By Linda Sieg
TOYAKO, Japan (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Eightrich nations meet this week in northern Japan to grapple with araft of problems from soaring food and fuel prices to Africanpoverty and global warming amid doubts about how much theannual diplomatic pageant can achieve.
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Canada andthe United States will be joined during the July 7-9 meetingsat a luxury hotel in the lakeside resort of Toyako by heads ofseven African states and major economies including China andIndia.
That makes this the largest such gathering since the eventbegan more than three decades ago when a cosier club of theUnited States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy met atthe Chateau de Rambouillet outside Paris in November 1975 todiscuss the oil crisis and a world recession.
The themes sound familiar, but the scale of the summitry,which draw huge media coverage, countless activists andsometimes violent protests, has some charging that the eventhas got out of hand.
"The first summit was a very small affair. They got in aroom, said they were facing a crisis, did a little horsetrading and came up with a plan," said Robert Feldman, chiefeconomist at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo.
"It has become something of a carnival ... and got awayfrom the original intent, which was to sit in a room together-- the human side of negotiating and getting things done,"Feldman said.
"It's unwieldy and it's not leading to a lot of results."
At the same time, the relative clout of the core group hasshrunk. The G6 accounted for about 48 percent of the world'sgross domestic product (GDP) in 1975, but by 2006 the G8'sshare had slipped to around 43 percent.
Over the same period, the share of five big emergingeconomies that call themselves the Group of Five -- China,India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa -- grew to 27 percentfrom 12 percent, measured by the purchasing power of theircurrencies.
PROBLEMS INTERTWINED
One reason for higher food and fuel prices is growingdemand from such emerging economies, making it hard for the G8alone to come up with solutions.
"The emerging markets have become a much more importantpart of total economic activity, but the monetary policies theyare running are too easy. That is spurring inflation in thesecountries and that tends to push up commodities prices," saidPeter Morgan, chief Asian economist at HSBC in Hong Kong.
"In the 1970s it was the developed economies that wererunning too easy monetary policies, so they could address it.But now they are passive receptors of the inflation burst fromemerging markets."
A Major Economies Meeting on Wednesday will bring togetherthe G8, the G5 and Indonesia, South Korea and Australia -- agroup that accounts for about 80 percent of the C02 emissionsthat cause global warming.
U.S. President George W. Bush is reluctant to sign on totargets to cut emissions without big developing countries onboard.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is among those whoadvocate formally expanding the G8 to include China and others,although Japan for one is not keen to see its Asian rival jointhe club.
Sarkozy repeated the call for expansion on Saturday.
"I think it is not reasonable to continue to meet as eightto solve the big questions of the world, forgetting China -- 1billion, 300 million people -- and not inviting India -- 1billion people," he told a conference in Paris.
The problems to be tackled have also become increasinglycomplex and intertwined, further limiting what G8 leaders cando to solve them in three days of meetings and socialising.
Efforts to reduce dependence on oil and cut greenhouse gasemissions have led many countries, the United States inparticular, to turn to biofuels.
That has, in turn, helped push up food prices, as hasrising demand from emerging countries and volatile weather thatmany attribute to climate change.
Still, for all its warts, the G8 has fans who see meaningin the process, if not its short-term results.
"The fact that it became ritualised should not detract fromthe fact that there is one more alternative to yelling andscreaming and fighting," said Andrew Horvat, a professor atTokyo Keizai University.
"If there was a crisis and you had to create it, youcouldn't do it. For people to yawn is to miss the point.
(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
