History of the G20 & BRICS: 2010 - 2015

This issue entitled, "Will the New G20 Troika Advance Sustainable Development?" includes feature articles on Public-Private Partnerships (will they help achieve climate and sustainable development goals?); the Turkish Civil 20; and ragged progress on the G20 Anti-Corruption agenda.

This issue of the G20-BRICS Update covers the hopes and fears for the G20 Summit in November 2014; outcomes of the BRICS Summit in July 2014; the G20's Global Infrastructure Initiative; and Korea's experience with public-private partnerships (PPP)s.

In this special issue of the G20-BRICS Update, scholars and activists share views on the potential of the BRICS and their new initiatives.

Read about the jobs crisis, mobilizing pension funds to underwrite infrastructure, the need for a new “model” for BRICS’ development, and the ambitions and risks of African mega-projects.

The February 2014 "G20-BRICS Update" features articles on the Australian G20 Presidency by Senator Christine Milne and Alan Alexandroff; articles on the BRICS by Graciela Rodriguez and Oliver Stuenkel (Brazil) and Vitaliy Kartamyshev (Russia); and reviews of work by Jayati Ghosh and Observer Research Foundation (India).

At the September 2013 G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Leaders faced conflicts relating to the Syrian crisis and decelerating global growth and, particularly, the role of the monetary policies of advanced countries, especially the U.S., in destabilizing developing country ́s economies.

This issue of the “G20 Update” includes articles on three questions:1) What is the nature of the upsurge of investigations of, and attacks on, Russian civil society? 2) Why has the G20 launched a new initiative on “financing for investment”? 3) How do the policy agendas of the G8 and G20 converge?

This issue features articles on  the G20 exclusion of African perspectives, the story of Russia’s CivilG8–2006 Project, the parade of “20” meetings, the G20’s Anti-Corruption Working Group and includes a “knowledge box” on “The `Enough’ Campaign and the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.

On December 1, 2012, the G20 welcomed its new leadership “troika”– Russia, Mexico, and Australia – the current, past and future presidents, respectively. The Russian G20 Presidency has announced its priorities for the 2013 Summit.G20 Sherpas, or presidential aides, will meet in Moscow in mid-December. At the same time, civil society, think tanks, and business leaders will gather to hammer out recommendations to present to the Sherpas.

Since the Mexican G20 Summit, the Eurozone crisis and the U.S. slowdown are hitting many emerging and developing countries suffer from declines in industrial output, export growth, trade and inflows of capital.

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 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.

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.

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.

Our latest issue looks at how the financialization of agricultural markets increased price volatility and how the G20, paradoxically, wants to address this by even greater financialization. It investigates what role the G20 will play in the transformatio of the world economy and in tackling climate change. It also addresses the practice of inviting CEOs of big businesses to G20 summits and calls for a more legitimate approach by inviting business associations that are more representative.

Historically, Summit agendas have a way of being hijacked by current events and the 2011 Summits will be no exception. On May 26-27, the G8 Summit can be expected to address threats in the Middle East, especially Libya; in the Eurozone (where sovereign debt ratings for Spain and Portugal have been downgraded), and in Japan. Some G20 Leaders want the G8 to die a quiet death; they perceive G8 Leaders “pre-cooking” outcomes for their Summit, which is not until November. Meanwhile, as events unfold, the G8 and G20 Ministers and working groups continue to work in parallel.

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.

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?

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.

We review the Toronto Summit and take a look ahead to Korea’s presidency of the G20 with a distinct focus on development issues, financial market regulation and civil society engagement.