," Bradol told IPS. "Since then, the number of AIDS victims has increased."
The accusations that private interests are misusing the G8 summit go further. The G8 will also boost the privatization of water in the countries of the South, critics of the summit claim.
According to Corporate European Observatory (CEO), a watchdog organization based in Amsterdam, the European Union Water Fund to be presented at the G8 summit in Evian "seems more about corporate welfare than helping the world's poorest."
Indeed, water will also be a top issue on the G8 agenda in Evian. French president Jacques Chirac is preparing a Global Water Plan and European Commission President Romano Prodi will launch the EU Water Fund.
The European Union Water Fund is based on proposals made by a panel mostly financed by private multinationals managing water resources all over the world, such as the French companies Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, and Vivendi.
It is directed by former International Monetary Fund director Michel Camdessus.
Last March the panel issued a report, titled 'Financing Water for All,' also known as 'The Camdessus Report', which openly advocates for the so-called "full cost-recovery" of private investments in water.
"Full cost recovery" means that the governments in the poorest countries of the world would guarantee the private investments in water infrastructure, either by means of rising water tariffs, or by subsidies, in case users cannot pay the high water prices.
Camdessus is not only the chairperson of the panel financed by private water multinationals, but also French President Chirac's personal representative for development in Africa.
Olivier Hoedeman of CEO told IPS: "Confidential documents show how the European Commission has worked in tandem with Suez and other giant water corporations in developing its international water initiatives."
Hoedeman recalled that EU officials had maintained intensive communication with private water companies' executives to design a common strategy to force countries in Africa, Latin America, and South East Asia, to open their water services to privatization.
"In early April the European Commission released a first proposal for a new 1 billion euro (US$1.17 billion) fund for water investments in 77 developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, all former colonies of EU member states," CEO says in a paper analyzing the EU strategy for water privatization.
The EU claims that its fund "should be able to give a very flexible answer to a variety of situations, providing the missing link in the financing of sustainable projects/activities."
"The need for a fund of this kind is obvious, but the EU proposal seems heavily influenced by the Camdessus report," Hoedeman said.
"While mostly shrouded in ambiguous wording, the Fund proposal clearly suggests providing public finance to private water corporations wanting to run water delivery in the South," he added.
Ballande also called the Camdessus Report "a proposal to guarantee private water companies that their investments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will always be lucrative, despite the market situation."
He said the G8 had abandoned plans for a 'Charter of Principles for a Responsible Market Economy,' which would formulate the basis for so-called ethical corporate governance.
According to Ballande, both the U.S. and the British governments opposed the charter, and pressed instead for a new investment agreement under the WTO to favor private multinationals.
"This new investment agreement would secure more rights to multinationals to take developing countries to court if these countries try to improve the situation of national enterprises," Ballande told IPS.
The new investment agreement echoes an earlier and highly controversial project of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)--aimed at expanding the legal rights of private multinationals.
Discussed in secret sessions at the OECD in 1997, MAI plans were unravelled by non-governmental organizations in Canada and in France. Bowing to public protests, both countries' governments withdrew their support for the plan, bringing it down.
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