The eurozone crisis hijacked the French G20 Summit and shows every sign of doing the same at the Mexican Summit, as fear of a Greek exit (“Grexit”) from the eurozone morphs into panic over Spain (“Spanic”).
The G20 adapted the 20 Year Development Action Plan (DAP) at the summit in Seoul, South Korea. This plan does not include a strategy for Africa's energy future or energy infrastructure plans. An effective process must put more effort on localize energy and use Renewable Energy Technology.
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.
This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses in the G20’s “financial inclusion” initiative, which attempts to get desperately needed credit to households as well as the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that provide almost half of the labor force and almost half manufacturing employment in developing countries.
The G20’s legacy will relate to economic outcomes as well as its record in reducing both the resource-intensity of development and the incidence of poverty and inequality. To that end, this brief provides recommendations for the G20 with regard to infrastructure, food security, investment in sustainable development, and global governance.
The G20’s new troika is preparing for the G20 Summit in Los Cabos,Mexico on June 18-19, 2012. The troika is comprised of the current, former, and upcoming Presidencies of the G20: Mexico, France, and Russia.
The French Presidency of the G20 began the year with sweeping ambitions of overhauling global governance. But now, on the eve of the Summit, its greatest accomplishment may be a more or less convincing plan to save the Eurozone.The latest newsletter on "EU financial reforms" by SOMO and WEED, provides important perspectives on EU and G20 approaches to the crisis.
On November 3-4, when the G20 Leaders gather for their Summit in Cannes, they will review recommendations from a High-Level Panel (HLP) on Infrastructure, which proposes a global process for scaling up and streamlining public-private partnerships (PPPs) for large-scale, regional infrastructure projects. This paper describes this top-down initiative, which is disconnected from efforts to promote sustainability and, instead, takes a “bigger is better” approach to development.
Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik uses the graph (below) to illustrate the “great divergence” between Western economies which struggle with crushing debt burdens and political paralyses, on the one hand, and the economic dynamism of developing nations. Emerging market countries want their economic dynamism to translate into political muscle, including at the IMF.
