In this edition of the newsletter we cover a wide array of issue-areas and opinions: 1) Kirk Herbertson of World Resources Institute and Nancy Alexander of HBS look at the G20 as a standard setter and ask whether it could push for the internalization of environmental and human rights impacts in order to lead to better investment decision-making.   2) Nancy Alexander looks at the implications of the G20 for global governance. 3) Marta Benavides introduces the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) and the important role of increased civil society involvement in the G20 process. 4) Ilcheong Yi of UNRISD discusses the financial transaction tax and its link to social security. 5) Karen Hansen-Kuhn of IATP gives an update on the on-going discussion within the G20 on commodity and food price volatility, a topic that certainly will remain on the top of the global agenda in 2011.

For more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be known as the commons -- everything from our forests and our oceans to our broadcast airwaves and our most important intellectual and cultural works.

After the Seoul summit, we summarize - and criticize - the outcomes of summit: how does South Africa aim to represent the interests of the African continent at the G20 meetings and how is this perceived in other African countries? How could the G20 avoid falling into the same trap as the G8 - announcing well-intentioned programs without delivering them? And what needs to be done to effectively regulate financial markets and commodity speculation?

Two years ago, the group of the world’s 20 major economies (the G20) announced their shared ambition: to manage the global economic crisis more efficiently and more transparently than the old industrialized nations (G8), and to prevent further financial market crises or economic downturns. Only two years later, the G20 now stands at a crossroads. At the Group’s summit meeting in Seoul on November 11 and 12, selfish interests may well gain the upper hand, pushing the group’s previous willingness to cooperate into the background.

On October 22, Nancy Alexander spoke at the Global Capital Forum of the Korean Women's Development Institute about the importance of women's leadership in achieving sustainable development. Her paper appears here.

Gender equality is highlighted as a special theme in the ongoing 16th round of replenishment talks for the World Bank Group’s International Development Association (IDA 16). A discussion about gender equality at the World Bank group is not new. Since 2001, the World Bank has had an official gender mainstreaming strategy. Yet there are some structural weaknesses in the way the World Bank addresses gender considerations that need to be overcome in order for IDA 16 to be able to contribute to gender-equitable development in the poorest developing countries.

An important addition to the growing international dialogue about the commons can be found in the new anthology, Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong? The essays in this book are now available online in English.

We are getting ready for Seoul where the next G20 summit is taking place. The core issues there are expected to be development and financial markets regulation. Some of our contributors argue that addressing development helps closing the G20's legitimacy gap, while others worry that yet another development actor will only make the development field more messy and the G20 less focussed. Instead, the G20 should narrow its agenda to financial issues like the latest Basel rules. This trade-off between legitimacy and focus could be solved by establishing issue-oriented, ministerial-led G20s: one that focuses on finance, one on development, one on climate change, and so forth.

Ahead of the G20 summit in Seoul, we present the ins and outs of food speculation which is expected to be one of the main topics of the summit in Seoul. We explain how food speculation works, analyze how it drives world hunger and propose what individual states and the G20 should do to limit food speculation.

This paper recommends that the World Bank distribute its assistance to Africa in more equitable ways. On August 16, 2010, it was presented to the African Caucus of Finance Ministers, Central Bank Governors, and World Bank and IMF Executive Directors in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Caucus established a Task Force to advocate that the World Bank implement the recommendations.