You are currently viewing CIGI’s blog archive. To visit our active blogging platform, please click here
Looking for Expert Commentary on the G8 Summit?
Media Advisory: CIGI experts are available to comment on next week’s G8 Summit in Deauville, France. The agenda is organized into three key areas, as are our experts.
Climate Governance and the G8: New Framing, New Forum
To ecological economists and many ardent environmentalists, ‘green growth’ is an oxymoron. However, there is an increasing trend towards the use of terms like ‘green growth’, ‘green jobs’, and ‘green economy’ in environmental policy debates. This stems from recognition that the political-crafting of arguments for progressive environmental policies is critically important.
Staying true to this trend, France has chosen ‘green growth’ as a theme for next week’s Deauville G8 Summit. Environmental governance discussions on the docket for the summit are overwhelmingly framed in the context of ancillary economic benefits including:
Where’s the e-G20?
The presence of digital issues on the G8 agenda is a welcome sign that world leaders are seriously considering the economic and social implications of the online ecosystem. Yet, given that President Sarkozy is currently chairing both the G8 and G20, the absence of an internet component on the list of G20 priorities is striking.
The e-G8: The Digital Economy Comes of Age
The priorities of the French Presidency for the G8 include a pervasive and conspicuous addition: the Internet. Including the digital economy in the international agenda was a signal from the always-ambitious President Sarkozy that his term at the helm would focus on pressing and emerging issues. As a recent White House strategy demonstrates, international cooperation regarding the Internet and digital economy is one such issue.
Carving out a Global Governance Niche
In CIGI’s fifth G20 paper, Distinguished Fellow Paul Heinbecker, a former ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the UN, provides an institutional look at the G20: what is it working on; what should it consider working on; and whether these are the right issues for leaders to deal with. Heinbecker also explores those issues that appear on a multitude of international agendas.
“In international relations, as in everything else, necessity is the mother of invention, timing is everything and opportunity comes to prepared minds.”
Maneuvering In A Time Of Interdependencies
The world’s largest economies are interdependent – as readers with the 2008 financial crisis still fresh in mind are sure to recall – so how can countries resolve the cooperation and coordination problems stemming from this condition?
In a recent report, Preventing Crises and Promoting Economic Growth: A Framework for International Policy Cooperation, co-authored by Chatham House and CIGI, Paola Subacchi and Paul Jenkins utilize a game-theoretic framework for the study of these strategic situations and propose eight policy recommendations for strengthening G20 cooperation.
Can the G20 Save the Climate?
In this noon lecture to CIGI staff, Senior Fellow Barry Carin examines whether the G20 can save the environment. What could be the potential impact of the G20 on international environmental policy?
Accepting the G20 as the Hub of Economic Global Governance
[This post is a response to an exchange on FT.com here]
What Prof. Wade and Dr. Vestergaard (Letter, April 18) choose not to accept is that the G20 has become the hub of economic global governance. Even the United Nations (UN), the alternative institutional vehicle for dealing with the financial crisis, has come to terms with this reality as witnessed by the presence in a facilitative role of Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the Seoul summit. As the G20 has expanded its agenda the UN has endorsed the credo that the two institutions are different and complementary, not competing and contradictory.
Prospects for France’s Presidency of the G20
In a new commentary for the East Asia Forum, CIGI Senior Fellow Barry Carin outlines the reasons why, despite high hopes, expectations for the G20 and France’s presidency are unrealistic.
The French have inherited an "unfinished agenda" from past G20 summits. They have, however, not adopted from past summits certain ideas, like that of a G20 Secretariat, and succesful outreach strategies (Korea sought ideas and inputs from non-G20 countries).
France has "overburdened" the G20 agenda, but that is not the only reason why expectations for the G20 in 2011 are unrealistic according to Carin:
Deal or No Deal on Measuring Imbalances?
G20 finance ministers and central banks met in Paris the other week to begin to tackle the G20’s 2011 agenda. A deal was struck on a list of indicators on economic imbalances, but there was no deal on how to use the indicators.
From the final communiqué: