Well, the G8 Summit is now over for another year. It went by in a blur of activity but what came out of it?

Here in brief are the headlines from the communiqués (more will be coming soon):

• Agriculture: A chaotic day was made more complicated by the happy surprise of an additional $5bn for agriculture added in the last throes of negotiations so the final read out included $20bn for ‘sustainable agriculture’ in the ‘l’Aquila Food Security Initiative’ (AFSI). The communiqué states that this agriculture funding will be additional to food aid, there are also some very positive new commitments to increase the effectiveness of this support for agriculture.
• New money: It’s unclear at present who will give what, and how much will be new money. We do know that the US has doubled their aid to take their contribution from $2bn to $4bn. Italy will pay a disappointing $450m over 3 years and like all the other countries, we need to find out if this is additional (the forthcoming budget will determine overall aid and therefore clarify that) Berlusconi also pledged to pay his 2009 payment of $130m to the Global Fund by the end of the year and $30m extra to fill the Global Fund gap. However, none of this comes near to filling their €411m aid cut
• Climate change: The Pittsburgh G20 will also address climate change carbon financing
• Trade: Trade Ministers will meet ‘as soon as possible’ and feed back in time for Pittsburgh: there’s a commitment to complete Doha in 2010
• Accountability: The G8 published an accountability framework to set out when they have and have not fulfilled their promises. This was a good initiative but we hope that the matrix will be more useful and user-friendly when the next one is published at the next G8
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Before the next G8 Summit in Huntsville, the G8 needs to show how they will meet the MDGs and this will hopefully mean a 2010-2015 framework to build on next year in Canada

Although we’ve followed the G8 as a whole, we’ve been keeping our eye on 2 leaders in particular – Obama and Berlusconi. We praised Obama for pushing the agriculture initiative and for being one of the only leaders to clearly pledge serious levels of new funding. We hope he will drive forward this initiative at the Pittsburgh G20 summit.

For Berlusconi, here’s what we called for: Reversal of his aid cut, adding another $500m for agriculture immediately, Italy’s 2009 contribution to the Global Fund and a recovery plan for how Italy will meet the Gleneagles commitments he promised in 2005.

Here’s what we got: a commitment to $450m over 3 years for the l’Aquila Food Security Initiative, a commitment to $130m Global Fund payment and $30m additional funding to fill the Global Fund gap, and vague promises for a ‘piano di rientro’ to get Italy back on track towards its Gleneagles commitments (0.33% by 2010 and 0.51% by 2010). That might not sound too bad but it remains unclear how much of that, other than the Global Fund money, will be actually be new money. We will have to do some work around budget law to track to see if Berlusconi follows up on these modest promises.

Anyway, that it’s for now but just wanted to update you on the key headlines from the Summit. And now it’s a case of looking forward towards the next G20 in Pittsburgh this September where we hope to see follow up on the issues raised here. There’s also next year’s G8 Summit in Canada which at the moment looks set to focus on accountability.

-Eloise Todd