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The G8 Summit is convening in Germany from today through Friday, bringing together a group of leaders from eight of the world's major industrialized nations.  This accumulation of wealth, with its potential to re-direct and alleviate both climate change and poverty hasn't escaped the attention of the activists.  Fortunately, both topics are key agenda items and that can mean a marked improvement in living conditions in Africa.

According Ciara O'Sullivan, poverty and climate change are linked in that one is often the result of the other.  "If the threat of climate change is not removed, it will wipe out all efforts to help the poor through commitments such as aid."  O'Sullivan is media coordinator for Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a world-wide group of civic organizations from over 100 countries.  

The effect of greenhouse gases on changes in the climate can be devastating on Africa's economy for a variety of reasons.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in it's report, Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, estimates that by 2020 access to water will become a hardship for approximately 250 million people.  The shortage will impact agricultural production, possibly by half.

Adverse changes in the climate is also being considered as a possible cause to the future spread of disease.  In a visit last week to the University of South Africa, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "More than 110 million people in Africa live in regions prone to malaria epidemics.  Slight changes in rainfall and temperature could increase this figure by up to 80 million by the end of this century".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, this year's summit president, plans to update the Kyoto Protocal, which originally mandated a greenhouse gas reduction (by leading industrialized nations) to five percent below 1990 levels by 2012.  The new Protocal proposes a fifty percent reduction of the same levels by 2050 and a twenty percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020.  The Kyoto Protocal is a product of the 1997 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It's expected United States President George W. Bush will oppose the new Protocol, preferring a voluntary program to be negotiated outside the United Nations.  The Kyoto Protocal was signed by former President Bill Clinton, but Bush, fearing it would undermine the U.S. economy, subsequently abandoned it.

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