Where are global leaders? Not at the G8 photo-op

By Jeffrey D. Sachs  |   2008-7-24  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

Illustration by Zhou Tao More in cartoon gallery

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THE G8 Summit in Japan earlier this month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation.

The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases.

And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world's leaders.

The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders who went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership.

They are weak individually, and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action.

There are four deep problems. The first is the incoherence of American leadership. While we are well past the time when the United States alone could solve any global problems, it does not even try to find shared global solutions. The will to global cooperation was weak even in the Clinton administration, but it has disappeared entirely during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The second problem is the lack of global financing. The global energy and climate crises can be overcome if the world invests together to develop new energy technologies.

The oceans, rainforests, and air can be kept safe through pooled investments in environmental protection.

Global solutions are not expensive, but they are not free, either. Global solutions to poverty, food production, and development of new clean energy technology will require annual investments of roughly US$350 billion, or 1 percent of GNP of the rich world.