This past weekend, on November 30 and 31, the G20 Summit was held in Rome. Most of the leaders of the participating countries traveled to Rome in person. The leaders of Russia, China and Mexico – Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – participated in the summit by video conference due to quarantine restrictions, while Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida did not come to Italy due to the ongoing parliamentary elections in his country.
The main topics of the summit are announced to be the climate, the consequences of the pandemic, vaccination campaigns and economic recovery.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that the G20 has made progress in combating the pandemic, economic recovery and climate issues.
“This has been a challenging year marked by enormous global challenges, of which pandemic, sustained economic recovery and combating the climate crisis are critical. I believe we have made tangible progress on each of these issues,” the United States leader said.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called combating climate change the greatest challenge of our time.
“The transition to clean energy is the key to achieving the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we can no longer postpone it,” the Italian leader said.
Draghi noted that the coronavirus pandemic is not yet over, but vaccination campaigns have made it possible to “look to the future with more or some optimism.”
“Successful vaccination campaigns and coordinated action by governments and central banks have allowed the global economy to recover,” the prime minister added.
Meanwhile, the Italian leader noted that there is an unequal approach to the distribution of vaccines worldwide, with high income countries having 70% of those vaccinated with at least one dose, and poor countries with less than 3%.
“These disparities are morally unacceptable and undermine global economic recovery,” Draghi said.
Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G20’s decision to scrap funding for coal power would accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
“Equally important is the fact that an agreement has been reached to stop financing coal power in the near future. China has taken an important step by joining the others. This means that the transition to other sources of energy will be much faster, here, in our view, gas should play a central role,” Merkel said.
According to the acting German chancellor, the G20 countries plan to discuss support for the use of gas also in the energy of African countries.
British Prince Charles, president of Britain’s World Wildlife Fund, said the upcoming COP26 climate summit (to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12) is the “last chance” to save the planet.
“We must turn our pretty words into pretty actions. The enormity of climate change dominates people’s conversations, from the news to their living rooms. The future of humanity and nature itself is at stake,” said Prince Charles.
He added that to reduce temperatures by 1.5 degrees annually, trillions of dollars of investment are needed to build the necessary infrastructure. But no government has that kind of money. That is why cooperation between the private and public sector is needed.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the G20 summit did not meet his expectations.
“Although I welcome the reaffirmation of the G20’s commitment to global solutions, I am leaving Rome with unfulfilled hopes – but at least they are not buried,” Gutteres wrote on Twitter.