Civil G8 (4): G8 and NGOs in harmony? The dialogue as a dilemma

At the concluding round table of G8-Dialogue with civil society, Masahuru Kohno, deputy foreign minister and G8-sherpa from Japan, discoursed about the world. Would his prime minister change his national motto “for a beautiful country” to the summit motto “for a beautiful world”, when the summit comes to Hokkaido next year? The NGO representatives laughed but, they have to be very careful not to get caught in a dilemma which could be described as follows: the greater and the more detailed their demands and expectations addressed to the G8, the greater the impression they create that the Big 8 will fix everything in the “Brave New World”. Why, for example, must the G8 regularly deal with biodiversity (as demanded by the vice president of Deutsche Naturschutzring, Manfred Niekisch), when there are established bodies and the Conference of the Parties to the Biodiversity Convention dealing with this issue?

In the final round of the Civil G8 Dialogue the 20 NGO representatives—a representative of the German Federation of Industry (BDI) among them—who were allowed to share the table with the sherpas, again set off a small fireworks display of demands. But the German sherpa Bernd Pfaffenbach acted as if he could see no contradiction between the positions of Martin Khor from Third World Network (or even trade union representative Jürgen Eckl) and Claudia Wörmann of the BDI, who basically presented the demands of the G8 Business Summit the day before. Michael Frein of the Protestant Church Development Service (EED) restored clarity by reminding everyone that the Doha Round can hardly be called “a development round” from the NGO point of view, even if Pfaffenbach continues to depict it as such.