CESTAS participated to the Civil G8 Dialogue, a traditional feature of the run-up to G8 summits, which gathered 258 delegates from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America in the Rome city hall on the 4-5th of May 2009 to draft a suitable document and a list of issues raised with G8 ”Sherpas”.

After two days of debate and confrontation among delegates from international civil society and non-governmental organizations from 37 countries, representatives of NGOs delivered a document with "concrete proposals" to stem the economic crisis and start afresh from a development model based on a new economic and financial architecture. "

Five thematic issues emerged in the final document: common goods, climate change and the environment, food sovereignty and agriculture, global economy and work, global governance. Five interdependent issues that NGOs have reported, "must be firmly on the agenda of the Great 8 and in the new dialogue established between institutions and the civil society'. The next G8 Summit, which will be chaired by Italy and held in L’Aquila, will have the opportunity to rethink rules, priorities and propose a model of effective sustainable development.

Alongside the new economic policies, the necessity to build a new governance has been underlined. It should be a governance that will ensure the protection of global public goods and ensure transparency in global decision-making processes , stressing the 'ethics of responsibility that transcends the dichotomy between the national interest and international solidarity in the intrinsic value of the search for the common good”.

Ensuring climate stability, financial stability, land fertility, a decent life where education and sanitation have key roles, must be the fundamental aspects of the development pattern.

Sergio Marelli, Italian spokesman of the Coalition against Poverty (Gcap, which brings together more' than 70 organizations on the territory and organized the event in Rome), has summarized the fundamental stages emerged in the two days by insisting on 'needs' to work on the channel of communication between NGOs and institutions and by stressing the need to ''protect shared property and the fundamental rights of all people''.

Giampiero Massolo, Italian sherpa and General Secretary at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Italy's presidency of the G8 should make a virtue of ''inclusiveness''. ''This is crucial in order to extend areas of global consensus,'' he told delegates attending the Civil G8 Dialogue,

Massolo recalled that Berlusconi, as G8 president, and US President Barak Obama are to jointly chair a forum of developing economies this summer. Turning to work by the Civil G8 Dialogue, Massolo praised the ''important contribution'' made by this conference each year, as well as its ''fruitful collaboration'' with official G8 organizers.

Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno promised to do his best to ensure Civil G8 representatives will meet with G8 leaders at some point during the summit in July and that he will ask Berlusconi to set up this meeting. This would entail talks between leaders of the world's eight most industrialized nations, representatives from the Civil G8, and the Italian Coalition Against Poverty GCAP. "There is no progress in governance overall if there is no interaction with the emerging economies”, he affirmed.

Business as usual is no longer an option. Therefore the Civil G8 concluded the meeting with the announcement of a new campaign to raise awareness and put pressure on the Great 8 in order to guarantee to all basic rights. A pressure switch will be placed in the main Italian squares of the Giro d'Italia and will ask individuals to 'put pressure' on the leaders of the Great 8.