[Unofficial transcript]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the media. It is a great pleasure to see you.

First I would like to thank Prime Minister [Yasuo] Fukuda for his leadership in hosting this G8 Summit meeting. I am delighted to be with you today in the company of World Bank President, Mr. Robert Zoellick. Our being here together reflects our joint commitment to work together.

As we stand before you today, the world faces three simultaneous crises: a food crisis, a climate crisis, and a development crisis.

The three crises are deeply inter-connected and need to be addressed as such.

The Millennium Development Goals – the MDGs – are the internationally endorsed agenda to address the development emergency. But at the midpoint in our efforts to achieve the Goals by 2015, progress in many countries is off track, particularly in Africa.

To accelerate progress in Africa, the Steering Group I have convened has produced a set of practical, costed recommendations to achieve the MDGs in Africa. This plan was endorsed by the African Union and its member states at their Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh last week.

The plan shows that the MDGs in Africa remain achievable. To do so, however, countries must agree to deliver on their previous ODA commitments. No new promises are needed. For Africa alone, donor countries must scale up to reach the Gleneagles target of US$62 billion a year by 2010.

Maternal health stands as the slowest-moving target of all the MDGs. US$10 billion would ensure coverage of basic services for maternal, newborn and children's health. More investment for training community health workers, would be a strong step towards strengthening health systems.

Leadership in mobilising action and increased funding to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases is essential. This year, we must show commitment to ending malaria deaths by 2010 by funding 120 million insecticide-treated bed nets for Africa.

Addressing the MDGs is not enough. We must recognize the interconnectedness of extreme weather patterns, empty grain and rice storage houses, and poverty.

High food prices are already turning back the clock on development gains. To halt further suffering, we are calling on world leaders to deliver the full range of immediate needs, including food assistance, as well as seeds, fertilizer and other inputs for this year's planting cycle. They must also commit to long-term agricultural investment, to lift export restrictions and levies on food commodities in particular for humanitarian purposes, and to cut agricultural subsidies in developed countries.

In order to increase agricultural production and rural development, we need to increase ODA from the current 3 per cent of ODA to 10 per cent without diverting funds from existing education or health budgets.

Our progress on the MDGs, including on food security, has been severely undermined by climate change. We tend to think of climate change as something in the future. It is not. We see it now, most of all in Africa where drought and changing weather patterns are compounding the challenges we face in attaining the MDGs. We must take action now.

The Bali Roadmap agreed last December represents important progress on which world leaders must build. We must negotiate a new, comprehensive agreement on climate change to be adopted in Copenhagen in December 2009.

We need to set a long-term goal of at least cutting by half emissions by 2050. But we also need short and medium-term targets that will drive today's market forces toward technological change and market transformations that are needed. Advances provided by the G8 leaders will send helpful political signals to the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention negotiators developing a comprehensive agreement.

But we can't leave everything for Copenhagen. Our immediate priority should be to focus on achieving concrete outcomes from Poznan beginning with a shared vision for what a new agreement would look like this year. We need to strengthen existing financial mechanisms and create new ones to assist developing countries to support their adaptation and mitigation needs. These mechanisms must be consistent with negotiations under the UNFCCC process, and the resources must not be at the expense of existing development finance commitments. By the end of this year, we must have a fully financed and operational Adaptation Fund. The leaders of the G8 [are] central to achieving these goals.

Our efforts so far have been far too divided, too sporadic, and too little. The time has come to take a very different approach. I can promise you that the UN stands ready to assist on all these global challenges as the world's universal, multilateral platform for making and implementing concrete actions.
Finally, let me suggest that we must take an investment approach -- every dollar, Euro, or Yen invested today, as well as every ounce of effort, is worth ten tomorrow, and a hundred the day after. I urge the world leaders present here in Hokkaido, Toyako, to be the catalysts for this collective effort.

I would now like to turn to Mr. Zoellick who has been a steadfast partner in all our efforts to achieve the MDGs, address the food crisis, and fight climate change.

Thank you very much.