What to expect from the G20 leaders’ summit in India’s capital New Delhi

What to expect from the G20 leaders’ summit in India’s capital New Delhi
Students work on paintings of world leaders at an art school in Mumbai, main, ahead of the G20 Summit in New Delhi. (AFP)
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Updated 09 September 2023
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What to expect from the G20 leaders’ summit in India’s capital New Delhi

What to expect from the G20 leaders’ summit in India’s capital New Delhi
  • Event is the culmination of over 200 meetings of G20 delegations in more than two dozen cities across India
  • India has sought to build its image as a champion of the Global South during its G20 presidency

NEW DELHI/WARSAW: Leaders of the world’s most important economies are converging on New Delhi for the annual G20 Summit beginning on Saturday.

The Indian capital has had a makeover, with colorful decorative plants, green posts, fountains, sculptures, new streetlights and illuminated logos of India’s G20 presidency visible all the way from the international airport to the city’s center and around the main meeting venues.

Parts of the metropolis of 33 million people also went quiet as some of the main roads were shut and 130,000 security personnel were deployed to guard the event.

But what is the G20, why is this year’s summit important, and what should we expect from it?

 

 

The group of the world’s 20 major economies was established in the late 1990s, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis to address such events collectively.

Over the years, it has morphed into a forum for addressing urgent global problems such as food security, climate change and, since the 2021 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the global repercussions of the conflict.

Together, members of the G20 account for 85 percent of global economic output, 75 percent of international trade, and about 60 percent of the world’s population.

The group’s members are 19 countries — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK, and the US — plus the European Union.

Every year, the group is led by a different member, which hosts its policy meetings and their culmination — the leaders’ summit. India took over the G20 presidency from Indonesia last year and will hand it over to Brazil.


FASTFACTS

The G20 was founded in 1999 in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis as a forum for ministers and central bank governors to discuss global economic issues.

It was upgraded to the level of heads of state and government after the 2007/08 global financial crisis, becoming the premier forum for international economic cooperation.

In recent years, the bloc has faced divisions over trade, climate change and the war in Ukraine.


This year’s G20 Summit is the group’s 18th and India’s first as the host. It is the culmination of more than 200 meetings of G20 ministers, sherpas, and engagement groups, as well as side events and workshops that have taken place in more than two dozen cities across India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet made sure that G20 meetings were visible, resonated across the country and were widely followed at home and abroad, in what became a campaign to establish India’s image as a global power.




Security personnel stand guard near a G20 communication billboard with the portrait of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inside the international media center at the G20 venue days ahead of its commencement in New Delhi on September 7, 2023. (AFP)

“India has lavished more attention on the G20 than any other host country in the past. This obviously means that all the main events are more high profile and are likely to generate good press for India,” Aditya Ramanathan, a research analyst at the public policy center Takshashila Institution in Bangalore, told Arab News.

The summit — coming right after India’s successful moon landing and last week’s launch of its first solar mission — would be expected to crown all the branding efforts, but how successful it is going to be does not depend on India alone.

“The G20 is much more divided today than it was a few years ago,” Ramanathan said.

“Global politics has changed dramatically since 2020 because of three factors: the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and China’s worsening ties with several countries.”


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China’s relations are frosty not only with the US, but also with India, with which tensions have flared sporadically along their Himalayan border for the past three years.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping was the second head of state to signal his absence at the summit. But while Putin also skipped the G20 Summit in Indonesia last year — in the wake of tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine — this will be the first time a Chinese leader has missed a summit since the first meeting in 2008.

“I don’t think that Xi Jinping’s decision to not attend is about the G20 per se,” said Manoj Kewalramani, a fellow in China studies at Takshashila Institution.

“It’s not like Beijing does not see value in the grouping. However, it does not want to be seen endorsing India as a leader of the Global South, which is how the Indian government has pitched its G20 presidency.”




In this photo taken on August 23, 2023, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi China (2R) and China's President Xi Jinping (2L) are shown in a family photo with Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during the  2023 BRICS Summit n Johannesburg, South Africa, during which they positioned themselves as the principal voice for the emerging economies of the Global South. (Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)

India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, have been competing to position themselves as the principal voice for the emerging economies of the Global South — that is, countries mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, and largely in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which until recently have often been described as developing or less developed.

India has used the world’s premier forum for economic cooperation to present itself as playing a bridging role between these countries and the West.

During last month’s summit of the B20 — the official G20 dialogue forum for the global business community — India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said that “the core mandate of the G20 is to promote economic growth and development and that cannot advance if the crucial concerns of the Global South are not addressed.”




India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar. (SUPPLIED)

Under India’s presidency, many meetings revolved around problems that plague the Global South, like reform of the international debt architecture and the impact of geopolitical uncertainties on access to food and energy.

India has also pledged that as G20 chair it would prioritize addressing the climate crisis, including the financing of response to climate change, developing green technologies, and a just energy transition.

During the G20 summit, world leaders will address what in general is referred to as key problems affecting the stability of the global market.

Some of the other issues up for agreement are green development, which includes climate finance, accessible digital public infrastructure, and augmenting renewable energy sources, as well as a global plan to improve sustainable agriculture and food security.

But will they achieve consensus?




Saudi Arabia’s assistant culture minister Rakan bin Ibrahim Al-Tawq represented the Kingdom at the G20 Culture Ministers' Meeting in Varanasi in India on Saturday. (SPA file)

The ultimate goal of the G20 forum is to formulate a joint statement and the ongoing war in Ukraine is likely to affect that. In the communique, the leaders will have to explain, for example, why the world is facing food and energy insecurity and high inflation.

However, during the ministerial meetings held throughout the year, G20 countries could not reach an agreement on what has caused this situation.

Western countries blame the crisis on Russia’s invasion of the world’s breadbasket, Ukraine, and some, including the US, France and Canada, have signaled that they would refuse to sign any joint declaration that does not condemn it.

If the leaders fail to achieve consensus, it would be the first time since the bloc’s founding that a summit would end without a joint communique. In that case, India, as the host country, will have to produce a statement summarizing the points the countries agreed on as well as the divergences.

“The G20 summit is taking place at a time when the world is impacted by the Ukraine war, and India represents the bridge between two extreme views,” said Sanjay Kapoor, analyst and chief editor of the political magazine Hard News.

“It’s a difficult summit to hold at this juncture. Though it has possibilities, the challenge would be to build a consensus around the core issues. The ministerial meetings haven’t yielded much in that direction.”

 


Japan looks to Saudi Arabia for ‘new forms’ of collaboration: Shikata

Japan looks to Saudi Arabia for ‘new forms’ of collaboration: Shikata
Updated 12 sec ago
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Japan looks to Saudi Arabia for ‘new forms’ of collaboration: Shikata

Japan looks to Saudi Arabia for ‘new forms’ of collaboration: Shikata
  • With COP28 talks taking place in the UAE, decarbonization is part of many countries’ objectives and green strategies

DUBAI: Japanese Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs Shikata Noriyuki told Arab News Japan that deep ties between his country and Saudi Arabia will pave the way for more opportunities to collaborate.

“There are emerging opportunities for a new way of life,” he said. “Especially if Saudi Arabia takes a leading role in presenting this new way of life with regards to sustainability issues.”

With COP28 talks taking place in the UAE, decarbonization is part of many countries’ objectives and green strategies.

Shikata said that when Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio visited Saudi Arabia in July, it was clear that the Kingdom was on a path to transformation.

“We sense very rapid change taking place in the Kingdom. It’s very impressive,” he added.

Japan is also working on its own transformation, specifically a green one. The cabinet secretary said, however, that the change will need collaboration with the Gulf region as well as other Asian countries.

“We want to work on joint projects or investments to encourage such a green transformation in the rest of Asia,” he said. “This is kind of conducive to our vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

At COP28, Japan introduced its new strategy to achieve a carbon-zero economy, which includes the idea of carbon pricing for the first time.

Japan not only will focus on the carbon emissions of major corporations, but also target zero-emission housing.

“This includes insulated windows to avoid extra heating costs,” Shikata said.

Other initiatives have been put in place, including the newly announced India-Middle East trade corridor.

“Japan is very attentive to this connectivity initiative between India and the Middle East,” he said, adding that a similar project is in the works with other Asian countries.

“We want to combine smart houses and urban transport so that we are eventually talking about smart, sustainable and carbon-neutral cities,” Shikata told Arab News Japan.

The conditions in Gaza have also been a topic of conversation at COP28, and Japan has consistently supported a two-state solution in order to realize peace.

“We have been working on the Jericho Agro-Industrial Park and trying to create jobs,” the cabinet secretary said, adding that Japan is encouraging its companies to invest. “However, with the political situation, it is very difficult to encourage investment.”

The industrial park aims to develop a fully functional and operational innovation business center in Palestine’s Jericho to improve the competitiveness of local businesses operating there.

There have been reports that Israeli strikes since Oct. 7 had damaged Japan International Cooperation Agency offices in Gaza.

However, Shikata said that once the situation in the enclave calms down, Japanese organizations will have “good motivation to go back and support reconstruction.”


Malaysia says COP28 should address ‘devastating’ climate toll of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza

Malaysia says COP28 should address ‘devastating’ climate toll of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza
Updated 02 December 2023
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Malaysia says COP28 should address ‘devastating’ climate toll of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza

Malaysia says COP28 should address ‘devastating’ climate toll of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza
  • Environment minister says Israeli occupation ‘robs’ Palestinians of their right to improve climate resilience
  • Israeli military has dropped an estimated 40,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since Oct. 7

DUBAI: The ongoing COP28 summit should address the climate and environmental impact of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, Malaysia’s environment minister said on Saturday.

Political and business leaders from nearly 200 countries are gathered in Dubai this week for the UN’s annual meeting, which aims to address some of the most pressing points related to global warming and the climate crisis.

As world leaders are in talks over the issues, Turkish President Tayyip Erodgan, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Jordan’s King Abdullah have all said that discussions on climate change should not exclude the topic of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza.

Malaysia’s Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad told Arab News that besides the humanitarian toll — with 15,000 people killed since October and many more injured or missing — the Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian enclave is also destroying the environment.

In retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack by the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, the Israeli military has dropped an estimated 40,000 tons of explosives on the 365-sq.-km territory, nearly four times more than the combined weight of the nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945.

“The unprecedented levels of assault unquestionably inflict a devastating impact on the environment,” the minister said on the sidelines of the climate summit. “Addressing this is non-negotiable.”

For the hundreds of thousands of people internally displaced by the attacks, toxic contamination from the explosives has made the air difficult to breathe and the water undrinkable.

“The world cannot ignore what is happening there — be it from a humanitarian or climate justice standpoint,” Nik Nazmi said, adding that it is resulting in “not only the Palestinians losing lives, but arguably (also) their future.”

With COP28 featuring several points on which participants need to find common ground — including phasing out fossil fuels, how to decrease emissions from global food production, how to finance energy transition in developing countries, and how to help those countries adapt as climate-related disasters mount— the Malaysian minister also raised the general issue of Israel’s military occupation thwarting climate action in Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza.

“The occupation robs Palestinians of their right and ability to improve climate resilience due to the inordinate control over Palestinian land, water, and other vital natural resources,” he said

Israel controls water reserves not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, and uses more than five times the amount of water consumed in those two locations combined, according to B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based NGO documenting human-rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The amount of water accessible daily to the Palestinians is the amount the World Health Organization prescribes as the minimum in disaster zones.

“It is very much a climate injustice. Gazans are facing a climate crisis further compounded by the loss of land due to rising sea levels, severe lack of access to clean water for Palestinians, lack of sanitation, impact on food security ... all of which aggravate the impact of prolonged conflicts,” Nik Nazmi said.

“They will struggle to cope with climate-change impacts, and are weakened by the turmoil that disrupts livelihoods and interrupts any access to food and other sustenance.”


Ukraine says blackout at nuclear plant risked accident

Ukraine says blackout at nuclear plant risked accident
Updated 02 December 2023
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Ukraine says blackout at nuclear plant risked accident

Ukraine says blackout at nuclear plant risked accident
  • “Due to the complete blackout, the nuclear power plant switched to powering its own needs from 20 diesel generators,” Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator
  • The plant’s Russian-installed operator confirmed it resorted to diesel generators overnight

KYIV: Ukraine said Saturday that two power lines connecting its electricity grid to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant were cut overnight, putting the plant at risk of an “accident.”
The plant has been at the center of fighting since it was captured by Russian forces last year, and both sides have accused each other of compromising its safety.
“Due to the complete blackout, the nuclear power plant switched to powering its own needs from 20 diesel generators,” Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said in a statement.
It said the plant was on “the verge of a nuclear and radiation accident” before Ukrainian specialists were able to promptly restore off-site power.
AFP was not able to immediately verify Ukraine’s version of events.
The plant’s Russian-installed operator confirmed it resorted to diesel generators overnight, but said that it had operated within safe limits and that no safety violations were reported.
The incident marks the eighth time the plant has been cut off from external power since the conflict began last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned.
“The most recent external power outage is yet another reminder about the precarious nuclear safety and security situation at the plant, which can be affected by events far away from the site itself,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said.
“The IAEA continues to do everything it can to help prevent a nuclear accident. I also call on all parties not to take any action that could further endanger the plant,” he added.
Since last year IAEA officials have been on the ground monitoring safety at the plant, which requires constant maintenance to prevent overheating.
It stopped supplying electricity to Ukraine’s grid in September 2022, and has been repeatedly rocked by shelling and drone attacks throughout the 21-month conflict.


US pledges $3 billion to Green Climate Fund at COP28

US pledges $3 billion to Green Climate Fund at COP28
Updated 02 December 2023
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US pledges $3 billion to Green Climate Fund at COP28

US pledges $3 billion to Green Climate Fund at COP28
  • The fund funnels grants for adaptation, mitigation projects such as solar panels in Pakistan or flood management in Haiti
  • The last US contribution to the fund was made under then President Barack Obama, who had committed $3 billion in 2014

DUBAI: Vice President Kamala Harris told the UN's COP28 conference on Saturday that the United States will contribute $3 billion to a global climate fund -- its first pledge to it since 2014. 

"Today, we are demonstrating through action how the world can and must meet this crisis," Harris told the climate summit in Dubai. 

The new money, which must be approved by the US Congress, will go into the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which was created in 2010. 

The last US contribution to the fund for developing countries was made under then President Barack Obama, who committed $3 billion in 2014. 

US President Joe Biden sent Harris in his place to COP28. 

The world's biggest climate fund funnels grants and loans for adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries, such as solar panels in Pakistan or flood management in Haiti. 

Prior to the US announcement, $13.5 billion had been pledged to the GCF. 

The failure of wealthy nations to fulfil financial pledges to help developing nations cope with climate change has fuelled tensions and mistrust at climate negotiations. 

Developing countries least responsible for climate change are seeking support from richer polluting nations to adapt to the increasingly ferocious and expensive consequences of extreme weather, and for their transitions to cleaner energy sources. 

The GCF plays a part in a separate promise by rich countries to supply $100 billion of climate financing to poorer nations annually. But that pledge was only likely met in 2022, two years late. 


UN lifts arms embargo on Somali forces

The United Nations headquarters building is seen from inside the General Assembly hall, on Sept. 21, 2021. (AP)
The United Nations headquarters building is seen from inside the General Assembly hall, on Sept. 21, 2021. (AP)
Updated 02 December 2023
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UN lifts arms embargo on Somali forces

The United Nations headquarters building is seen from inside the General Assembly hall, on Sept. 21, 2021. (AP)
  • “The lifting of the arms embargo enables us to confront security threats, including those posed by Al-Shabab,” he said

UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN Security Council on Friday completely lifted an arms embargo on Somali government forces, but continued to maintain sanctions against the Al-Shabab jihadist group.
The UN implemented a general arms embargo on Somalia in 1992, but has since largely eased it in regards to Somali forces.
The embargo did not apply to deliveries of weapons for the development of Somali security forces, although the UN committee overseeing the sanctions had to be notified and could object to certain heavy weapons.
A first resolution adopted unanimously Friday lifted the general embargo, removing the last restrictions on the Somali government.
A second resolution reimposed the arms embargo on Al-Shabab, maintaining the ban on delivery of weapons, ammunition and military equipment to the Islamist group and “other actors intent on undermining peace and security in Somalia.”
Somali ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman welcomed the moves.
“The lifting of the arms embargo enables us to confront security threats, including those posed by Al-Shabab,” he said.
“It also allows us to bolster the capacity of the Somali security forces by accessing lethal arms and equipment to adequately safeguard our citizens and our nation.”
After making significant progress, Somalia’s offensive against Al-Shabab has stalled for months, raising concerns about the government’s capacity to crush the 16-year insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
The Somali army, in alliance with clan militias, has been supported by troops from the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) in recapturing vast areas of the territory.
UN resolutions call for the ATMIS force to be reduced to zero by the end of next year, handing over security to the Somali army and police.
However, the government requested in September a three-month “technical pause” in the pullout of 3,000 troops.
The drawdown of those troops “will conclude as scheduled on December 31 of 2023,” the Somali envoy said, adding that the government was committed to the country’s forces taking over security responsibilities “within the agreed timelines.”