Document Actions

Communiqué GCAP G8 working group meeting - Tokyo, October 2007

1. INTRODUCTION

The GCAP G8 working group met in Tokyo to share lessons from campaigning in 2007 and to plan for 2008. There
were participants from Japan and elsewhere in Asia, from Africa and from most G8 countries. The meeting was
kindly hosted by the Poverty and Development unit of the 2008 Japan G8 Summit NGO forum and GCAP Japan -
Hottokenai Sekai no Mazushisa.

The objectives of the meeting were:

To review & understand progress in G8 countries since 2006;
To understand the Japanese political and campaigning context;
To agree top-line policy asks, public messaging and key activities for the next 9 months.

In addition to this communiqué, there is a full set of meeting notes with details of all sessions. For a copy of these
notes, please see contact details at the end of the document.

2. LOOKING BACK

G8 2007 outcome

The official perspective on the last G8 summit in Heiligendamm was fairly positive. The G8 governments declared
that the summit process contributed to an important compromise on climate change – with the US accepting that
climate change should be negotiated under the UN - and began a process to widen G8 format to informally include
the G5 countries (Brazil, Mexico, S Africa, China, and India). Much was also officially made of an announcement to
provide an extra $60bn for HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB and strengthening health systems; policy development on health,
through the “Providing for Health” initiative; and plugging the Education for All $500m financing gap by the end of
2007.

From GCAPs perspective, this year’s summit was extremely disappointing, despite high quality co-ordinated
campaigning. Overall delivery on the Gleneagles promises was collectively poor, albeit with wide variation between
countries; the $60bn announcement was deemed weak, as it included previous commitments and came with no
timetable or delivery date; the announcement to provide treatment for an additional 5 million people in Africa
undermined the earlier and more important promise for universal access for all; and the “Providing for Health”
initiative had critical modality flaws. Time is running out to plug the education financing gap by the end of 2007 as
promised. We remain hopeful.
In addition to discussions about the performance of the G8 as a whole, representatives from each G8 country gave
an update on their own government’s progress towards Gleneagles promises. Notes of these updates are available -
see contact details at the end of this communiqué.

Lessons learnt from our G8 campaigning in 2007

We looked back at the last year of campaigning and drew out some key lessons for us to take into consideration
when devising campaign strategies for the next G8 summit in Japan, including the following (full list in detailed
meeting notes):

Having a joint lobby platform was useful – we will update last year’s platform
Including the voices of people living in poverty in our campaigning is vital
We need to build relationships with governments who support our demands, to help us put pressure on those who don’t
It is essential to translate complex policy into simple messages
Surveys & opinion polls work well – particularly just before elections
Despite celebrity fatigue in some countries, celebrity support is still useful in most countries, including Japan
We need to lobby at 2 levels: staff/bureaucracy and more senior level politicians
We need an orchestra of campaigning activities - multiple strategies/tactics in co-ordination
We must use ad agencies and media partners – but make sure it is on our terms, not theirs
We are still very short of media capacity and must develop this in all GCAP countries
We need sustainable campaign strategies, to prevent the exhaustion factor, and to build our influence year on year.
Creating a joint slogan/message across diverse organisations can be difficult – but really important for civil society coherence
It is important to allow time for all G8 GCAP platforms to internalise and translate messaging.

3. LOOKING FORWARD

There will be elections in the USA and Russia. It is also possible that there will be elections in Japan and Canada.
Clearly, this means that the political environment will be in flux, but provides opportunities for us to include our
demands in domestic election campaigning.
We have some strong indications about the agenda for the G8 summit. The most likely date for formal
announcement of the agenda is at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 08, but the early signs indicate
that global health, climate change and Africa will be the main items for discussion. It is also possible that education,
water and sanitation will be included.

What does GCAP expect from the next G8 summit?

Expectations are moderately high for what could be achieved within the context of the Japanese chair of the G8.
Japan’s own recent experience of rapid development, particularly its focus on massive and long term investment in
public services, puts it in a strong position to be a positive force in fighting global poverty.

Japan played a critical role through the OECD process from 1996 that culminated in the Millennium Development
Goals. At the last G8 summit hosted by Japan in 2000, the Japanese government made a creative and significant
contribution by taking a leading role in establishing the Global Fund. Further, commitments made in 2005 and 2007
demonstrate Japan’s willingness to respond to the global development emergency. All this, combined with
increasing civil society coherence in Japan, set the scene for potential progress at the 2008 Summit.
However, all this comes with one substantial caveat. Japan’s own aid budget has been falling in recent years and
without a change of policy this downward trend will continue. This provides a significant and negative context. In the
public arena, although many people are supportive of the idea of tackling poverty, aid increases do not yet have
majority support.

With all this in mind, and at this point, the least we would expect from the next G8 summit will be:

A strong recognition that time is running out to achieve the Millennium Development Goals
Delivery on the Gleneagles aid quantity promises, including clear timetables for aid increases towards 0.7% of GNI;
A deepening of commitments & substantial policy progress on global health, HIV, basic education, and water & sanitation.
A reaffirmation of the UN process on climate change and a clear acknowledgement of the link betweenclimate change and global poverty.

Our main concerns include:

Aid targets will yet again be all rhetoric & no action from most governments;
Confusion of focus between economic development per se, and that which benefits the poor;
Concern that in the search for newsworthy initiatives, the host government may not provide important and necessary support for ongoing multilateral initiatives, particularly on health and climate change;
Japan is by nature less inclined towards substantial engagement with multilateral initiatives and this tendency could seriously weaken progress across G8 countries;
Money for climate change adaptation will be found from existing aid budgets rather than governments finding additional money.

Our plans for 2008

Particular attention will be paid to linking activity in the south with that in the north. Possibilities include:

The outcome of a GCAP Asia assessment report on ODA spent in Asia (in 9 countries) should be used to develop demands from GCAP Asia towards the G8;
Testimonies from southern colleagues to be included in our global messaging;
Clear articulation of importance, relevance and origin of lobby messages to needs expressed in the south, with reference to issues such as human rights and indigenous concerns;
A civil society forum to give voice from Africa on TICAD.

We agreed that, learning lessons from previous years, we need to have an over-arching message and an ongoing
action that will bring coherence to our diverse national campaigning. The overarching message is yet to be decided,
but there is firm agreement to develop one and we agree that this needs to happen quickly, following this meeting.
The final decision on the ongoing activity (to launch at the beginning of 2008 and to build to culmination at the
Summit) is dependent on discussions at the Japanese NGO Forum. The proposal of this meeting is to have ongoing
public activity around the world leading up to the Japanese tradition of Tanabata on 7/7. (People write their wishes on strips of paper and tie them to bamboo trees. We envisage creating a central G8 campaign website which would host the Tanabata action – people would tie vi rtual wishes to virtual bamboo trees. But the action could also be staged for real at key moments).

The emerging key moments for coordinated global campaigning work, under the banner of GCAP (be that mass
mobilisation, media activity or lobbying) are:

1. January - New Year – ‘soft launch’ of our campaign – our proposal is to send New Year’s cards to the
Japanese government and embassies, combined with media work, asking them to make this year count in
the fight against poverty
2. January/early February – finalise and launch our GCAP G8 policy platform, to tie in with WEF in Davos and
the G7 Finance Ministers Meeting
3. May – TICAD Conference – an important moment for engaging African leaders and linking northern and
southern campaigning
4. July - Pre-Summit – the final push for our mobilisation (‘Tanabata’ theme)

Next steps

GCAP G8 working group telecons will continue fortnightly, to build on this agenda, including sharing political
intelligence. They are open for anyone to join.
The Japanese NGO Forum on the G8 will meet on November 6th to take decisions about the shape and content of G8
campaigning in Japan next year.
The next face to face meeting of the GCAP G8 working group will be in early October 2008 in Italy.
Funding and capacity issues for campaigning in Japan need to be urgently addressed.