The Real Issues Are Far From Settled The G8 Summit in Japan of a few days ago was overtaken in India by the political crisis that has shaken the UPA government and continues to rumble on towards a climax. But at Toyako in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, the site of the summit, India's politics were peripheral and the talk was of other matters, being dominated by concerns about global warming and spreading food shortages, among other intractable issues. The remote location of the meeting and the unprecedented security arrangements served to dampen the customary NGO-led demonstrations and demands for alternative solutions that have come to mark the annual G8 meeting. Nevertheless, activist groups have succeeded in raising worldwide awareness of the crucial importance of climate change issues, and the heavyweight leaders of the G8 themselves placed this matter at the forefront of their concerns. Form of words In the lead-up to the summit, significant differences of view had emerged between major industrial countries ~ or the major polluters if one prefers so to call them ~ with the USA as ever reluctant to accept binding targets for controls of emissions while Germany and others were shifting around to endorsing stronger control measures. In the event, the summit discussions yielded an agreed form of words that enabled everyone to depart with the satisfaction of having found a good compromise that both preserved the essential interests of all parties and advanced the common cause as far as it could reasonably be taken. The core of it is the agreement to which all subscribe that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by half by the year 2050. So stated, this conclusion looks neat and attainable. But the ink was barely dry before contrary views began to be heard. Leave aside the strongly committed activists who have maintained an unceasing barrage against all governments, reputed bodies of experts and experienced observers expressed their doubts about the value of what the final G8 communique stated. One point of concern was that the base year for measuring the 50 per cent reduction has not been clarified. Ordinarily, 1990 is regarded as the base year but other more recent baselines have been suggested. One can expect that this particular matter will be decided at the ongoing UN-sponsored negotiations on the subject. This is not a straightforward matter: depending on what is agreed, the choice could either bring onerous new responsibilities on all countries or more or less leave them to carry on much as they are doing, so the stakes are high and tough negotiations will lie ahead. The G8 Heads may be fairly satisfied with what they achieved in Japan but it seems evident that the real issues are far from settled. Meanwhile, the international negotiations on the subject under UN auspices grind on. As in other comparable negotiations involving all the member states, the meetings of delegates bring together large, unwieldy bodies of national representatives struggling to reconcile conflicting and highly divisive interests. From one point of view, the G8 summit is no more than an episode in the much longer story of international efforts to do something about the effects of man-made damage to the global environment. The