Brazilian command: find out what the challenges of Brazil’s presidency of the G20 are

The motto of the Brazilian presidency of the G20, “Building a fair world and a sustainable planet”, gives a measure of the ambition of the priorities that the government has defined to direct the discussions and the leading role that the country wants to take in facing major global issues. The idea is that, despite the tumultuous international geopolitics, the 19 largest economies in the world, the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU), agree that there is no way to escape this guideline and make this clear in a joint statement, where they confirm that they will act and how they will do it. After all, there is a consensus that it is necessary to end hunger and poverty, combat climate change and promote the energy transition, and make international organizations function in a balanced manner.

At least that’s what President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is betting on. But what will determine the distance between expectations and the final result is reality.

“It’s up to us to be ambitious, it would be ridiculous if we weren’t. It was necessary to propose an agenda that, in the face of conflicts, was minimally consensual”, said a negotiator.

A veteran among those attending the G20, Lula knows that this is not a platform for great leaps forward. But he also knows that it is an important showcase for Brazil and its foreign policy, as well as currently being one of the main forums for global debate. That’s why you want concrete results. And, for the government, this means, for example, at the end of a year as president of the group — to be handed over to South Africa after the leaders’ summit in Rio on November 18 and 19 — showing power to call and ability to mobilize new and existing resources around these causes.

Alliance against hunger

One of them is the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, to be formed by July. From then until November, when it will be officially launched, Brazil has the challenge of bringing in partners from outside the G20. There, there are forms of membership for nations of all sizes. The richest come in as donors, adding to the budgets of international organizations and existing funds to sponsor social policies in low-income countries.

Medium-sized nations, like Brazil, provide knowledge and technical cooperation (which also costs money). The policies will come from a menu of successful experiences, to be announced with the Alliance. The benefits are not just new financing. They could be forgiveness of part of the billion-dollar debts. Conditionalities must be lenient. No leonine tax demands.

On a second front, the government wants alternative and complementary financial mechanisms for the energy transition and the fight against climate change. A novelty of the G20 is to ensure that the financial regulation of central banks directs financial market resources to appropriate and sustainable initiatives. The topic expands what has been discussed within the scope of the COP. Your design would be a great victory. A new calculation for the size of the financial challenge to be faced will be announced at COP29, in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, in the same week as the G20 summit in Rio.

To these two priorities is added that of global governance. Brazil wants to make a lot of noise around the need for reforms of multilateral international institutions and considers the unprecedented “call to action” that it will make at the first meeting in the history of G20 countries and guests from outside the club on the sidelines to be a great gain of its presidency. of the UN Assembly in September.

“We are talking about a different economy. The redistribution of resources and powers needs to be mirrored in the contemporary world”, says the secretary of economic issues at Itamaraty, ambassador Mauricio Lyrio, the Brazilian sherpa in the negotiations.

A final declaration will also be seen as a victory, although less forceful than the president would like. Its degree of boldness will measure Brazil’s ability to prevent geopolitics from contaminating the consensus. The final wording has been an arduous task. The 30-page final document was almost not published during the two previous presidencies, in India (2023) and Indonesia (2022), precisely because of the geopolitical situation, now considered to be much more serious.

In 2023, 123 conflicts were recorded (a level close to the times of the Cold War in the early 1990s). They are not the only ones who can take the shine off the statement. The international calendar can play against the good results of the G20 or create unfair consequences. The American presidential election is a big question mark. If Donald Trump is elected, the chances are strong that the American seat will be empty at the Rio summit. The expectation is that the Republican will not come, if he wins. Neither will Democrat Joe Biden, if he loses.