Prime Minister Rudd US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Mar. '09. Credit US State Department
By Rich Bowden
There have been calls for Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to use the G20 forum to help protect poorer countries from the recent economic crisis.
Mr Rudd used an address to the United Nations yesterday to urge that more inclusive forums such as the G20 be used by the world to resolve world crises such as the recent global economic downturn. In an earlier statement Mr Rudd criticised the United Nations saying that, in contrast to the G20, it had become unwieldy and therefore unresponsive to crises such as the recent financial downturn.
“While our global economic system failed comprehensively to prevent this crisis, the G20 governments have rallied to reduce the damage and prevent systemic collapse,” he said at a luncheon in the United States prior to this week’s gathering of the G20 nations in Pittsburgh. He added the more flexible nature of the G20, involving the heightened participation of both developed and developing nations, was the secret behind its success.
“Through the agency of the G20, for the first time involving heads of government from the major developed and developing economies, governments acted in concert. The IMF has assessed that these extraordinary interventions succeeded in breaking the fall in what was an economic crisis spiralling out of control,” said the prime minister.
Protect poorer nations
However aid agency Oxfam Australia has called on Mr Rudd to use the G20 to ensure poorer nations were protected against increasing poverty caused by the GFC.
“The financial crisis has helped to increase the number of people facing chronic hunger to more than a billion worldwide, said Oxfam Australia’s Economic Justice Coordinator, Kelly Dent. “At the same time, the World Bank has estimated an extra 50 million people will be pushed into poverty as a result of the crisis.”
“In addition to this, poor people in developing countries are already suffering from the effects of climate change, as changing weather patterns affect their ability to grow food and threaten their homes,” she said.
Copenhagen
Ms Dent added the G20 meeting was also crucial in setting the agenda for an agreement on emissions at the Copenhagen climate talks in December.
“It’s especially important that leaders from wealthy countries use this meeting to commit money to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. This is a crucial step towards getting a global climate deal at the talks in Copenhagen in December.”
“Money for climate change adaptation should not come from existing aid budgets, as this will only undermine the fight against poverty. We don’t want to see hard won development gains lost,” Ms Dent said.
Oxfam specifically called on Mr Rudd to convince G20 nations to:
* Provide at least US $150 billion a year to help developing countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change of whichAustralia’s fair share of this is AU $4 billion (US $3.5 billion);
* Deliver on their commitment to provide 0.7 per cent of their national income as aid;
* Provide US $290 billion extra funding to help the world’s poor cope with the financial crisis.
Oxfam said part of the funding could be through implementing a Currency Transaction Tax, with a tax of at least 0.005% on international currency transactions generating US $33 billion per year towards lifting world poverty.
Ms Dent said that the commitments were necessary because the weak recovery from the financial crisis had yet to trickle down to poorer nations.
“Existing aid levels are not enough to protect poor people from the combined effects of the financial crisis and climate change. The green shoots of recovery have not reached the poorest countries, which continue to suffer in the economic downturn. There is a real danger that rich countries will scale back further their aid commitments and fail to deliver, just when poor countries need it most,” said Ms Dent.
The G20 is a membership of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors from 19 countries and the European Union. The countries are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.
G20 Leaders, Washington D.C., Nov. 2008. Credit: Pres. of Argentina.
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