Green campaigners can only recall two important environmental achievements throughout the 28-year history of G7/G8 summits: financial help to make Chernobyl safer and a push that helped secure the UN's Kyoto Protocol on global warming in 1997.

They predict the outcome of next week's bash in Evian, southeastern France, will be even blander than the past, given the G8's need to show a united front after the divisions dug by the Iraq war.

"We should be pleased that the environment is at least showing up on the (G8) agenda, because it's important for the heads of state to recognise the importance of the problems," Hilary French, of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, said in an interview.

"On the other hand, the lack of specificity in what they've got to say suggests they are not approaching this problem with the kind of seriousness needed to turn environmental deterioration around."

Environmental problems have zoomed up the global agenda in recent years.

From climate change and strife over diminishing freshwater to overfishing and deforestation, they now touch on enormous social, political and economic interests -- and have the explosive potential to match.

Yet a draft copy of Evian's final communique acquired by AFP shows that green problems have either been avoided or subsumed into economic questions and where there are commitments, the language is littered with conditional clauses:

-- GLOBAL WARMING: The draft makes not a single reference to the K-word -- the Kyoto Protocol vehemently rejected by President George W. Bush. Instead, it stresses reducing greenhouse-gas emissions through smart energy technology in the future rather than making pollution cuts today.

-- MARITIME SAFETY: France, the victim of two oilslick catastrophes in three years, had lobbied for a tough commitment on scrapping single-hulled tankers, blamed for pollution disasters. Instead, the vague G8 promise, demanded by Japan, is to "work towards further accelerating" the phaseout.

-- SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: The G8 summit will reiterate its support for the goals spelt out at last year's Johannesburg summit, which set 2015 as the date for helping poor countries gain access to clean water and sanitation.

But no new money is being put on the table. Instead, the emphasis is put on funding by public-private partnerships.

Environmentalists say G8 is bad news, especially for developing countries.

The G8 always favours "neo-liberal" economics rather than sustainable development, and because it is restricted to a tiny elite, its decision-making "does not have the legitimacy of the multilateral arena," Greenpeace campaigner Bruno Rebelle said.

But University of Toronto professor John Kirton, who is director of a Canadian organisation, the G8 Research Group, said the group has a generally sound record.

Kirton acknowledged the G8 "has not been a total success story" but contended it has served as the motor for "the modern generation of international environmental regimes."

This is "a vitally important role, given that the UN charter makes no mention of the environment and to this day has only a mere programme, UNEP, devoted to environmental matters," Kirton said.

The personal chemistry of summits is important, said Kirton.

"It was through the G7 summit that President George Bush Senior was convinced to go to Rio in 1992, thus leading the other leaders to come (unlike Johannesburg) and thus creating consequently the landmark conventions on climate change and biodiversity."

The G8 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, as well as the European Commission.

SPACE.WIRE