A decade after the first Group of Twenty’s (G20) Leaders’ Summit, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers — the G20’s founders — reflect on how the forum came to be and how it can serve the international community going forward.
In this video, Martin begins with a warning: the pressing issues facing the global community today can only be solved with cooperation. This was the driving idea behind Martin and Summers’ creation of the G20. After experiencing the financial crises of the 1990s, Martin and Summers were convinced that the existing Group of Seven (G7) wasn’t enough — there needed to be more voices at the table. They were successful in establishing the G20 finance ministers’ meeting, but it wasn’t until 2008 — when another financial crisis struck — that prime ministers and presidents finally got together for the first G20 Leaders’ Summit.
The G20 was created with a certain spirit in mind: global problems require global solutions. Since the 2008 financial crisis, this sentiment — and indeed the institutions underwriting the post-World War II world order — seem to be in question. National populist forces are the rise, the benefits of trade aren’t being felt equally and technological advances are leaving people behind. In this climate, what role can the G20 play in making globalization work for everyone?
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