G20 Summit in Seoul a ‘turning point’ in global economic leadership

Nov 8th, 2010 9:16 AM UTC
By Malaka Gharib

Last Friday, I attended a briefing on the upcoming G20 Summit at the Center for Global Development (CGD). It was really neat to hear about it from the experts’ perspective, especially because this year’s Summit will be pretty historic — it’s being held in a non-G8 country for the very first time: Seoul, South Korea.

It will be historic for a number of other reasons, too. This year’s Summit represents a real turning point in global economic leadership. G20 finance ministers are shifting toward a more representative steering body and paying more attention to development, climate change and anti-corruption, issues that were not focused on in previous Summits. The CGD hopes that this year’s Summit will make the switch from a crisis-driven approach to long term-driven — a notion that could potentially “save” the G20.

Nancy Birdsall, president of CGD, said that the Seoul Summit — other than what’s already on the agenda — should focus on a few specific things: creating growth with resilience, making growth that is inclusive and encouraging the public sector to invest in infrastructure. This Summit will not be about new money, the MDGs or charity, she said.

Apart from talking about how to make the Seoul Summit the best that it can be (which you can read about in detail on the CGD website), Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow at the CGD, talked about how to make the G20 more “legit.” As it stands, there isn’t really an official process to get into the Group, and as a result, the G20 isn’t representative of the global economy or people. By creating a standard, clear criteria for “getting a seat at the table,” we can boost the Summit’s transparency and credibility.

We’ll be following the G20 Summit next week and we’ll give you more updates and analysis then. In the mean time, be sure to take a look at those links that I’ve hyperlinked in the text — they’re filled with great information about the Summit.

TAGS: G20, ONE, South Korea