With the successful conclusion of Rio G20 Summit, the spotlight now shifts to African continent as South Africa takes over the baton from Brazil from 1st December 2024. India’s role in troika also ends once the curtain falls on Brazilian Presidency. South Africa would be the last G20 country to hold the Presidency in the first cycle. Coincidentally, South Africa would be fourth developing country in a row to assume the G20 Presidency. Starting with Indonesia in 2022, followed by India, and Brazil and now South Africa, have helped in mainstreaming the Global South agenda at G20 deliberations.
It is important to note that Indonesia, India and Brazil have held the G20 Presidency during the most challenging time. Pandemic, followed by prolonged wars in Europe and Middle East have sharply divided the G20 members. Russian President Putin hasn’t been attending G20 leaders’ summit since 2022. Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped the leaders meet at New Delhi last year.
Nevertheless, the last three G20 Presidencies have helped in reprioritizing the Global South agenda. Besides socioeconomic challenges, Indonesia, India and Brazil have successfully highlighted the fallout of geopolitical crisis, climate and environmental challenges on developing economies. During India’s Presidency, a pathbreaking step was to admit African Union in G20. This was a historic decision resulting in necessary course correction in the composition of this most powerful multilateral block. For many years South Africa was the lone representative of 55 nations strong African continent.
The Indonesian G20 presidency was marked by initiatives in energy transition and finance. Indonesia emphasised the need for a transition to clean energy at the global level and developed a framework for accelerating an equitable, affordable and inclusive energy transition based on the priorities of the G20 Energy Transition Working Group. India has spearheaded it with the mission Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE), duly endorsed by leaders at Rio Summit, to nudge individual behavioural changes to support reduction, reuse and recycling of waste and promote circular economy.
India also launched the Global Digital Public Infrastructure Repository (GDPIR) during its G20 Presidency. The GDPIR is designed to be a resource for key lessons and knowledge available from G20 nations and guest countries, enabling easy discoverability. It is aimed at addressing the existing knowledge gap around the right practices to design, build, and deploy digital public infrastructure depending upon the population size. Other issues of interest to developing world which India raised included importance of addressing debt vulnerabilities in low and middle-income countries in an effective manner, climate financing and to make GVCs (Global Value Chains) inclusive and resilient.
The Brazilian G20 Presidency, whose term ends on 30th November, has focused on three priorities that includes – (i) social inclusion and the fight against hunger and poverty; (ii) sustainable development, energy transitions and climate action; and (iii) the reform of global governance institutions. The entire current agenda of global south can be bucketed under the above three headings.
The G-20 Rio Leaders’ Declaration rightly raised the alarm on SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). With only six years left to achieve, progress towards only 17% of the SDG targets is on track, nearly half are showing minimal or moderate progress, and progress on over one third has stalled or even regressed. The G20, being the most powerful grouping of world leaders, is well suited to address those challenges through much needed cooperation and political drive. The Brazilian Presidency placed inequality, in all its dimensions, at the center of the G20 agenda under the motto “Building a just world and a sustainable planet”.
The Rio Declaration while reaffirming commitments to tackle climate change by full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, underscored the need for equity by following the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in the light of different national circumstances. The countries need to achieve net zero emissions/climate neutrality commitments in a nationally determined manner, taking into account our different national circumstances, pathways and approaches.
Climate finance was at the center of discussion at both New Delhi and Rio G20 Summits. There is a need for increased international collaboration and support, including with a view to scaling up public and private climate finance and investment for developing countries. At Rio Summit, the leaders reiterated the Delhi Declaration recognition of the need for rapidly and substantially scaling up climate finance from billions to trillions from all sources. They supported the Sustainable Finance Roadmap and welcomed the consensus achieved in the 2024 G20 Sustainable Finance Report.
Underlining the importance of progress towards making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development, the Brazil’s G20 Presidency took an initiative to establish the Task Force on a Global Mobilization against Climate Change (TF-CLIMA). This will bring together the Sherpa and Finance tracks, while helping further mainstream climate change into the global financial, economic and development agendas.
On reforming global governance institutions, the leaders at Rio Summit extended their support for an enlarged UN security council composition that improves the representation of the underrepresented and unrepresented regions such as Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. They also underscored the need for enhancing the representation and voice of developing countries in decision-making in MDBs (Multi-lateral Development Banks) and other international economic and financial institutions.
As the G20 marches towards creating history when South Africa takes the mantle of G20 Presidency on 1st December, the task is cut-out as the global south agenda is well defined to further consolidate the work done during the previous three Presidencies. The South African Presidency also would provide an opportunity to newly inducted African Union to play a major role in setting the priorities of African continent, which has the maximum number of Least Developed Countries. One of the issues, which South Africa may bring for discussion and seek the support of G20 leaders, is their continent-wide economic integration mission through AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area).
Deep Kapuria is the Chairman of The Hi-Tech Group of Companies comprising The Hi-Tech Gears, The Hi-Tech Engineering Systems, The Hi-Tech e-Soft, and Novus Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz. The Group has manufacturing, R&D and engineering facilities in India, Canada and USA. He is also the Past Co-Chair of Digital Economy and Industry 4.0 Task Force of B20, 2018 Argentina and Past Co-Chairman, CII National Committee on International Trade & Trade Policy.