G20 summit agrees on words but struggles on action
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[September 11, 2023]
By YP Rajesh and Krishn Kaushik
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Group of 20 major economies reached a
hard-fought compromise over the war in Ukraine and papered over other
key differences in a summit declaration at the weekend, presenting few
concrete achievements in its core remit of responses to global financial
issues.
Diplomats and analysts said the surprise consensus in the summit
statement on the Russia-Ukraine conflict avoided a split in the group,
and the inclusion of the African Union as a new member represented a
victory for host India and for developing economies, but the rest was
disappointing.
"The G20 has been at its best as a multilateral forum when it can forge
consensus - not just on language, but on action - to deal with serious
global issues, such as global financial crises," said Michael Froman,
president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
"Looking ahead, the focus should be on that, not on the statement per
se," said Froman, a former U.S. trade representative who has also worked
as Washington’s G20 and G8 negotiator.
The summit declaration avoided condemning Russia for the war in Ukraine
but highlighted the human suffering the conflict had caused and called
on all states not to use force to grab territory.
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Few had expected the G20 to reach a consensus on the document, let alone
on the first afternoon of the two-day summit, as the group had failed to
agree on a single communique at the 20 or so ministerial meetings this
year due to the hardened stance on the war.
A failure to agree on a summit declaration would have signalled that the
G20 was split, perhaps irrevocably, between the West on one side and
China and Russia on the other, analysts said.
And with Beijing pushing to reshuffle the world order by expanding
groupings such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, G20
could have ended up becoming irrelevant, they said.
DIFFICULT SUMMIT
G20 was set up as a platform of finance ministers and central bank
governors in 1999 to counter the effects of the Asian financial crisis
and the meeting was expanded to include leaders after the global
financial crisis in 2008.
Its primary role of coordinating responses to economic issues -
including global taxation and helping low-income nations manage their
debt burden under the Common Framework in recent years - has been
diluted because the need to seek a consensus has led to weak agreements,
some analysts said.
This year, resolving differences on the Ukraine war and other issues
took up a lengthy 25 days of negotiations, including in the week leading
up to the summit, Svetlana Lukash, the Russian G20 sherpa, or government
negotiator, was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Interfax.
"This was one of the most difficult G20 summits in thealmost twenty-year
history of the forum," Lukash said.
The G20 process requires consensus on all decisions which means it will
pursue the “lowest common denominator”, said Patryk Kugiel, a senior
analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw.
“Therefore, we do not have any concrete and substantial decisions,
commitments, pledges from G20 on any of the pressing global challenges,
from climate change to debt,” Kugiel added. “It makes the forum
ineffective, even useless.”
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![](../images/091123PIX/news_q1.jpg)
U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
President of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen attend the G20
summit in New Delhi, India, September 9, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn
Hockstein/Pool/File Photo
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At the New Delhi gathering, the leaders agreed to pursue tripling
renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and accepted the need to
phase-down unabated coal power.
However, they set no timetable and said the use of coal had to be
wound down in line with national circumstances.
Coal, which is being phased out of the power system in many
industrialised nations, is still a vital fuel in many developing
economies and may remain so for decades to come.
The meeting also agreed to address debt vulnerabilities of poor
countries and strengthen and reform multilateral development banks,
but without setting any concrete goals.
There was also no progress on getting Russia to return to the Black
Sea initiative although the declaration called for the safe flow of
grain, food and fertiliser from both Ukraine and Russia.
FEAR OF DIVISION, DISAPPOINTMENT
For most major G20 members though, the summit declaration appeared
to be a major gain since it reached a consensus on acceptable
language to refer to the war in Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who represented Russia at the summit
in place of the absent President Vladimir Putin, said India's
presidency, "probably for the first time during the entire G20
existence, has truly consolidated G20 participants from the Global
South".
Diplomats have said negotiators from India, Indonesia, Brazil and
South Africa drove the consensus in the summit document.
The U.S., Germany and Britain all lauded the declaration.
There was no official word from China but its state-run news agency
Xinhua, without referring to the declaration, said in a commentary
on Saturday that G20 could still be made to work.
China's presence was muted at the meeting with President Xi Jinping
staying away and Beijing represented by Premier Li Qiang, who took
his post in March this year.
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A French official who was present at the summit said “G20 actually
remains a club that's capable of forging consensus between north and
south and east and west”.
Despite the lack of concrete progress, Harsh Vardhan Shringla,
India's chief G20 coordinator, said the meeting did take the group
forward.
“The concerns of the developing world are so great that if you
failed ... they would have to face much greater issues of division
and, I would say, even disappointment,” he told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Michel Rose and Aftab Ahmed; Editing by
Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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