G20 Update #11 - Occupy G20?

Occupy G20? Can the G8 or G20 Deal with Diversity and Dissent?

Introduction by Nancy Alexander,  Heinrich Boell Foundation- North America

The G8 and G20 Summits, which will be held on May 18-19 and June 18-19, respectively, are both being held in remote locations. When the original venue of the G8 Summit was Chicago (just prior to the May 20 NATO Summit in Chicago), major “Occupy” protests were being organized. Then, President Obama decided to move the G8 Summit to Camp David, his presidential retreat in the mountains of the U.S. state of Maryland.

Camp David is relatively inaccessible, as is Los Cabos, Mexico, where President Calderon is convening the G20. Los Cabos is located on a peninsula in Mexico’s smallest state, Baja California Sur, which is parallel to the mainland. It is several miles from the state’s capital, La Paz, where some civil society events and protests will be held in the run-up to the G20 Summit.[1]

Ultimately, protest is the result of elitism and exclusion. The Arab Spring and its aftermath represent only some manifestations of growing discontent among people with governments that are politically unaccountable and/or captured by corporate and financial interests. Civil society asks: how many grave crises related to finance, food, fuel, or the earth’s climate will be necessary for decision-makers to not only provide us with a “seat at the table,” but also respond to our demands?

In her article, “Civil Society G20 Engagement: Reflections from the Mexican Experience,”

Rocio Stevens of Oxfam Mexico states that, ultimately, the G20 needs to establish mechanisms to ensure civil society influence over decision-making.  Reportedly, the G20 appointed one Sherpa to every Business-20 task force to ensure that business voices were heard (see box , p.6).

The Mexican government is engaged in an ambitious outreach program in the run-up to the Summit, especially compared with the U.S. government which seems to lack any outreach at all – at least to civil society. Although G20 outreach is insufficient to influence the course of decisions, it is a beginning.

The G20 website is informative, including official and civil society calendars of events as well as reports of meetings with various constituencies - Business-20 (B20), Labor-20 (L20), Youth-20 (Y20), Think Tanks (TT20) and civil society.

On February 23, 2012, the G8/G20 Civil Society Working Group met in Mexico City and presented its recommendations to Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinoza, the Sherpa Lourdes Aranda, and their team. The Working Group articulated the principles upon which dialogue between G20 governments and civil society should be based, stressing that the G20 cannot achieve its goals without the leadership and energy of civil society, particularly those most marginalized. In addition to making recommendations on the substantive foci of the G20 (e.g., the economic and financial system; food security and food price volatility; and green growth), the Working Group called for coherence between G20 policy decisions and other commitments and treaties, including those related to human rights and environment. It emphasized that the G20 should not emasculate multilateral forums, including the UN, by entering into agreements (e.g., bilateral and free trade agreements) that often conflict with other commitments.

In her article, “Galvanizing Civil Society’s fight in Argentina: the launch of a common platform on the G20,” Maria Jose Romero of the Latin American Network on Debt, Development, and Rights (LATINDADD) in Peru, describes how two civil society organizations succeeded in launching a platform on the G20 agenda, putting forward policy proposals to the Argentine government, and contributing to a Latin American common position on the G20, among other things. Both the Argentine and Mexican platforms view the G20as largely a “prisoner of the neoliberal logic of free trade and the dominance of deregulated global finance.”

In an April 12 speech, even Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director of the IMF, conceded that with regard to financial regulatory reform: “The mission has not been accomplished—the mission is still to be accomplished.”

Regulation is an uphill battle, given the growing power and influence of business.  Social movements feel not only their own exclusion from decision-making, but also the “regulatory capture” of their governments and inter-governmental bodies, such as the G20. Two boxes describe the role of elite groups (e.g., World Economic Forum, McKinsey and Company) in influencing the positions of world leaders on “green growth” and “food security”: “The G20 and Rio +20: In Pursuit of `Green Growth’ and `Green Economy’” (p. 10 ) and “Business and Labor Leaders Present Recommendations to G20” (p 7).    On the issue of “food security,” which is on the  agenda for both the G20 and the G8 Summits,  governments are expected to announce commitments to an expansion of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in  agricultural initiatives designed by 17 corporations with McKinsey & Company as project advisor.

Such PPP initiatives, including in the climate finance arena, are facilitated by the new International Development Finance Club (IDFC)] of regional and sub-regional development banks. They aim to mobilize increasing volumes of public resources to leverage private investment, including through mitigating political and commercial risks.

In his article, “Indonesia and G20: Challenges and Opportunities for an Emerging Economy,” Don K. Marut, Executive Director, International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) describes how PPPs can create conflicts between local communities and the government when property and resource rights of communities are not recognized. In addition to describing the nature of pro-poor investment, Marut explains why it is so difficult for countries, including Indonesia,   to honor its commitments to multiple regional and international bodies, including the G20.

In his article, “India and G20,” Harsh Jaitli, Chief Executive Officer, Voluntary Action Network India (VANI), puts India’s role as a member of the G20 and the  BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)  in historical perspective. He also outlines the challenges for civil society in a near-vacuum of media coverage of issues relating to the G20 and India’s new role as a donor and world leader.  Finally, Jailtli sets forth the six-point “Agenda for Indian Voluntary Organizations,” which was adopted by civil society organizations last October to deal with these challenges.

One outcome of last month’s BRICS Summit in New Delhi was the commitment by leaders to explore a new "BRICS-led, South-South development bank." This move is a signal of the frustration of the BRICS with the control over the World Bank’s leadership, governance, and financing arrangement, primarily by the U.S., Europe, and Japan. (See Box “The Fourth BRICS Summit (March 2012) on "BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Security and Prosperity” p 13.) As a Financial Times editorial (April 7, 2012) recently stated, the Vatican and the World Bank face similar challenges: “Latin America contains almost half the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, but the continent has never provided a pope and is under-represented in Rome…As for the bank, its clients are in the poor and middle-income world, yet rich countries dominate its boards and the US, by convention, chooses its president.”