PRESS RELEASE: G8: One Step Forward, One Step Back

Washington, D.C. -- Citizens for Global Solutions welcomes the compromise reached on climate change at the G8 Summit, but is disappointed by the G8 countries' failure to keep their promises in the fight against poverty and disease in Africa.

This year, the G8 took an important step towards an effective international response to global climate change. President Bush's commitment to work within the U.N. framework to achieve a new climate agreement by 2009 is a critical shift in U.S. policy. However, the absence of binding emissions targets and the president's continued opposition to such targets remain cause for serious concern.

On Africa, the G8 failed to take meaningful action to achieve the goals set at the Gleneagles summit in 2005.

Following is a statement from Citizens for Global Solutions’ Rebecca Mbuya-Brown, Program Manager for Global Health, Poverty & Environment at our organization:

"After more than six years of denial, obfuscation and opposition on climate change, President Bush has finally said that he will bring the U.S. back to the negotiating table. This is an important step forward. Yet, unless he ends his opposition to binding limits on greenhouse gas pollution, this will lead nowhere.

"When it comes to climate change, the only effective solutions are international solutions. The President's commitment to work through the United Nations is critical. The U.N. is the only body capable of addressing challenges - like climate change - which occur on a global scale and can only be overcome through cooperative international action.

"G8 leaders missed a golden opportunity to prove they are serious about keeping the promises made to Africa two years ago. Instead, they produced a set of recycled, non-binding, non-specific commitments and backed away from achieving universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010."


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Notes to Editors:
Citizens for Global Solutions is a non-partisan membership organization that envisions a future in which nations work together to abolish war, protect our rights and freedoms, and solve the problems facing humanity that no one nation can solve alone.