Takeaways from Delhi’s G20 summit

There was much apprehension whether there would be a declaration of the G20 summit held in New Delhi as India ended its one-year presidency on September 9-10 because of the strong divergences over the war in Ukraine. But hosts India had managed to sort it out and there was an agreement about the wording.

The reference to the Ukrainian war was done mostly in terms of the economic distress it is causing in many countries because of the interrupted exports of food, fertiliser and fuel from Russia and Ukraine because of the war. While in the G20 summit in Bali in 2022, there was a reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was dropped in the Delhi declaration.

The agreement was reached after long parleys among the parties. It was revealed that this was mainly due to the efforts of India, Indonesia and Brazil. At the end of it, Russia said that it was a balanced statement, but Ukraine was dissatisfied. The G7 countries, which have been vocal about Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, maintained diplomatic silence about it all.

The more important aspect of the Delhi G20 summit was African Union (AU) becoming an official member, the 21st. There are 19 members in the group, and the European Union (EU) is the 20th member. The inclusion of AU is more than symbolic. It reflects that Africa is a key global player, in terms of the economy and also that of fighting climate change.

Africa has many developing and under-developed economies, and it represents the Global South. It is acknowledged that AU’s membership issue was given a strong push by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who argued that it is important to give the developing countries both representation and voice in a forum like G20, which represents the advanced economies and the emergent economies.

Global issues like climate change cannot be fully tackled unless there is involvement of the poorer countries. The Delhi declaration has come out strongly on the issue of climate finance, especially for the poorer countries to adopt the new green technologies to fight climate change. The declaration said that the multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank must change the rules to enable the stakeholders to borrow funds for energy transitions.

There was also enough in the declaration about the global trade and its many problems. It emphasised that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) must change its rules and allow for fairer trading terms between the developed and developing countries. And it also sought the use of digital means to promote trade and payments so that the transactions become smoother and transparent across borders. This is mainly a hurdle for the emergent economies in their trade with advanced economies. But this will benefit the developing countries in the long term. Another issue of importance to the G20 is that of cryptocurrency. It has been agreed in the declaration that cryptocurrencies need to be regulated instead of banning them.

Prime Minister Modi is a technology-friendly political leader, and it is because of this that India has been pushing the G20 towards a more open technology-related global systems. In his remarks at the closing session of the summit, Modi pointed towards being open about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it should be harnessed for developmental needs of the world. He mooted the idea of ‘Human-centric AI’ as a way forward. And he made the important observation that new groups like G20 and BRICS – without naming them – have arisen and proving to be effective because the post-World War II institutions like the United Nations have not changed in the last 75 years and more.