PM's plea to G8 on world poverty

1:56pm Saturday 5th July 2008

Rich nations must not abandon action to tackle climate change and world poverty in the face of the credit crunch, Gordon Brown has warned fellow G8 leaders.

Amid campaigners' fears next week's summit in Japan could see previous pledges on aid and global warming scaled back, the Prime Minister said they should in fact be accelerated.

"The world is suffering a triple challenge: of higher fuel prices, higher food prices and a credit crunch," he told the Guardian.

"My message to the G8 will be that instead of sidelining climate change and the development agenda, the present economic crisis means that instead of relaxing our efforts we have got to accelerate them.

"This agenda is not just the key to the environment and reducing poverty, but the key to our economic future as well," Brown said as he prepared for his first G8 summit as PM.

Soaring food and oil prices have given this year's gathering of the world's biggest economies an added relevance, amid a growing recognition that the key issues are intimately linked.

But anti-poverty groups fear domestic economic problems could encourage national leaders to concentrate on domestic solutions at the expense of international help.

"The problems we have today are global and they require global solutions," Mr Brown said.

"Unless we help poor countries to become more prosperous through education, health and economic development, we will be piling up the problems of global inequality."

"I'll be telling people that the worst possible thing would be to drop the development agenda because it holds the key to the economic challenge. If we don't produce enough agriculture, we are going to have food shortages, and Africa needs help to develop its agriculture. We can't solve the problems of food and fuel shortages unless developing countries are involved."

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