G20 leaders pledge more COVID-19 Vaccines for poor countries, endorse tax deal

*Leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies have largely backed calls to extend debt relief for impoverished countries, and pledged to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population against the damaging COVID-19 pandemic by mid-2022

*Stakeholders also urge governments to work together and face up to the formidable challenges facing their peoples across the world

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

The world’s 20 biggest economies’ leaders endorsed have endorsed a global minimum tax aimed at stopping big business from hiding profits in tax havens, and also agreed to get more COVID vaccines to poorer countries of the world.

ConsumerConnect gathered the G20 leaders, attending their first in-person summit in two years, Saturday, October 30, 2021, broadly backed calls to extend debt relief for impoverished countries and pledged to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population against COVID-19 by mid-2022.

However, with a crucial United Nations (UN) climate conference due to start in just two days, the G20 appeared to be struggling to throw its weight around the sort of strong new measures that scientists say are needed to avert calamitous global warming, Reuters report said.

Italy, hosting the gathering in Rome, put health and the economy at the top of the agenda for the first day of the meeting, with the more difficult climate discussions set for Sunday, October 31.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, while addressing the opening of the meeting being held in a steel and glass convention centre in Italy, said governments had to work together to face up to the formidable challenges facing their peoples.

Draghi said: “From the pandemic, to climate change, to fair and equitable taxation, going it alone is simply not an option.”

However, the corporate tax deal was hailed as a evidence of renewed multilateral coordination, with major corporations facing a minimum 15% tax wherever they operate from 2023 to prevent them from shielding their profits in off-shore entities.

COVID-19 Vaccines

United States (US) President Joe Biden reportedly wrote on Twitter, that “this is more than just a tax deal –it’s diplomacy reshaping our global economy and delivering for our people.”

With the world sweltered by rising energy prices and stretched supply chains, President Biden was expected to urge G20 energy producers with spare capacity to boost production, notably Russia and Saudi Arabia, to ensure a stronger global economic recovery, a senior US administration official said. read more

Dimmed hopes?

Like many of the other G20 leaders in Italy, the US President will fly straight to Glasgow Sunday for the United Nations’ climate summit, known as COP26, which is seen as crucial to addressing the threat of rising temperatures.

The G20 bloc, which includes Brazil, China, India, Germany and the United States, accounts for an estimated 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but hopes the Rome meeting might pave the way to success in Scotland have dimmed considerably.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin both decided to follow events only via video link and diplomats looking to seal a meaningful accord said both countries, as well as India, were resisting ambitious new climate goals.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged the G20 and COP26 talks would be difficult, but warned that without courageous action, world civilisation could collapse as swiftly as the ancient Roman empire, ushering in a new Dark Age, according to report.

Johnson told reporters, that “it’s going to be very, very tough to get the agreement we need,” standing next to the ruins of the Colosseum amphitheatre – a symbol of once mighty Rome.

Other world leaders in attendance at the ongoing G20 Summit in Italy include Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) , and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

On global climate efforts

A draft communique said G20 countries will step up their efforts to limit global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius – the level scientists have said is necessary to avoid disastrous new climate patterns, report stated.

The document also acknowledges that current national plans on how to curb harmful emissions will have to be strengthened, but offered little detail on how this should be done.

Additionally, the leaders are set to pledge to halt financing of overseas coal-fired power generation by the end of this year, and to “do our utmost” to stop building new coal power plants before the end of the 2030s.