G20 leaders wrapping up a summit in South Africa on Sunday hailed multilateralism — even as they struggled to adapt to a changing world order beset by go-it-alone US policies, wars and deepening geopolitical rivalries.
“Too many countries are retreating into geopolitical blocs or the battlegrounds of protectionism,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters.
He added: “We are not experiencing a transition, but a rupture.”
He and the other leaders at the summit — which was boycotted by the United States — held a searching discussion on how the G20 can survive in a fragmenting world.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said, just before bringing the gavel down on the summit, that the meeting took place “at a crucial time, as calls around the world grow louder for progress on the imperatives of our time”.
Despite challenges to international cooperation, Ramaphosa said a joint declaration by G20 leaders issued early in the meeting “reaffirms our renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation and our recognition that our shared goals outweigh our differences”.
Dozens of leaders from key economies around the world — including Europe, China, India, Japan, Turkey, Brazil and Australia — attended the summit, the first to be held in Africa.
In their G20 statement, they said their meeting was held “against the backdrop of rising geopolitical and geo-economic competition and instability, heightened conflicts and wars, deepening inequality, increasing global economic uncertainty and fragmentation”.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday warned that “the G20 may be coming to the end of a cycle”.
Noting difficulties in finding a common stance on conflicts around the world, he argued it should refocus just on strategic economic issues going forward.
– ‘New connections’ –
The G20 — comprising 19 nations plus the European Union and the African Union — was founded in the wake of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, and its original mission was to boost global economic and financial stability.
US President Donald Trump’s government snubbed the event, saying South Africa’s priorities — including cooperation on trade and climate — ran counter to its policies.
Trump’s officials have also made unfounded accusations of a “white genocide” in South Africa.
The United States is to host next year’s G20 summit, with Trump planning to hold it at a Florida golf club he owns.
Several leaders, including Carney, Ramaphosa and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said that emerging economies and the Global South were becoming more important in the G20.
Lula told reporters: “If anyone thought they could weaken multilateralism, these events, both at the COP (UN climate talks in Brazil) and here in South Africa, demonstrate that multilateralism is more alive than ever.”
He said that Trump “is trying to practically advocate for the end of multilateralism, strengthening unilateralism” but added he believed that “together we are much stronger… and it is easier to solve the world’s problems”.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he thought “it was not a good decision” for America to skip the summit, but “that is for the US government to decide”.
“What has really fascinated me a bit here today and yesterday is the fact that you can see that the world is currently reorganising itself and that, here, new connections are being formed,” Merz told reporters.
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