What it means for the environment: nothing more than a minuscule

"NOWADAYS it rains differently, " said Andres Tamayo, a Catholic priest from Honduras. Droughts had become more frequent and less predictable, and farmers' harvests were suffering. "These changes affect the poorest communities the worst, " he said at a meeting in Edinburgh last week. "Climate change oppresses us."

Tamayo was speaking alongside seven other community leaders from Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, India and the Philippines.

They all made the same point, often with anger and passion. Droughts and floods caused by pollution from the developed world are killing them.

"It's now a critical situation, " said Mubanga Kasakula, a subsistence farmer from Zambia. "Malnutrition is on the increase. People are more susceptible to diseases and less resistant to HIV/ Aids. They have to work harder to survive, and they get more tired."

The meeting, Global Warming 8, was one of many organised in Edinburgh in the run-up to the G8 summit at Gleneagles. Its outcome was summarised by the former UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson.

"It isn't possible to make poverty history without combating climate change, " she said. "The G8, including the US, must take responsibility for the problem, and must take action."

But what has been achieved?

According to Sarah La Trobe, of the Christian relief agency Tearfund, less than nothing. The G8's failure to make any meaningful commitment to protect people suffering from climate change "puts millions of lives at risk, " she said. Any progress on Africa would be "fundamentally undermined" by lack of action on climate change.

The G8 finalised two documents on climate change, a communique and a "plan of action". Earlier versions of both had been leaked, enabling progress on disagreements to be tracked.

The worst fear of environmentalists had been that George Bush would fail to accept that the world is heating up due to pollution. He disputed a sentence in an early draft that said simply: "Our world is warming."

In the event, the communique did accept that climate change was happening and that pollution was causing it, though the words it used were tortuous. Human activities, it said, "contribute in large part to increases in greenhouse gases associated with the warming of our earth's surface".

The convoluted phrasing of the next sentence betrayed its compromises.

"While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, " it said, "we know enough to act now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."

This caused Lord May, president of the Royal Society, to dismiss the communique as a failure. "The science already justifies reversing - not merely slowing - the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, " he said.

G8 countries also promised to act "with resolve and urgency" to find ways of achieving "substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions".

But there were no specific targets, and no timetables for achieving them.

"The G8 was not a sell-out but it was certainly a cop-out, " said Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland. "The US, the world's biggest greenhouse polluter, has taken a minuscule step forward." He added that the G8 agreement would actually allow countries to increase emissions for years. "The world must now get on with ignoring the Bush administration."

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, suggested countries should threaten to impose taxes on high- polluting imports from the US.

Tony Blair, however, will not ignore or penalise Bush. Before the world's media at Gleneagles on Friday, he argued that he had succeeded in engaging the US in a new dialogue.

"My fear is that if we do not bring the US into the consensus on tackling climate, we will never ensure that the huge emerging economies, particularly China and India, are part of that dialogue, " he said.

Unlike the US, however, India and China are already involved in the world's main attempt to combat climate change, the 1997 Kyoto protocol. At Gleneagles, along with Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, they issued a declaration strongly endorsing Kyoto.

The G8 offered no funding to help developing countries fight global warming. "Not one new dollar was committed to develop [anti- climate-change] technologies, " said Philip Clapp, president of US group the National Environmental Trust. "They just told the World Bank to go do it with no new financing."

What the "plan of action" does is to promise to promote energy- efficient buildings and labelling of energy-efficient household appliances. It favours low-pollution cars, more research into aircraft pollution and the continued development of renewable energy. But, at Bush's insistence, it has a nuclear sting in its tail, stating: "We take note of those G8 members who will continue to use nuclear energy to develop more advanced technologies."

MAIN POINTS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT What the G8 was asked to do:

Provide a timetable for greenhouse gas reductions Tackle climate change more vigorously Reduce pollution from cars and aircraft Discuss renewable energies What the G8 will actually do:

Monitor and slow the growth of greenhouse gases.

But this permits emissions to keep increasing and gives no reduction targets Take forward a dialogue on climate change. But this risks subverting existing negotiations Assess air pollution impact and encourage low-pollution cars. But air travel and car sales will increase Nuclear power will be used to tackle climate change

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