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Opinion | Amid rising US-China tensions and a slowing recovery, the G20 must live up to its crisis-solving legacy
- While the G20 earned praise for helping avert financial meltdown in 2008, its relevance is increasingly in question amid waning internal cohesion
- Emerging economies holding the presidency in the next three years could inject the group with more inclusive ideas and greater legitimacy
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“If we didn’t have it, we would have to invent it” might well be the catchphrase for the Group of 20 as the international community rethinks global institutional architecture in the face of shifting power dynamics and geopolitical strife.
To be fair, the same is often said of other venerable institutions such as the World Trade Organization, or even the United Nations, often as a line of defence when questions are raised over their relevance or effectiveness.
According to former Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman and UK treasury minister Jim O’Neill, size also matters because the G20 is both too big and too small to be on the ball consistently. While he might be right, numbers alone suggest the G20 should be the room where it happens when it comes to fixing global challenges, such as post-pandemic economic recovery, tackling climate change or getting the world vaccines.
Of all the international groupings, it boasts the most diverse and compelling mix of nations. It has 80 per cent of global income, three-quarters of global exports, 60 per cent of the global population and 80 per cent of global emissions.
The G20 was a forum of central bankers and finance ministers created when the 1997 Asian financial crisis laid bare the Group of 7’s insufficiency. It came of age in 2008 when elevated to a leaders’ level summit two months after the Lehman Brothers collapse that precipitated the global financial crisis.
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G20 summit explained: what is it and why is it important?
G20 summit explained: what is it and why is it important?
Perhaps distance did make the heart grow fonder, or at least hindsight rosier. While the G20’s response to the 2008 global financial meltdown is often lauded as an exemplary economic crisis response, the reality is less straightforward.
Bernice Lee is director of Futures at Chatham House, London and a Hoffman Distinguished Fellow for Sustainability. She is also a member of the UK Global Resource Initiative Task Force, the UK Climate Change Committee’s International Advisory Group and the Energy Foundation China Board. Bernice has previously been director of climate change and resource security initiatives at the World Economic Forum and team leader of the EU–China Interdependencies on Energy and Climate Security Project.
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