Ukraine war comes as a hurdle to G20 leaders joint communique draft

Fourth G20 sherpa meet in Haryana hopes to transform the consensus achieved on intent into action

The Ukraine war is the biggest roadblock towards preparing the final draft of the G20 Leaders’ joint communique, officials at the fourth G20 sherpa meeting said on Sunday.

Officials are racing against time to hammer out the final declaration that will be adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders of G20 nations later this week in New Delhi.

Beginning in Nuh district of Haryana on Sunday, the five-day meet faces a tough challenge to create consensus in several areas, including energy transition, trade, and health, given that almost all ministerial meetings of various G20 working groups have ended without joint communiques.

Instead, a series of ‘Chairman’s Summary and Outcomes Documents’ have been issued with a clarification that nations remain divided over the Ukraine issue.

Talks are expected to reach fever pitch from Monday.

Circulated by India, the first draft of the joint communique was intensely discussed in the third G20 sherpa meeting in Hampi, Karnataka. The second draft had been sent out to G20 nations in late July.
 

After the previous meeting, the government had said that considerable progress was made on the preamble part and on gender equality. However, consensus is yet to be created on key parts of the communique.
 

“All participants have been sent the draft and multiple discussions were held on almost all topics. Most technical issues have been dealt with at the talks by various working groups. We have already seen broad consensus among nations on most areas of intent. Now, this will be converted into points of action,” the official mentioned above said.
 

The clock is ticking as September 6 will see the joint meeting of sherpas and finance deputies.

Indian focus

India also remains focused on building consensus on key developmental issues.

During the past three sherpa meetings in Hampi, Kumarakom, and Udaipur, India had tried to steer the conversation towards digital public infrastructure (DPIs), accelerating progress on sustainable development goals (SDGs), and green development.

On DPIs, 40 countries have shown interest in adopting the Indian stack, a set of open application programming interfaces,

which allows governments, businesses, start-ups, and developers to utilise a unique digital infrastructure to solve many of India’s hard problems. This includes Aadhaar, Co-Win, unified payments interface (UPI), DigiLocker, and India’s artificial intelligence-based language platform Bhashini.
 

High-level principles (HLPs) on harnessing Data for Development (D4D) to accelerate progress on SDGs are a part of the G20 2023 action plan. This plan will speed up progress on SDGs, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant had earlier said.
 

On trade, the nations have already agreed to promote digitalisation of trade documents and a generic mapping framework for global value chains (GVCs). They have given a “Jaipur call for action” to enhance the access by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to information.
 

Officials are also confident of receiving unanimous support for India’s proposal to accord full membership to the African Union in the grouping.

“For India, the objective has always been to use the presidency to focus more on the Global South. We are confident that the language of the leaders’ communique will reflect that,” another official said.
 

However, energy transition and climate remain major headaches for officials as developed and developing nations differ on key areas of climate mitigation, and phasing down of fossil fuels, apart from the issue of climate funding. G20 nations are responsible for 80 per cent of global emissions.

Strict security

The sherpa meeting is taking place around 50 km from Delhi, across multiple locations in Tauru tehsil of Nuh district. The Haryana district had been hit by riots in early August.

While the format of the sherpa talks has not been curtailed, associated visits and side events have been cancelled, sources said.

Given the heightened security, Section 144 has been imposed around both the hotels where the event is taking place, that is, ITC Grand Bharat and Lemon Tree Hotel, Tarudhan Valley. There is also a ban on flying drones in the area.