G20 Sherpa meet: A presidency with a show of culture and clear-cut agenda

Focus on emerging economies

In its opening remarks, India pointed to the significance of the Global South, listing out accelerated, inclusive and resilient growth and progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly health and education, as the key priorities for the G20 Summit. India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant invoked India’s G20 Presidency theme of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ — ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’ — to evolve the strategies for green development, fostering climate finance, technological transformation and digital public infrastructure, readying multilateral institutions for the 21st century and a focus on the three Fs — food, fuel and fertilisers — alongside the broader theme of women-led development.

“Our perspective is that we should have a win-win collaboration between all of us, developing countries, Global South and advanced economies. We need to bring new approaches. This is a unique forum of both developed world and emerging economies, so we need to build approaches to benefit the world on key global issues. The world is facing a vast number of challenges,” Kant said in his opening remarks.

“The challenges we face today can only be solved by working together through hope, harmony and healing, and our first concern should be towards whose need is greatest, and therefore, we need to focus on the Global South as well. Our G20 Presidency will seek to advocate the oneness of all in accordance with our theme of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’, and our priorities will reflect not just the aspirations of all of you, the G20 partners, but also the Global South whose voice is often unheard,” he added.

G20 President: Significance for India

Kant said the G20 Presidency for India “means a lot”. “It means that so far, we were getting agenda items from the developed world, we were reacting to them. This is the first time since Independence that we are able to set out our own agenda and, therefore, we can tell our own narrative that we have done some remarkable work on health, vaccines, pharmacy, digital public infrastructure. We can tell the world that we are the mother of democracies,” he said.

India’s G20 Presidency theme is of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ – ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’, as well as the vision of an ‘all of government’ approach. The shift of presidencies between the troika — Indonesia, India and Brazil — is being seen as a move towards a more inclusive world order. The discussions are being seen as focused on concerns of emerging economies centred around economic and financial issues. The Summit’s first round saw informal engagements to ensure that discussions remain focused on issues of developing economies such as rising debt levels, climate finance, food and fuel security even as Russia-Ukraine found its way through indirect references in discussions on the disruptions in global supply chains and energy supplies.

The opportunity to lead G20 comes at a time of compounding existential threat, with the Covid pandemic having exposed the fragility of the systems under the cascading impacts of climate change, which is also a key priority agenda for the summit. Key economic challenges also found its way in the discussions even as there was a palpable effort to ensure that the Finance track doesn’t overshadow the Sherpa track.

Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth made a presentation outlining key economic challenges facing the world, and highlighted the need for collective efforts by the G20 to respond to them.

Kristina Kostial, Deputy Director of Strategy and Policy Department, IMF, made a presentation on the pressing global economic challenges of the day, including the international debt situation and trade.

“The dialogue discussed ideas for the world to tackle such concerns and emerge more resilient to economic vagaries,” a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement said.

G20 Sherpas arrive to attend a cultural programme organised for them, in Ranakpur, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022. (PTI Photo)

Building soft power

At its first Sherpa meet in Udaipur, India left no stone unturned to put its culture and colours on display right from the point of arrival at the airport, with drums, traditional Rajasthani musicians and dancers, to the concluding excursion trip to Kumbhalgarh fort, a 15-century UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The evening of Day 1 of the Sherpa track had a turban-tying event where sherpas and delegates tied colourful safas or turbans along with wearing traditional jackets. G20 delegates got a chance to meet Pawan Vyas, the man who can tie a turban in 108 different styles and holds the 2020 record for tying the world’s longest turban of 478.5 metres (1,569 feet) in 30 minutes without using a single hairpin or glue.

Day 2 had performances by Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Kathak, Kathakali and Manipuri dancers as well as folk dances of India, which saw many delegates cheering to the music and sounds of the dances.

The history of G20

G20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom and the United States) and the European Union. The G20 members represent around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.

India holds the Presidency of the G20 from December 1, 2022 to November 30, 2023. At least 43 heads of delegations will be participating in the final New Delhi Summit in September next year. During its term, India will hold over 200 meetings across 32 different workstreams in 50 cities, involving ministers, government officials and civil society members, leading up to a final summit in September 2023.

The G20 was founded in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis, as a forum for Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to discuss global economic and financial issues.The G20 was upgraded to the level of Heads of State/Government in the wake of the global economic and financial crisis of 2007, and, in 2009, was designated the “premier forum for international economic cooperation”.

Different tracks under G20

The G20 Summit is held annually, under the leadership of a rotating presidency. The G20 initially focused largely on broad macroeconomic issues, but it has since expanded its agenda to inter-alia include trade, climate change, sustainable development, health, agriculture, energy, environment, climate change and anti-corruption.

The G20 consists of two parallel tracks: the Finance track, led by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors; and the Sherpa track. Within the two tracks, there are thematically oriented working groups in which representatives from the relevant ministries of the members as well as from invited/guest countries and various international organisations participate. The Sherpas oversee negotiations over the course of the year, discussing agenda items for the Summit.

There are 13 working groups ranging from energy, trade and investment, development, employment, tourism, agriculture, digital economy, health, education, culture, environment and anti-corruption along with the two new groups — Disaster, Risk and Resilience Group, and Startup20 Engagement Group — brought to the forefront by India under its presidency.

On trade and investment, the discussions will focus on resilient global value chains, integrating small and medium industries and global trade and trade for growth and prosperity. On development, data for development, accelerating progress on sustainable development goals, lifestyle for the environment will be discussed. The employment working group will talk about addressing the global skills gap, sustainable financing for social security, gig and platform economy and social security, while the tourism working group will discuss green tourism, digitisation for transforming tourism, skills for tourism.

The group on agriculture will talk about enhancing food scrutiny and nutrition, sustainable agriculture with a climate-smart approach, tech and digitisation for agriculture, while for digital economy, it will be focused on digital public infrastructure, public digital platforms and cybersecurity and cyber safety.

On the health side, there will be talks about prevention, preparedness, and response for health emergencies, digital health for universal access and improved service delivery and strengthening cooperation for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. The discussions on energy will focus on low-cost finance for energy transition, about fuel for the future, that is, bio-energy cooperation amongst G20, the principles of green hydrogen, which is seen as important in the transition to decarbonise the economy, and universal access to clean energy.

The next round of discussions under the first Finance track will be the 1st Finance and Central Bank Deputies meeting during December 13-15 at Bengaluru.