The G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro
The G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro on 18-19 November 2024 marked the conclusion of Brazil’s presidency of the grouping. The presidency has now moved to South Africa.
The G20 comprises 19 individual countries as well as the European Union and African Union.
It is certainly an important grouping. As Martin Wolf has commented, “If the G20 did not exist, we would have to invent it”.[1] But it is certainly not a homogenous grouping. One way of looking at it is, as the IMF does, to split it between advanced and emerging economies (see diagram).
Furthermore, the G20 advanced economies can be seen as the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US) plus two other countries - Australia and South Korea – and one country grouping – the EU.
Similarly, the G20 emerging economies can be viewed as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)[2] plus five other economies - Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico – and one country grouping – the African Union. The latter became a member of the G20 only in September 2023: the name of the group has not (at least, yet) changed from the G20 to G21. But it could probably better be named the G100, reflecting its country and country-grouping representation.[3]
Together, the G20 economies are expected to have a GDP of USD97tr in 2024, 88% of the global total; a population of 6.4 billion, 80% of the world total; and account for 84% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
Fit for purpose?
But that broader representation has been associated with a questioning of its importance, notably by Gordon Brown.[4] He was UK prime minister when the UK had the G20 presidency in 2009. At its London summit, the G20 agreed a global response to the Global Financial Crisis, arguably its most significant achievement so far. Now, however, Brown sees the G20 as much less important because of “the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world, from a hyper-globalized economy to one that might be called ‘globalization lite’ and from neoliberalism toward neo-mercantilism.”
Exclusions
Other issues have also been raised about the importance of the G20. Despite its breadth, important economies are excluded. Three of only the four economies in the world judged ‘free’ by The Heritage Foundation[5] – Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan – are not included.[6] Eight of the G20 economies have levels of corruption that are seen as high enough to compromise economic growth.[7] Hong Kong, Ukraine, Israel and all the Gulf economies (apart from Saudi Arabia) are not included. Most Latin American economies are not included (Argentina and Brazil are members). None of the 10 ASEAN economies are included.
G- Zero
Of course, widening membership further could be a recipe for an even greater ‘cacophany of competing voices’ as meetings of such international bodies of co-operation have been described by Ian Bremmer. He sees a G-Zero world in which no one country (or country group) is willing or able to assume global leadership.[8] That seems too pessimistic. “Jaw Jaw” as Winston Churchill commented is better than “War War”.
[2] The BRICS grouping has itself been widened recently to include three Gulf economies – Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; two African economies – Egypt and Ethiopia; and Argentina.
[3] That is, the sum of the 7 economies of the G7 plus Australia and South Korea and the 27 economies of the EU ( minus the three in the G7, to avoid double counting) but adding the [2] EU representatives (the presidents of the EU Council and the Commission both attend meetings) plus the 5 BRICS, the 5 other emerging economies included in the G20 plus the African Union (comprising 55 countries) minus the one already in the G20 (South Africa) plus one African Union Commission representative. That makes 100 in total.
[4] Gordon Brown Fixing Global Governance. Project Syndicate 25 September 2023. https://tinyurl.com/y8wbr7nh
[6] Ireland, the fourth, is represented as an EU member state.
[7] Transparency International Corruptions Perception Index. Data as at 1 October 2023.