Time for U.S. to Step Up Efforts on Africa and Global Warming

Time for U.S. to Step Up Efforts on Africa and Global Warming

July 1, 2005

Leaders from the Group of Eight (G8), the world's eight wealthiest and most powerful nations, will gather next week in Scotland to discuss two major global items on British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s agenda: ending poverty in Africa and tackling global climate change. Blair’s ideas have left the White House “scrambling to come up with plans” to avoid criticism of appearing to be too stingy. Simultaneous live concerts will be performed across the globe on Saturday to promote the anti-poverty agenda of the summit and will act as a reminder that the freedom that Americans will be celebrating this weekend remains a far distant goal for many others.

• The U.S. currently spends less the two-tenths of one percent of its overall wealth on foreign aid. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is rejecting an ambitious plan from the British to create an ‘International Finance Facility’ to raise an extra $50 billion in aid for Africa through bonds. The White House is also resisting Blair's proposal to increase the total aid contribution of the G8 nations to 0.7 percent of their gross national product, comfortable that its current level of 0.16 percent is sufficient enough.
  
  
• The Bush administration has yet to provide Africa with critical funds it has already promised to help fight diseases. As part of an effort to double U.S. assistance to Africa by 2010, President Bush said he would ask Congress to spend $1.2 billion until 2008 to help fight malaria as part of a $1.7 billion aid package for Africa. However, this “new” pledge is just repackaging previously-pledged money and would merely replenish funding that Bush cut in the current year's budget. According to the Global AIDS Alliance, the budget Bush submitted to Congress earlier this year cut spending for infectious diseases by $45 million. The Alliance also noted earlier this year that the Bush administration urged Congress to cut its commitment to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria by $200 million.
  
  
• The United States remains the only major world government to reject basic scientific evidence about threats from global warming. The other major item Blair has put on the agenda is to force the world’s leading economies to address global climate change. Blair has admitted the task will be "very difficult," due almost entirely to the Bush administration's resistance. Reuters reports that "in a leaked draft text for the summit, the sentences 'Our world is warming' and 'We know that the increase is due in large part to human activity' are in brackets, indicating U.S. disagreement by marking them out for possible deletion."