Beyond the G8: Will the West include the Rest?

Introduction

By 2050, 8 of the 9 billion people on earth will be from non-Western countries, and only 1 billion will then be from advanced industrial countries of the West. The G8 Summits purport to deal with global challenges, but the global majority is not there, not today, and certainly not if we anticipate the future.

A recent survey by Colin Bradford of the Brookings Institution tackles the issues of G8 relevancy and the results are summarized below. Bradford, who is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings, received responses to questionnaire from 76 officials and experts from 16 countries, all of whom are involved in international reform. The survey results reveal a surprising degree of consensus on the state of the G8 on the eve of the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan.