Bank, International Labour Organization, New Development Bank, UN, UN Conference on Trade and Development, UNESCO, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization. These leaders will focus first on the host’s summit theme of ‘Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet’ and its three priorities: social inclusion and the fight against hunger; the energy transition and sustainable development (with economic, social and environmental dimensions); and reform of global governance institutions. Another priority is artificial intelligence. Leaders will also confront an unprecedented combination of interconnected crises, starting with the climate emergency fuelling record heat and extreme weather events throughout the world. They include elevated inflation, interest rates, debt, energy, food and health insecurity, as well as Russia’s war against Ukraine, China’s actions in Asia, and deadly conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. In addressing them, Rio’s leaders will be propelled by the results of the new record of 24 ministerial meetings for 18 different portfolios held from 21 February to 8 November 2024. They are led by those for finance ministers and central bank governors with four plus a joint meeting with health ministers and another with climate ministers, followed by foreign ministers with two, and one each for ministers of development, hunger and poverty, employment, agriculture, digital economy, research and science, tourism, energy transition, climate and environmental sustainability, disaster risk, women’s empowerment, culture, anti-corruption, trade and investment, education and health. They will also be emboldened by G20 members’ high compliance of 81% by 19 May 2024, with the priority commitments made at the New Delhi Summit last year. Amid the proliferating global perils and the deep geopolitical divisions among G20 leaders, the Rio Summit promises to
deliver a significant performance. Leaders will again transcend their divisions over Russia’s war against Ukraine, and now the Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian war with Israel to agree on a consensus communiqué, as they did at their summits, with Putin absent, in 2022 and 2023. While Rio may not significantly affect the world’s numerous military conflicts and geopolitical tensions, it will advance its priorities of reducing hunger and poverty, fostering gender and racial equality, supporting Indigenous peoples, improving health, taking climate action, promoting clean energy and establishing rules for artificial intelligence. This progress will come more on process than on product, with the creation of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty and the Task Force for the Global Mobilization Against Climate Change, and procedural reforms at international institutions, rather than delivering major new money or ambitious agreements on climate, food, the economy, development or debt. This performance will be propelled by very high levels of shock-activated vulnerability from climate change and many other crises, by significant gaps in the response of the IMF, World Bank and UN galaxy, and by significant levels of members’ predominant equalising capability. But it will be constrained by leaders’ lower levels of common principles and practices, domestic political control, and attachment to their G20 club at the hub of a growing network of global summit governance.
Progress will come more on process than on product, with
the creation of the Global
Alliance Against
Hunger and Poverty and
the Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change”
JOHN KIRTON John Kirton is the director of the G20 Research Group, the G7 Research Group and the BRICS Research Group, and co-director of the Global Health Diplomacy Program, under the umbrella of the Global Governance Program at the University of Toronto, where he is a professor emeritus of political science. He is author of G20 Governance for a Globalized World , ÏŅĶ±ƚƋĘŅųŅü Reconfiguring the Global Governance of Climate Change , and co-editor of G7 Italy: The 2024 Apulia Summit as well as a global health series, including the recent Health: A Political Choice – Building Resilience and Trust . @jjkirton : www.g20.utoronto.ca
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globalgovernanceproject.org
2024 — G20 BRAZIL: THE RIO SUMMIT
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