Tuesday, October 13, 2009

G20 Recap

While I took a respite, the world has been pretty active.
Two rounds of global talks on economy recovery: the G8 summit at L’Aquila, Italy, pledging (mere?) $20 billion to boost food supplies (it’s a ‘moral obligation’ to help poor countries, says Obama); and the G20 Pittsburg summit in US last month where leaders met to follow up on their London pledges. (Check out the last five months’ action on the BBC pledge tracker).
China, India become the new caretakers of the global economy; but the communiqué is panned by the anti-poverty UN Millennium Campaign. New voting powers to emerging countries do not help the poorest in smaller economies driven to debts.

Two more stocktaking planned next year in Canada and Korea: will words translate to action?