The meeting of the 7 richest industrialized countries, plus Russia, the so-called G8, taking place in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July has been the focus of global justice campaigners for over a year. The mobilization is reminiscent of the Live Aid outpouring of public support for Africa 20 years ago. Then the aim was to provide food for the starving. Today the aim is to tackle the root causes of poverty and inequality. On the campaigning front it is going well. The UK ‘Make Poverty History’ coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) including Oxfam, Christian Aid and War on Want, reports over 3 million white wrist bands have been sold. Tickets for Bob Geldof’s G8 concert are highly sought after. Hundreds of thousands if not millions will turn out to demonstrate.

Campaigners are already been rewarded with positive headlines promising debt relief and action on climate change. UK Prime Minister Blair and his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, have been hailed as the ‘Lennon and McCartney of global development’ by pop star Bono, music to the ears of the architect and the banker of Britain’s participation in the war on Iraq. Perhaps their place in the history books will be less infamous than they feared.

Tony Blair is making the most of the UK’s leadership of the G8 group of industrialised countries and forthcoming presidency of the European Union to seize the initiative and secure his legacy, before handing over to Brown, leader in waiting who made a high profile tour of Africa earlier in the year. They appear to be knocking heads together and making progress where it has been lacking for decades.

But, and there is a but, the headlines hide the detail of the text of what is being negotiated. Not only are the concessions wrested from our leaders less than first appears, the double-dealing could actually make the situation in poor countries worse, not better. This raises the question, can our leaders ever deliver what global justice campaigners are seeking?

The simple fact is that the world economy operates to rules developed by rich countries and rich countries are in large part rich because they grab the wealth of other countries. It is hard to grasp when we see the dirt-poor people in African villages, the recipients of our aid handouts, that the net transfer of wealth is from these people to those of us in the rich world.

How could the world be so unjust? How could our leaders permit this to happen, engineer it to happen? How can we let them get away with it?

But the sad fact is we are rich because they are poor. The sadder fact is that if the campaigning around the G8 changes the rules, in the small print the status quo will prevail.

In advance of the Gleneagles meeting, the G8 Finance Ministers have agreed to write off US$40 billion of debt. What a triumph for campaigners! Here in Brazil I have just listened to a church leader praising this act of justice. But this is a hollow victory for to qualify for debt relief countries are required to open their markets to foreign competition and to further privatize their public services. Debt relief becomes another crow-bar to open target economies to our investors and corporations. The governments of these poor countries will be expected to applaud our generosity as they watch profits being repatriated.

On climate change the news is no less gloomy. President Bush famously said that he would take no action that would prejudice the US economy and expecting polluters to pay for their pollution would do just that. While Tony Blair is seen as calling in his favour of supporting Bush over Iraq, the UK position is not all it seems. In the European Union system implementing the Kyoto Protocol the Blair government has backtracked on commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the face of industry lobbying. Why? Because it would harm the UK economy. Business holds a powerful threat over governments: take action business does not like and investment and jobs will go to more amenable locations.

The richest countries in the world are winning the competition against other nations. It has not been a fair fight and we should not expect our leaders to penalize themselves by giving up their power voluntarily. Campaigning will undoubtedly give some movement. Our leaders are human and perhaps can be touched by compassion. They certainly can be swayed by the fear of losing public support and votes.

Yet there is a starker truth our leaders face than thousands of protestors wearing white wrist bands. Most voters will stay at home and their over-riding concern is not global justice, it is the economy. Yes, they care about starving people in far off places, but of greater importance is food on their table and a job to pay their mortgage and ballooning credit card bills. All the leaders at the G8 will be out of power in pretty short order if they take action that puts their country on the slide in the global league table. So there will be crumbs from the table of the rich, but no fairer sharing of the cake belonging to all humanity.

When the dust settles after the Gleneagles meeting, most people who took to the streets will happily listen to their CDs of Bob Geldof’s concert feeling they have helped to make a difference. It will be many years before many can be stirred to take action again. For some, such as George Monbiot (see  http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1510820,00.html), it is worse than useless to accept the double-dealing that is likely to come from the G8 in place of real change. It is a betrayal of the countries the global justice movement wishes to help.

Protest is essential, however. Every person who puts on a white wrist band is one more voter wanting to ‘Make Poverty History’. But there is also a parallel strategy being promoted by the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) that has the potential to deliver the change the global justice movement is demanding.

If the policies developed by our leaders sell the people of the world short, why not develop the policies ourselves?

ISPO is bringing people together, through the mechanism of National Simultaneous Policy Organisations, to discuss and develop the global rules we want to see implemented. Instead of powerful vested interests setting the agenda, it is campaign supporters, known as Adopters. Within the ISPO policy development process all Adopters have a voice and ultimately will approve the Simultaneous Policy (SP) package.

Our leaders are required to implement SP as a complete package alongside other governments. Simultaneous implementation neutralizes double-dealing and removes the threat of disinvestment that financial markets and transnational corporations hold over governments to get their own way. The means to compel our leaders to take this action is to deny them power unless they sign a pledge to implement SP alongside other governments. Clearly this has more impact at election time. In the recent UK election from a standing start the newly formed National SP Organisation, Simpol-UK, gained signed pledges from candidates in 33 constituencies, 10 of whom, from all main political parties, were elected to Parliament. It is a foundation on which to build in the coming months and years until the government as a whole pledges to implement SP alongside other governments. The same process is happening in other countries. SP is already represented in the Australian Senate and European Parliament and has the support of the Foreign Minister of East Timor.

Developing a consensus amongst the people of a world may seem hopelessly ambitious. Gaining meaningful pledges from politicians may seem naïve beyond belief. And our leaders may really be listening to the protests and the G8 will deliver.

Time will tell.

In the meantime, all it takes to support the SP campaign is to sign up as an SP Adopter, which costs nothing. Adopters undertake to encourage their preferred party to sign the SP pledge or, if they don’t have a party preference, to vote for any reasonable candidate who has signed the pledge. The more Adopters, the more pledges from politicians and one day we wake up with enough government pledges to trigger implementation of SP. By then the problems the world faces will likely be far worse than they are today. On that day not implementing SP will be the senseless option.

See  http://www.simpol.org.uk/ for further information and to sign up as an Adopter.