G20 leaders gather in Rome under pressure to send clear signal on climate

The leaders of the 20 main economies of the planet They begin this Saturday in Rome their first face-to-face summit since the appearance of the coronavirus, under pressure to send a strong signal against global warming on the eve of COP26 in Glasgow.

“We still have time to get things back on track and this G20 meeting is an opportunity”UN Secretary General António Guterres said yesterday, warning of the “serious risk” of failure at the conference held in Scotland.

Climate is at the center of the agenda of the G20, scheduled until Sunday in the Eternal City, which will also address the fight against covid-19 and will have parallel meetings of interest, such as that of the leaders of Argentina and the International Monetary Fund.

In full renegotiation of his debt, the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, will hold a meeting with the managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, after talking with the leaders of Germany, Spain and the institutions of the European Union (EU).

“If we still do not close an agreement [con el FMI] it’s because we’re not going to kneel”Said on Wednesday Fernández, who, together with the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, will be the only leaders of Latin America present in Rome in the absence of the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

But AMLO’s will not be the only one. Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida participate by videoconference in the meeting with the leaders of the United States, Europe or India, among others.

Meeting in “The Cloud”

The setting chosen for the first face-to-face summit from Osaka in 2019 is known as “The Cloud”, a modern and open-plan congress center built in the EUR neighborhood, which the dictator Benito Mussolini devised as the capital of his empire in the first half of the century XX.

To guarantee security and in the face of the different demonstrations called on Saturday (unions, extreme left, Fridays for Future), 5,000 members of the forces of order were deployed and helicopters and drones will fly over the Italian capital.

Despite the expectations, no great progress is expected on the meeting topics, beyond the ratification by the leaders of the pact reached weeks ago to apply a worldwide corporate tax of 15% from 2023.

On climate change, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already advanced on his way to Rome that they will not stop “climate change neither in Rome nor at the COP meeting” in Glasgow. “The most we can hope for is to slow the rise” in temperatures.

In Paris in 2015, the international community pledged to strive to limit global warming to + 1.5ºC compared to the pre-industrial era and, in Scotland, they must now set the medium-term timetable for actions, such as reducing the emission of polluting gases .

133 vs 4

The devastating effects of the coronavirus, both human and economic, will also be on the menu at the weekend meeting in Rome, as well as the debt of the poorest countries, which demand, for their part, that the developed ones stop monopolizing the anticovid vaccines.

“In high-income countries, 133 doses of the anticovid vaccine were administered per 100 people, while in low-income countries 4 doses were administered per 100,” denounced on Friday several UN organizations, including Health (WHO).

At the beginning of September, the international financing mechanism Covax, promoted by the WHO among others, revised down its dose forecasts in 2021, to 1,425 million. The initial goal of 2 billion should now be reached in the first quarter of 2022.

After a preview on Friday marked by Pope Francis’ diplomacy and the first in-person meeting between the presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and France, Emmanuel Macron, after the submarine crisis, the behind-the-scenes meetings continue.

The leaders of the European powers that participated in the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 – France, the United Kingdom and Germany – are due to address their reactivation with Biden on Saturday. On Sunday, Macron and Johnson must address the fisheries crisis in the English Channel.

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