By Abdou Diouf and Kamalesh Sharma
(L-R) Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma and former Senegalese President Abdou Diouf.
The Los Cabos summit is looking at key facets of sustainable development, notably green growth, food security and climate change.
About 90 per cent of the world’s countries are without seats at the G20 table and most continue to experience severe development challenges beyond their control – challenges associated with access to finance for development, to international trade markets, equitable participation in the global trading system, and attracting investment, particularly in infrastructure. These challenges are compounded by persistent debt and, for many states, especially small island countries, high vulnerability due to their susceptibility to natural disasters.
It is evident that the G20’s nine-pillar multi-year action plan for development has been pursued with unprecedented vigour. Key challenges for the poorest, smallest and most vulnerable developing countries have been taken up as central priorities for G20 action.
The Mexican G20 Presidency has also pursued an unparalleled effort to reach out to non-G20 developing countries, particularly the poorest, smallest and most vulnerable countries, actively integrating experiences and lessons of development from these states into the Group’s policy framework on development.
The Commonwealth and La Francophonie, two associations representing over 100 countries, have contributed actively to the G20 development agenda in the lead-up to Los Cabos, and ahead of the Rio Earth Summit.
But the financing required for the priorities of developing countries needs to be raised through more concerted international action. Existing domestic and external sources of finance are inadequate to address the range and scale of these challenges. New and innovative sources of development finance must be found and given legitimacy: the options must be adaptable to individual country circumstances rather than having a one-size-fits-all straight jacket approach to development funding from official sources. Also new options should be explored to address escalating debt, including innovative actions to tackle liquidity and solvency challenges of the most severely affected countries.
In addition, there must be a scaling up of investment in the natural resource base of developing countries as a foundation for green production and growth. New initiatives must be taken to promote the sharing of knowledge of experiences, practices and lessons learned.