The G8 The annual G8 leaders summit is attended by eight of the world's most powerful heads of government. The meeting is to bring a range of complex and sometimes inter-related issues to discussion.

Function and decision making The G8 come together annually to discuss issues of mutual or global concern. Such issues include health, law enforcement, labour, economic and social development, energy, environment, foreign affairs, justice and interior, terrorism, and trade. The summit decides on policies for a range of issues for all eight countries. E.g. in 2010 water sanitation was on the agenda. They pledged support towards meeting Millennium Development Goals. They affirmed a common desire to achieve aid-effectiveness for development in Africa. They discussed the importance of meeting MDG 4 (reducing child mortality) and MDG 5 (maternal health), but did not indicate water and sanitation as integral to such efforts anywhere in the main Declaration.

Decisions on climate change and other issues One of the main most obvious issue for them to tackle at the moment is climate change. At the most recent G8 summit in Canada the leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations agreed to a limit on global warming of 2 degrees Celsius. The leaders did not, however, agree to a universal emissions reduction target. The July 2005 G8 Summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, had been preceded by the decision, a month earlier, by G8 Ministers to cancel debts owed to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank by 18 poor, developing countries in Africa which had already satisfied HIPC conditions. The June decisions and those at the Gleneagles summit expanded them, this had been prompted by the strong advocacy for more aid to Africa mounted by the British government's Commission for Africa (CFA).

Members

Impacts Although the G8 is sometimes seen as being omnipotent or the world’s directoire by anti-globalization protestors, it is also criticised for being irrelevant or a moribund entity because it does not have real decision- making capacities. Nonetheless, the G8 can play an important role and the Summit is simply a symbolic.