Beyond Bali

India's presidency must make G20 more relevant

Predictably, the Ukraine war and its fallout dominated events at the G20 summit in Bali, with disagreements reportedly delaying the wording of the final declarations. The differences reflected global alignments on the issue, with some countries reaffirming their national positions — as expressed earlier at the United Nations Security Council —in opposing moves by the US and the EU to condemn Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. On November 15, the leaders of US, Europe, Japan and the UK met on the margins of the summit and released a strongly worded statement condemning “the barbaric missile attacks that Russia perpetrated on Ukrainian cities and civil infrastructure”. In the end, the joint declaration reflected those dichotomies with the paragraph on the war underlining member-countries’ positions expressed at the UN Security Council and other fora, but “deploring in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine” and demanding “its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine”. The statement also reiterated the G20’s commitment to international law and the need to search for peaceful resolution of conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy. In a hat-tip to India’s assumption of the G20 presidency, the paragraph ended with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation earlier this year that, “Today’s era must not be of war”. 

For the rest, the statement revealed the diminishing capabilities of these G20 meets to deliver the kind of meaningful change achieved by the first three summits, which took place under the shadow of the global financial crisis. This summit’s slogan, reflecting the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, was “Recover Together, Recover Stronger”. Though the statement touched on related themes such as food security, eradicating “energy poverty” and so on, there was little that was new in terms of actionable programmes; most of the statement focused on expressing support for ongoing initiatives. On climate change, however, it is significant that the statement underlined a commitment to the 1.5 degree Celsius target rather than the 2 degree proposed by the developed world. The statement also spoke of the phasedown of unabated coal power, but qualified it with the phrase “in line with national circumstances”, which recognises India’s position on its continuing reliance on coal for the foreseeable future. It remains to be seen how far this statement will be reflected in the final statement of the COP27 meeting in Egypt, which ends on November 18. It is also significant that the world’s largest economies agreed to pace interest rates to avoid increased volatility in currency movements — though it is unclear how far they will be able to meet this commitment.

It says much that the G20 summit made more news on the side-lines of the main meetings — US President Joseph Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping being among them. Another key meeting on the margins was hosted by the US, Indonesia and the EU with key member countries, India included, to deepen engagement under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment to accelerate investment in quality infrastructure in middle- and low-income countries, a counter perhaps to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.  Given the distractions of the Ukraine war, expectations of substantive progress at Bali were low. Now that India holds the presidency, it has a chance to work towards setting a practical and meaningful agenda to ensure that the G20 does not lose its relevance.