Brazil's 2024 G20 Summit: Right Agenda, Little Consensus

The 2024 Group of Twenty (G20) Leaders’ Summit convened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, earlier this week as the world grapples with war, rising protectionism, and worsening climate change.

In the past, the G20 has sent strong, unequivocal signals on each of those critical issues. And, as a grouping of leaders of the world’s largest militaries, economies, and emitters, its pronouncements carried weight.

But with Donald Trump’s re-election as US president hanging over the Rio summit and the most fractious geopolitical backdrop in decades, this year, the G20 underdelivered on each of those fronts.

On war, for the second year running, the G20 Leaders Declaration refrained from explicitly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—something it had managed to do in 2022 when Indonesia chaired the summit, but dropped last year under India’s chairmanship. Some have interpreted this as a weakening of international resolve on the war in Ukraine. But more accurately, it reflects Russian obstructionism, tacitly supported by non-Western members such as China and India.

On trade, G20 leaders failed to issue a clear statement against protectionism in the face of a global slide away from open, rules-based trade. Most egregiously, Trump has threatened to impose 10 to 20 percent tariffs on all imports into the United States, and 60 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, which could spark trade wars with China and Europe. A call from the world’s most powerful economies to resist all forms of protectionism would have been an important signal to the rest of the world before Trump takes office. But such unity was extinguished under the first Trump presidency and has not reemerged under Joe Biden.

On climate, many had hoped the G20 Summit would reaffirm a landmark global commitment, agreed at last year’s UN climate summit in Dubai (COP28), for countries to transition away from fossil fuels. But with G20 member Saudi Arabia, among others, attempting to walk back that commitment at COP29 in Azerbaijan, it was never going to be easy.

As Trump prepares to again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, trust on this issue is abysmally low between rich and poor countries. Despite this, Brazil, which is also hosting next year’s UN climate summit (COP30), will have been working hard behind the scenes to push major economies to put forward new ambitious emissions-reduction pledges by February 2025.

The G20 has the potential to make an impact when it most matters. In 2009, during the global financial crisis, the G20 helped avert a deeper global downturn by mobilising trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus. Last year, the G20 encouraged the tripling of renewable energy capacity globally—which was adopted as a key commitment at COP28.

As an institution, the G20’s strength has been its balance between including the world’s most powerful governments while avoiding some of the divisions that plague broader groupings. But in 2024, there is no hiding from geopolitical fragmentation, particularly when the key antagonists are in the tent.

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