SAVING FACE

Japan is hoping this year's G8 summit will wipe out the 'painful memories' of its disastrous Okinawa summit in 2000 and also steer the controversial superpowers through a rocky 12 months, writes DAVID McNEILL.

TOKYO IS again in the G8 cockpit, since assuming the rotating chairmanship of the Group of Eight industrialised nations from Germany in January. That means hosting the group's annual summit, one of the world's great logistical headaches at the best of times; this year burdened with a shifting agenda as G8 leaders struggle to deal with the aftershocks of the US mortgage crisis and growing economic turmoil.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda must help steer the world's economic superpowers through what looks set to be their bumpiest 12 months since the mid-1970s oil crisis, while pushing a list of issues that includes climate change, rising oil prices, nuclear proliferation and poverty in Africa. But one of Japan's key priorities will not even appear on the official agenda: avoiding a disastrous repeat of the last time it organised a G8 summit.

The G8 carnival that descended on Okinawa in July 2000 was the most bloated and grandiose in memory. Delegates were treated to a lavish holiday on the sub-tropical Japanese island, protected by one of the largest security operations ever mounted: over 20,000 armed police and 100 navy vessels, including six warships and 20 aircraft. The result - almost no new initiatives and a staggering €490 million conference bill - impressed nobody.

Critics were quick to point out the ironies. Just as the plight of the world's failed economies was starting to appear on the G8's radar - after 25 years - the host had blown the equivalent of a year's debt-servicing for half a dozen nations.

"An insult of historic proportions," was the angry verdict of debt-relief campaigner Jubilee 2000. And the summit's huge environmental impact on one of Japan's most pristine resorts was not missed either.

"The painful experience of Okinawa lingers in the mind of the Japanese government," admits Tomohiko Taniguchi, a spokesman for Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "It was later called the 'squandering summit'. We have to be very careful not to repeat that failure, and to make this year's summit as economically and ecologically successful as possible. That is what we will strive to do."

Japan has little choice but to give the summit a green tinge. With the Kyoto Protocol due to expire in 2012, the host wants to push climate change to the top of the conference agenda, and avoid accusations of double standards. The venue, a lakeside resort near Lake Toya on the northern island of Hokkaido, was chosen under the leadership of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, partly as a showcase for his government's environmental credentials.

"Hokkaido is full of nature and I think the environment issue will be a major agenda for next year's summit," Abe said. "It's also an appropriate location to show off Japan's beauty to the world."

The foreign office says no effort has been spared to ensure that the summit, which runs from July 7th-9th, uses recyclable materials. Dozens of companies have been invited to show off eco-friendly products and the press will be housed in a state-of-the-art media centre cooled by snow collected and stored during Hokkaido's winter.

Anticipating criticism from the world's environmentalists, however, may turn out to be the least of Tokyo's problems as alarm spreads about the state of the faltering world economy. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown clearly had the gathering economic storm on his mind in April when he wrote to his Japanese counterpart, Fukuda, urging him to take a leadership role in discussing food shortages and soaring prices for basic needs.

"Rising food prices threaten to roll back progress we have made in recent years on development," warned Brown. "For the first time in decades, the number of people facing hunger is growing." The British leader urged "redoubling efforts" to improve access to the rich countries' markets and safety nets for the poorest. "We may need to increase . . . the scale of our support for humanitarian programmes."

Tokyo denies that its carefully-planned summit agenda is at risk of being overtaken by world events, but admits that the environment is no longer the only show in town.

"Overtaken may be a little too strong," argues Taniguchi. "But given the urgency of the global financial crisis, we must pay greater attention than before to how the world should manage the situation and not just focus on our two core issues."

Those issues are, of course, climate and what Japan calls "African development", another attempt to, in its words, make the continent "a connected economy". The strategy includes broadening the outreach sessions at the G8 summit to include eight African countries and the African Union, in addition to leading members Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US.

But, as always, the G8 will struggle to reconcile its soaring pre-conference rhetoric with political and economic reality. Some newspapers have already pointed to the discrepancy between Tokyo's pledges to help Africa and its shrinking aid spending, which fell by 30 per cent last year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Will the host country announce a sudden increase in funding? It seems an unlikely scenario.

Then there are the domestic difficulties of Mr Fukuda, who has seen his approval ratings plunge to the mid-twenties amid a war of attrition with the opposition Democratic Party (DPJ). A self-effacing career diplomat, Mr Fukuda's statements seem designed to play down expectations in the summit. "As the environmental issue is very important, it needs to be understood by people, so I hope to be of use to that end, even in a small way," he said this month after visiting the Hokkaido venue.

Most commentators doubt whether the prime minister will even last out the year, let alone fight for the creation of a post-Kyoto framework and lead a difficult charge against big industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses. A March survey by the government added to his problems, revealing that Japan's top 100 producers of greenhouse gas accounted for about a third of the more than one billion tons spewed out in 2006.

Japan has promised to half carbon emissions by 2050, but supports essentially a voluntary approach: winning consent from big industrial sectors such as steel and transport and tallying the result nationally. Some countries want tougher measures, including legally binding limits. On a trip this month to Tokyo, the head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, piled pressure on the G8 host. "I really hope there will be a breakthrough at the Hokkaido summit because we need a global agreement," he said.

Finally, there is China, still hovering outside the club of richest nations despite its rapidly growing economic and environmental footprint. Few underestimate the difficulty of reaching agreement on climate change without Beijing, but first the G8 must agree on a strategy, warned Japan's deputy foreign minister Masaharu Kono earlier this year. "Of course, certainly major carbon emitters like China, India and others, their participation is also very important, but without the common understanding among G8 leaders, I wonder whether that might be a non-starter."

Japan's role, then, says Taniguchi, will be to play "a major role in developing a sense of unity about tackling climate change". It will be a tall order. As commentators have noted over the years, nothing dates as fast as a G8 pledge. Does anyone now remember the key pledge made at the end of the ill-fated Okinawa summit in 2000? "The 21st century must be a century of prosperity for all."