New Delhi: In June 2010, the foreign minister of a European country made headlines for calling the G20 one of the “greatest setbacks” for the international community since World War II.
“The G20 had a meaning when the [2008] financial crisis broke out, the situation was serious and joint decisions had to be swiftly made in order to calm the markets…But the G20 is a grouping without international legitimacy — it has no mandate and it is unclear which functions it actually has,” said Norway’s then foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre in an interview with Der Spiegel (No Nordic country is part of G20 but is represented by way of their membership in the European Union).
Thirteen years on, as the G20 meets in New Delhi under India’s presidency, the group continues to struggle to define its core purpose. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend even as India pushes hard to make the grouping a more inclusive body and draw up a joint communique that would be acceptable to both the West and Russia.
At a time of deepening geopolitical rifts, questions over the G20’s relevance remain. Is it just about talking shop or can it provide tangible solutions to the world’s pressing problems?
Three protests have shaken G20 Summits in the past: held in 2009 in London, 2010 in Toronto and 2017 in Hamburg. Some turned violent, others saw a bank firebombed, with protesters largely identified as anti-capitalist Left-wing activists. But for those who protested peacefully, a common complaint was that the G20 upholds a financial system that continues to rob the poor to benefit the rich. and that it has done little to address climate change.
It wouldn’t be until the 2021 Rome Declaration that G20 leaders would call for the phasing out of “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies.
There’s been similar anger against summits like the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) annual meeting in Davos, often criticised as a congregation of billionaires who do little to fight economic inequality.
However, India, as chair, is trying to give the G20 more meaning. It wants to broaden the ambit to address concerns of developing countries, modernise global tax regimes, reform multilateral development banks and, according to some reports, create a global framework for cryptocurrency.
At the beginning of its G20 presidency in January, India had even hosted the ‘Voice of Global South Summit’, held virtually.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it, multilateralism is in “crisis” today, so New Delhi is pushing for a more inclusive world order, one that may also satisfy its desire to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
But expectations of a “Delhi Declaration” or a joint communique are low.
This isn’t only because not a single ministerial summit under the Indian presidency has resulted in a communique, but also because diplomatic negotiators had a tough time finding consensus on the G20 Bali Declaration last year.
It took six rounds of negotiations and over 17 days of talks for Russia and Western countries to agree on the language of the Bali Declaration, specifically parts referring to the Ukraine war. It hasn’t helped that Russia and China have opposed parts of chair summaries issued by India after ministerials, specifically paragraphs on the Ukraine war and the UN charter that were lifted from the Bali Declaration.
Since then, G20 Sherpas have been meeting to try to finalise a draft document.
When asked about a consensus on the communique, External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar said in an interview with ANI that India knows how to “handle the world”.
But this hasn’t quelled growing pessimism.
Not only are the Russian and Chinese presidents skipping the summit in Delhi, the Russian foreign minister has warned that there would be no communique if Moscow’s position on the Ukraine war isn’t represented. Meanwhile, US National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby said it would be difficult to get “20 clocks to chime at the same time”.
Experts agreed that the absence of a communique could indicate paralysis of the G20 but were divided on whether the lack of it will hurt India’s image or not.
“India should not put too much energy into a joint communique because China is hell-bent on sabotaging the event, as is evident from Xi’s decision not to attend,” Mukesh Aghi, President and CEO of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, told ThePrint. “The lack of a communique will also not hurt India. Its image is more determined by the 7 percent economic growth, the recent Moon landing and other achievements.”
Frédéric Grare, senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment’s South Asia Program, also defended India in the event of no communique.
“Everybody’s aware of the actual difficulty over the Ukraine war and the reorganisation of world geopolitics. Second, it’s not like that if there’s no joint communique that there’ll be no advances in the actual agenda,” he told ThePrint.
But others disagree.
Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), argues that outcomes are “measured” by communiques.
“If there isn’t a communique — which would be a first — it means Indian diplomacy doesn’t have the tenacity that we may think it does, and/or global divisions over the Ukraine war have only become worse,” he told ThePrint.
It’s also unclear if the absence of a communique would push back the African Union’s (AU’s) formal joining as a member of the G20.
Also read: Consensus on PM Modi’s push for action against economic fugitives likely at G20 summit
What has G20 achieved in past 24 years?
G20 was born out of crises. It was created in 1999 at a time of heightened globalization, and leaders’ summits began after the 2008 Lehman crisis when the richer G7 economies realised that it needed to engage other larger developing nations for smoother global economic coordination.
Today, G20 countries account for 90 per cent of global GDP and 80 per cent of global trade. Previous summits have addressed the global economic recovery post the pandemic but have also touched upon non-economic matters like the Iranian nuclear program and the Syrian civil war.
Within the G20, developed nations talk directly to those outside the G7 club and coordinate policy measures with them. But it’s unlike the World Bank or International Monetary Fund (IMF) which have cash in hand to respond to financial challenges facing the world, especially poorer nations.
Some summits have failed to garner consensus on commitments and policy coordination.
Take the 2019 summit in Osaka, Japan, during which climate change was a divisive issue. The Osaka Declaration mentioned that signatories to the Paris Agreement reaffirmed their commitment to implement the pact, but the following paragraph detailed that the US “reiterates its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because it disadvantages American workers and taxpayers”. This decision was made under the Donald Trump administration.
Even the 2020 Riyadh Summit, held virtually, displayed how the pandemic “exposed” shortcomings of the G20 with different countries adopting vastly different macroeconomic policies and lockdown protocols.
That said, the G20 has taken a few strides.
For example, in 2021, rich countries agreed to give some of their unused IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) — an international reserve currency — to poor countries. The goal was to make $100 billion in SDRs available for vulnerable countries which was achieved this year, said the IMF. Pledges grew over the last two years — $81 billion in the 2022 Bali Declaration and $45 billion in the 2021 Rome Declaration.
Or take the 2016 Hangzhou Declaration during which G20 leaders pledged to create an open world economy and “reject[ed] protectionism” — eight years after the global financial crisis. It was seen as a much needed commitment during a time when various economies introduced 85 new trade-restrictive measures between May-October 2016 or 17 trade constraints per month on average, according to the World Trade Organization.
This is an updated version of the article.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
Also read: Trans-nation train & port link to counter China, to 6G: What tops US agenda with India at G20