As he launched a conference of the world’s powerful economies, Italy’s Premier Mario Draghi made a strong plea to speed up the delivery of vaccines to impoverished countries, calling the worldwide COVID-19 vaccine gap “morally unacceptable.”
Only 3% of people in the world’s poorest countries are vaccinated, whereas 70% of individuals in wealthier countries have received at least one shot, according to Draghi, who is hosting the two-day Group of 20 summits in Rome.
Climate change, vaccines, recovery, and international taxes are all topics on the minds of leaders meeting for the first time since the pandemic began. A theme running through the G-20 summit was the desire for greater collective vaccine assistance for low-income nations, which confronts a two-track global recovery in which wealthier countries are recovering quicker.
Draghi welcomed the leaders of the Group of 20 to Rome’s Nuvola cloud-like convention hall, which is located in the Fascist-era EUR area, which is cut off from the rest of the city.
The first session on Saturday focused on global health and the economy. Rich countries have utilized vaccines and stimulus expenditure to jumpstart their economies, but poor countries, which account for the majority of global development, are at risk of falling behind due to low vaccination rates and financial constraints.
According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, wealthier countries have spent 28 percent of their yearly economic production on pandemic recovery, while the poorest countries have spent only 2%.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, European Union officials will meet off-site with African leaders in an effort to provide additional support to the continent’s poorest economies. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that the G-20 will ratify an additional $100 billion in aid to Africa’s economies.
The funds would come from the reallocation of a portion of $650 billion in special drawing rights, a foreign exchange instrument used by the International Monetary Fund to assist finance imports. The idea is that countries that don’t require assistance will have their special drawing rights reassigned to those who do. African Union President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame were expected to attend. The French president announced that the chiefs of the state of South Africa and Senegal, Cyril Ramaphosa and Macky Sall, will participate by videoconference.
Prior to the United Nations climate conference, which opens Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland, Italy hopes the G-20 will gain critical commitments from countries representing 80 percent of the world economy — and accountable for roughly the same proportion of global carbon emissions.
As soon as the G-20 summit concludes, the majority of the heads of state and government in Rome will depart for Glasgow. President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chinese President Xi Jinping are participating via video conference.
On the eve of the summit, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautioned that the meeting in Glasgow could fail due to the still-weak commitments from big polluters, and pushed the G-20 leaders to overcome “dangerous levels of mistrust” among themselves and with developing countries.
“Let’s be frank – there is a serious possibility that Glasgow will not deliver,” Guterres said in Rome to reporters.
A recent United Nations environment assessment stated that pledges by dozens of countries to achieve “net-zero” emissions by 2050 might keep global warming to 2.2 degrees Celsius if fully implemented (4 F). That’s closer, but still, above, the Paris climate agreement’s less rigorous goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times.
Action “has taken a back seat to vaccine hoarding and vaccine nationalism,” according to the UN chief, who also blamed geopolitical splits for impeding a worldwide vaccination effort to combat the COVID-19 epidemic.
The G-20, on the other hand, is likely to be a celebration of a single agreement: a global minimum corporate tax. The G-20 leaders are set to formally reinforce their commitment to creating a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% by 2023, a policy designed to deter multinational corporations from stashing earnings in nations where they pay little or no taxes.
White House officials have hailed the move as a “game-changer” that would generate at least $60 billion in additional income annually in the United States, money that may help partially fund President Joe Biden’s almost $3 trillion social services and infrastructure program. Because so many global corporations have their headquarters in the United States, adoption there is critical.
Biden, on the other hand, is having trouble reaching an agreement with members of his own party on what will be included in the big-spending proposal, let alone how it will be funded. Biden’s discussions with fellow leaders are not likely to focus on the president’s challenges to get agreement on U.S. legislation, according to White House sources.
