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The Kananaskis G8 Summit

The 2002 G8 Summit will be held in Kananaskis, Alberta. Kananaskis is a wilderness area, 100 kilometers west of Calgary in the Rocky Mountains. Criticisms of the 2002 Summit are of two sorts:

• Its financial cost
• Its impact on the environment

Financial Concerns

The Kananaskis Summit is scaled down relative to past G8 summits. This year’s Summit will only be a day and a half (instead of 3 days) and members will only be allowed to bring 25 delegates (instead of the usual 2 or 3 hundred).

Nevertheless, the cost of the Kananaskis Summit will be enormous. Taking into account food, entertainment, accommodation and security, the cost of the Summit may exceed $300 million.

Critics are arguing that the cost is unreasonable and the money could be spent more effectively in other ways:

• Other less expensive means could be used to facilitate meetings between leaders (i.e. teleconferencing or less formal one-on-one leader meetings).
• For the 2002 Summit, Canada is spending $300 million. However, Canada will only be committing $500 million over three years to the African Action Plan.

Environmental Concerns

The Kananaskis area is an important ecological region:

• It contains the largest remaining foothill region in the southern Rocky Mountains. Foothill regions are important because they act as a transition zone between the alpine, the prairies, and the boreal forests.
• It is an important watershed region.
• It is an important wildlife habitat, containing large populations of cougars, bears, wolves, wolverines, mountain goats, big horn sheep, moose, elk, deer and trout.

Many environmentalists are concerned about the impact the Summit will have on Kananaskis’ ecology:

• Short-term Concerns
  During the Summit, over 5000 security forces will be deployed in the region, as well as thousands of protestors, media, and public. This many people in the region at one time will place enormous pressures on Kananaskis’ delicate ecological and wildlife habit.
   
• Long-term Concerns
  The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society warns that the Summit may be a pretext for putting forward new development proposals for Kananaskis Country. This includes new tourist, recreation, and natural resource development.

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This page was last modified: August 10, 2007