It was never going to be a smooth runner at this year’s Group of 20 summit in India.
The just-concluded conclave was missing notable officials: China’s Xi Jinping, who has never missed a G20 meeting since taking power in 2012, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has missed the summit for the second consecutive year since the invasion of Ukraine has skipped.
Relations between India and China remain frosty, with many concerned whether the absence of the two presidents – especially Xi’s – would affect the future and relevance of the G20, especially if the leaders fail to reach a final communiqué to come.
These concerns were partly allayed when member states’ leaders managed to adopt a final declaration on Saturday, albeit only by making the blandest possible statement on Ukraine. It did not condemn Russia’s invasion of the country and simply “remembered” the statement made in last year’s G20 statement in Bali.
It referred to United Nations resolutions and the need to respect territorial boundaries. This undoubtedly made some Western officials uneasy.
On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who replaced Putin at the summit, declared the meeting “a success” and thanked countries in the South for maintaining a consolidated position on Ukraine. Russian negotiator Svetlana Lukash told journalists in New Delhi that the joint statement was “balanced” and welcomed by Moscow. She said the BRICS countries – Brazil, India, China and South Africa, apart from Russia – and other allies contributed to the “balanced” statement.
While Russia was clearly pleased with the outcomes, Western diplomats may believe this is a price worth paying. They must keep the G20 operational. Many Western countries, concerned about China’s growing power, want New Delhi – a strategic counterbalance to Beijing – to be able to claim that the summit was a great success.
International aid organization Oxfam called the summit ‘uninspiring and disappointing’ because no action is being taken to tackle poverty, inequality and climate change.
It is fair to say that the summit had words about the restructuring of the global financial system, which was conceived during the Bretton Woods conference at the end of the Second World War, and which most international experts consider outdated. The conclave talked about the possibility of reform, but there are no timelines or an action plan.
The same goes for global debt. Many countries are struggling and find themselves in what the UN calls a “debt row”. Relief is needed and provisions are being made for these countries, but no concrete steps have been announced.
The UN spokesman said the body did not intend to issue a line-by-line report on the G20’s decisions. But despite this very diplomatic approach, the UN did say it was not satisfied with the outcome of climate change.
The G20 countries are responsible for 80 percent of the world’s emissions. Yet there is no commitment to phase out coal, and no timelines have been set.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Al Jazeera at the start of the meeting that he had ambitious new goals for the G20: for rich countries to reach net zero by 2040 or sooner, and developing countries by 2050. But two days later he did not include those commitments in the final statement.
The G20 was originally founded in 1999 as an economic body of finance ministers. The G20 has no permanent secretariat and no one to monitor how things are done. Because it is a multilateral grouping, change is slow and incremental. Many experts fear this will not deliver the progress needed to solve the enormous problems facing humanity.
Guterres told Al Jazeera in the interview that he feared a major rift would occur: the world would divide into two blocs, one led by the United States and the other by China. It would evolve into a system in which there are two major currencies, two internets, and two different economies on either side of this divide. He said this would be a disaster for the world.
The question is: are we there yet? Are we slowly moving towards a world where we have the US and its G7 allies on one side, and the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) on the other? Xi took center stage in South Africa last month at the BRICS summit and chose to miss the G20; Some fear this is the way things are going.
Certainly, there are many countries trying to keep a foot in both camps, with India as an example. That means it may not yet be a foregone conclusion that the world will fall apart in the ways some fear.
The next G20 summit will be in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November 2024, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva taking over the presidency. In that role, Brazil will have quite a bit of influence on the agenda and hope to influence the group.
For the first time, the African Union will attend the summit, representing 55 countries, including some of the poorest in the world. Lula’s political views are well known, so perhaps issues such as inequality, poverty and world finance reform will be highlighted even harder next year.