World leaders, including US President Joe Biden, China’s Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be attending the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Rio de Janeiro, which will take place November 18-19.
The G20 is a collection of leading economic nations that account for roughly two-thirds of the world population and 80% of world trade. The grouping was founded in 1999 to deal with financial crises and economic disruptions by bringing together the world’s largest economies.
It gained prominence during the 2008 global financial crisis when it began holding annual summits of national leaders.
The forum has since evolved into somewhat of a “mini UN” that deals with issues like climate change and geopolitical tensions, even though member states do not always agree on what should be on the agenda.
What’s Brazil focusing on?
Brazil took over the body’s annually rotating presidency from India last December, and South Africa will assume the presidency for the next year.
Throughout the year, Brazil has hosted and chaired multiple G20 ministerial meetings.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government has put issues that concern the developing world at the heart of the nation’s G20 presidency. These include the reduction of inequalities, reforming of global governance institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization and the need to tackle climate change and promote environmentally sustainable economic development.
M. Habib Abiyan Dzakwan, a researcher focusing on international economic policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Indonesia, a Jakarta-based think tank, said Brazil must strengthen the G20 countries’ approach to crucial issues such as climate change and global health challenges.
“Consolidation among emerging economies is very important because developing countries cannot expect too much from the United States, especially under the next [Donald] Trump administration,” he said. “The same applies to Europe; we cannot rely on them too much either.”
But it’s unclear what Brazil will be able to achieve in concrete terms.
How did India manage last year?
The summit will also likely offer an opportunity for leaders to discuss divisive issues such as Russia’s war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.
A look at the G20 summits over the past two years, hosted by India last year and Indonesia in 2022, shows the challenge faced by Brazil in achieving a consensus on a joint leaders’ declaration.
India was able to notch a diplomatic victory by negotiating a consensus last year, with the final joint declaration touching on the Ukraine war but avoiding specifically condemning Russia.
Instead, it categorized the “human suffering and negative added impacts” of the war in an economic context “with regard to global food and energy security, supply chains, macro-financial stability, inflation and growth.”
Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian diplomat, said that the summit was “indicative of India’s ability to balance its historically stable partnership with Russia while nurturing its relationship with Western countries.”
“More than just balancing key relationships, what India attempted in geopolitics was to bridge divides. This applied both to the East-West divide and to the North-South one,” he added.
At last year’s event, the African Union also became a permanent member of the G20.
The move was seen as a way to highlight the importance of including the “Global South” in multilateral forums.
Observers in India say the summit in New Delhi bolstered their country’s image as a growing diplomatic and economic force on the global stage, particularly at a time when the world was confronting multiple geopolitical and economic crises.
An acrimonious presidency
During Indonesia’s presidency a year earlier, the G20 leaders gathered on the idyllic island of Bali.
It was one of the most acrimonious presidencies in the grouping’s history.
The summit took place at a time doubts were being raised about the very effectiveness and usefulness of the G20, against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which caused unprecedented divisions within the club.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo was keen on having the G20 leadership as the capstone of his presidency.
And in the end the outcome of the summit exceeded expectations, marking a diplomatic coup for Jakarta.
Participants were able to agree on a carefully worded final declaration, noting that “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.”
Unique and complex challenges
Dzakwan, the CSIS researcher, said that each G20 presidency faces its own unique and increasingly complex challenges.
He noted that Indonesia’s presidency in 2022 was significantly overshadowed by the Russia-Ukraine war, while India last year had to grapple with escalating tensions in the Middle East in addition to the Ukraine conflict.
Dzakwan argued that these challenges will continue to intensify, particularly with Donald Trump set to return to the White House after scoring a thumping victory in the US presidential elections.
“It has never been easy, especially since Donald Trump’s first presidency. It demonstrates that multilateralism is not too effective, but rather more transactional,” he told DW.
Srinivas Mazumdaru is an editor and reporter focusing on business and Asia. He
is fascinated by economics, history and geopolitics.
DW