There was a negative response yesterday to the declaration from the Major Economies Forum which met on the sidelines of the G8 summit to discuss progress towards a global climate change deal scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

G8 leaders must demonstrate much greater political courage on climate change or they will condemn yesterday's Major Economies Forum declaration to being little more than hot air, Christian Aid has warned.

G8 leaders are in danger of squandering opportunities and plunging poor people into deeper climate chaos and poverty, the aid and development agency Tearfund has said.

As world leaders begin meeting in Italy, the aid agency World Vision has accused them of failing to honour aid pledges to the world’s poorest countries.

The G8 group of the world’s richest nations is a dinosaur which should be put out of its misery, the British anti-poverty War on Want said yesterday.

The impact of climate change in poor countries is leading to a shift in seasons that is destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger according to a new report

Millions in developing and developed countries face growing hardship after Britain along with European countries and the US blocked a radical UN response to the global financial crisis.

Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien, Archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews, have called on governments to protect the poor across the world amid the ongoing economic crisis.