G20 Summit: Leaders Agree on Aid Agenda, but Soften Stance on Ukraine War (2024)

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Here is the latest on the G20 summit.

This year, amid low expectations that the divided group would reach any sort of consensus with Ukraine, the declaration pointed to past United Nations resolutions condemning the war and noted the “adverse impact of wars and conflicts around the world.” The statement also called on Russia to allow the export of grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and “to support a comprehensive, just and durable peace.”

American officials defended the agreement, saying it built on the statement released last year and that the United States was still pressing for peace in Ukraine.

“From our perspective, it does a very good job of standing up for the principle that states cannot use force to seek territorial acquisition or to violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of other states,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters.

But Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook that the omission of Russian aggression was “nothing to be proud of.”

Mr. Biden and his advisers focused on what the new declaration had achieved: It included new language on the issue of global debt and on overhauling institutions like the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; an invitation to the African Union to join the G20; and a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of dealing with climate change. The declaration also underscored the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.

The president joined other leaders in announcing a project to create a rail and shipping corridor linking India to the Middle East and, eventually, Europe. It was a promise of new technological and trade pathways, they said, in a part of the world where deeper economic cooperation was overdue.

The project lacked key details, including a time frame or budget. Even so, it represented much softer than usual rhetoric about Russia from Mr. Biden and other Western leaders, who have spent the better part of two years spending billions on arming Ukraine and burning untold domestic political capital building support for the war. Facing a summit rife with deep divisions, Mr. Biden did not speak publicly about the war or almost anything else, except to say “it would be nice” if President Xi Jinping of China, who skipped the summit along with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, had attended.

Mr. Biden spent most of his time at the summit quietly nurturing his relationship with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, who has continued his country’s traditional practice of abstaining from superpower skirmishes, but who has his own tensions with China. He is also keenly interested in presenting himself — and his country — as an ascendant global player.

“Biden, like previous presidents, is trying to bring India closer,” Richard N. Haass, a foreign policy veteran and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “He’s having limited success, but that’s the nature of the relationship. That’s baked into the cake here.”

Mr. Haass said that joint declarations often take on the characteristics of the host country. In this case, he said, it seemed that “the host determined not to antagonize either China or Russia.” He called the statement — and the economic summit — an example of “incremental diplomacy” and not a forum where the conflict could be resolved.

White House officials did not publicly say why the United States would sign onto a joint agreement that did so little to keep pressure on Russia, though the Russians had loudly complained about the focus on them. (Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, cited the “Ukrainization” of the summit to explain Mr. Putin’s absence.)

Besides Ukraine, there were other points of contention over the declaration. Mr. Sullivan was asked about reports that the Chinese had objected to language in a draft that confirmed that the United States would host the G20 meeting in 2026. “On the issue of China, all I can say is the communiqué is done,” he said.

The absence of two of the group's most influential leaders, coupled with the ongoing war in Ukraine, had raised questions about whether the summit meeting could achieve much of anything given the current geopolitical divisions. Biden administration officials spent much of their time with reporters assuring them that the summit was still effective.

Mr. Biden’s advisers pointed to to the announcement of plans to build a rail and shipping corridor from India through the Middle East to Europe as evidence that the group could build connections even in fraught territory.

At the event presenting the initiative, Mr. Biden shook hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to participate, something he had pointedly avoided doing when visiting the kingdom last year.

The announcement comes as the Biden administration has worked, so far unsuccessfully, to broker an ambitious diplomatic agreement that would help the Saudis normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. The United States and the European Union also announced on Saturday a project that would explore the creation of a rail line between Zimbabwe and Angola.

Unlike in years past, where he held high-stakes meetings with individual allies and competitors, Mr. Biden stayed in the background for most of his time in India, content to let Mr. Modi take the lead. On Sunday, Mr. Biden will travel to Vietnam, where he is expected to celebrate a new upgrade in relations with Vietnam, despite concerns about the country’s recent authoritarian crackdown and repression.

Unlike his predecessor and possible 2024 competitor, former president Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s brand of personalized statesmanship has long been centered around the belief that the best relationships — and even some of the worst ones — are best handled through one-on-one interactions and private negotiations. At forums like the G20, Mr. Biden has often presented his version of leadership as a steadier alternative to Mr. Trump’s bombastic and unpredictable style.

Mr. Modi, for his part, was so intent on showcasing the promise and potential of India to the rest of the world that his government effectively shut down a city of 20 million people for the occasion. Leading up to the event, Mr. Modi’s likeness was plastered on thousands of posters throughout New Delhi.

On Saturday, speaking in Hindi, Mr. Modi began his inaugural address to the group of leaders by paying respects to the people of Morocco, where an earthquake killed hundreds. He ended his remarks by announcing the invitation to the African Union and hugging Azali Assoumani, the chairman of the bloc and the president of Comoros. Officials offered Mr. Assoumani a flag, a country nameplate and a seat at the table.

India’s G20 presidency comes at a moment of contradiction for the country: Its rise to a bigger role on the world stage coincides with increasing divisions at home. While Mr. Modi is tapping into India’s strengths — a rapidly growing economy, a young work force and a strong tradition of technological and scientific innovation — to transform it into a developed nation, he is making sure that nation is reshaped along Hindu-first lines.

The increasing aggression of his right-wing support base has created a combustible reality, with religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims frequently erupting in clashes.

Mr. Biden notably stayed away from the democracy-versus-autocracy themes that shape much of his messaging overseas and at home. (At one point, Mr. Biden did pose for a photo with the leaders of several other democracies, including India, Brazil and South Africa.) And, his advisers stressed that the G20 was not competing with forums like the group of nations known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

They pointed out that reaching a consensus on the declaration, even if it was a softer one, was a labor of effective diplomacy.

“The G20 is just a more diverse body with a wider range of views,” Jon Finer, the president’s deputy national security adviser, said. “It gives us a chance to interact with and work with and take constructive steps with a wider range of countries, including some we don’t see eye-to-eye with on every issue.”

Mujib Mashal, Peter Baker, Alex Travelli and Damien Cave contributed reporting from New Delhi.

India takes credit for progress on the G20’s aid agenda.

She rattled off a list of economic and development finance achievements, starting with reforms to the Multilateral Development Banks, or M.D.B.s, tasked with driving economic development in poorer countries. The measures, she said, were intended to make the banks “bigger, better and more effective.”

The M.D.B.s, which include the World Bank, the BRICS’ own New Development Bank and a dozen others, have been under review by an independent “expert group” appointed by India and led by Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, and N.K. Singh, an Indian economist.

The review found that the current funding — at $192 billion for 2022 — was now equivalent to just two-thirds of what it was during the financial crisis and a fraction of the world’s developing countries’ GDP. The banks would need deeper pockets, Mr. Summers and Mr. Singh wrote, along with a greater focus on cross-border challenges like climate change and pandemics.

Ms. Sitharaman announced that one reform alone, of the banks’ “capital adequacy frameworks,” would open up an additional $200 billion in lending to the Global South.

She listed seven more achievements, including the expansion of India’s digital-public infrastructure to other countries via a two-year financial-inclusion plan — again focused on the Global South.

There also was a notable shift on climate finance. The United States, the European Union and other wealthy countries had pledged more than a decade ago to mobilize $100 billion per year in financing to help poorer countries shift to clean energy and adapt to future climate risks. But they have fallen short and sidestepped questions about the fund.

On Saturday, however, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India made a statement that redirected the group’s attention from climate finance to the development of biofuels to help reduce emissions. His remarks also seemed to cast doubt on his country’s commitment to the benefits of carbon-credit trading, though Indian officials later clarified that India remains committed to it.

To finish the day, several heads of government unveiled a more tangible development. The India-Middle-East-Europe Economic Corridor — announced by President Biden, Mr. Modi and the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman — would run oil, gas and other forms of energy from the Persian Gulf through countries north, south, east and west with the exception of Iran. However, the project lacked key details, including a time frame.

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The G20 statement this year takes a softer line on the war in Ukraine.

The 37-page joint declaration released Saturday put those worries to rest, but compared to the statement from last year’s summit in Bali, Indonesia, the language referring to Russia’s invasion could best be described as less forceful and less specific — a strong nudge rather than a counterpunch.

In the third paragraph of the 2022 joint statement, the G20 had declared that the group “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine.”

That line is nowhere to be found in this year’s statement, nor was any other mention calling for a Russian withdrawal. Beyond calling for unimpeded deliveries of food and fertilizer, there is no mention of Russia at all in the 83-paragraph document.

The first mention of the war in Ukraine comes in the eighth paragraph. “Concerning the war in Ukraine, while recalling the discussion in Bali,” the declaration says, “we reiterated our national positions and resolutions adopted at the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. General Assembly.”

The statement last year cited the high level of support for the resolution opposing Russia’s unprovoked invasion — with “141 votes for, 5 against, 35 abstentions, 12 absent.” It also noted that “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.”

However, the 2023 statement made no mention of a majority opposing Russia’s actions.

“We highlighted the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine,” the statement released on Saturday said.

Both the 2022 and the 2023 statements noted there were different views on the war — an unsurprising assessment, given that Russia and China are part of the G20, along with many countries (including India) that have not signed onto the U.S.-led sanctions targeting Moscow.

American and European officials, who have demanded stronger statements in the past, did not immediately comment on the new, lowered standard of international outrage.

S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, in a news conference after the statement was released, suggested that opinions were being changed by events. “Bali was a year ago, the situation was different,” he said. “Many things have happened since then.”

One area of agreement: helping countries build up their digital infrastructures.

The introduction of such technology in countries where physical infrastructure is lacking lets them leapfrog past that shortfall, its advocates say.

India created a digital biometric identity system as the base upon which service delivery apps could be built. The system’s flexibility and reach were particularly useful during the pandemic, helping the government with initiatives like the vaccine rollout and cash transfers.

The clearest sign of India’s success in this area has been its homegrown digital payments infrastructure. The quick scan-and-pay system — used at roadside vegetable carts, tea stalls, barbershops and many other places — connects bank accounts to mobile phones. It accounted for about 10 billion transactions last month.

The August transactions totaled more than $180 billion in value, but what makes the reach of U.P.I. especially broad is that most payments are small: a 10-cent cup of milk chai or a $2 bag of fresh vegetables.

India’s success with digital public infrastructure, or D.P.I., helped build consensus during the negotiations for the G20 summit declaration, officials said. New Delhi has already signed agreements with eight nations to help them develop digital infrastructure of their own.

Reaching that consensus required addressing several concerns, including fears about privacy and potential data breaches, and a perception that “public” infrastructure meant there could be no market competition.

“The conversation of the D.P.I. need not be a binary with the harm,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s state minister for electronics and technology. “We have to deal with the harm, we have to deal with the bad, as we continue to push forward with the good.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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On that trip to Jeddah, Biden gave the prince a fist bump instead of a handshake, a much-discussed moment given that he had vowed during the 2020 campaign to make the kingdom a “pariah” over the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The African Union gets a long-sought voice on the global stage.

But until Saturday, only one of its members, South Africa, was part of G20.

Moussa Faki Mahamat, the group’s main representative, said the membership would give African countries, which often struggle to be heard on matters beyond the continent, a platform to push their own agenda.

A key issue is likely to be the adaptation by African countries to climate change: They are home to most of the world’s renewable energy resources and contribute the least to global warming, although they are the most affected by it.

William Ruto, the president of Kenya, one of the biggest economies in sub-Saharan Africa, said recently that the continent could be immensely wealthy if its natural resources were fairly treated.

“Those who produce the garbage refuse to pay their bills,” Mr. Ruto said at the first Africa Climate Summit earlier this month, in calling on the world’s richest countries and largest emitters to finance the climate transition.

The group’s membership in the G20 is the product of an effort by African countries to gain a higher profile in global institutions, including lobbying for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. And last month, Egypt was extended an invitation to join a group of emerging economies known as BRICS.

S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, said that President Macky Sall of Senegal, the former chairman of the African Union, had complained at the G20 summit in Bali last year about how long it was taking the bloc to gain membership. Mr. Modi promised him that it would be done under India’s presidency, he said.

In recent years, African leaders have pushed back on the idea that the continent had little to contribute in addressing the world’s challenges. They have also rejected accounts that focus on a struggle for influence between global powers in defining the region, which is home to the world’s second largest rainforest and vast reserves of oil and minerals needed to make renewable and low-carbon technologies.

Many African governments, for instance, declined to take a side after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to be dragged into a conflict that they say is not theirs.

The African Union is the second region bloc of countries to become a permanent member of the G20, after the European Union. But speaking for all its member states at G20 summits may be a stiff challenge because of their diversity in size and economic development.

Critics have in recent years questioned the African Union’s ability to address some of the continent’s most pressing challenges, prime among them growing insecurity and repeated coups.

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One of the more inspiring achievements listed by Sitharaman concerned India’s Digital Public Infrastructure — public goods including three foundational resources: digital identity, a real-time system of fast payments, and a platform to share digital content without compromising privacy. A financial-inclusion plan, to run between 2024 and 2026, is supposed to spread these tools far and wide to other countries that want it.

That is an all but explicit riposte to China’s complaint of this year: That the G20 is supposed to be only a forum for discussing economic matters, and not things like war and peace.

The joint declaration reiterates support for the U.N. resolution opposing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine – but it both softens and adds to the G20’s characterization of the war from 2022.

The third paragraph of last year’s joint statement said that the group “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine.” This year’s statement did not contain that line – or any other line calling for a Russian withdrawal.

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Putin is skipping the meeting, complaining about the G20’s focus on Ukraine.

“It has become difficult for the countries of the G20 to work due to the fact that not a single meeting is complete without a discussion of Ukraine,” a Russian television channel, 360, quoted Ms. Zakharova as saying, blaming leaders of the United States and its allies for forcing the meeting in that direction.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Russia had not coordinated its attendance with China, whose top leader, Xi Jinping, will also miss the meeting.

Last year, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed the G20 leaders in Bali by video link, calling on Russia to immediately withdraw its troops from his country. Differences over Ukraine also prevented the world leaders from issuing their usual joint statement at the end of the meeting.

Russia has sought to portray one of goal of its war in Ukraine as an attempt to dilute the power of Western nations in global economic and other institutions. As such, it has been working to bolster the weight of the BRICS organization, whose name is an acronym for its founding members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. At its last summit meeting in South Africa in August, the bloc agreed to admit Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates.

One aim of the group is to replace the dollar as the international currency of trade, although that has faced problems, especially when it comes to oil purchases. Mr. Lavrov noted last May that Russia has accumulated billions of rupees in Indian bank accounts that it must try to convert to another currency to transfer out of the country. At the time, Russia was running close to a $40 billion trade surplus in rupees for the fiscal year, according to press reports.

Mr. Putin did not attend the BRICS meeting in South Africa either, although he did address it by video link, blaming the West for the war he started in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest over accusations regarding the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine during the war. Any nation that is a party to the court, including South Africa, would be under pressure to detain him if he traveled to its territory.

Some Western nations have suggested that Mr. Putin should not be invited to any international summits given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.

Even at a tightly choreographed event, surprises are always possible.

Mr. Zelensky met personally with several of G7 country leaders, including Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, which has insisted on neutrality throughout the Russian war in Ukraine. But that meeting did not persuade the Indian leader to offer military support to Ukraine, and it is seen as unlikely that Mr. Zelensky will make a similar surprise appearance at the G20 meeting in India this weekend.

In Hiroshima, the Ukrainian leader’s star presence transformed the predictable event into a newsmaker and overshadowed other story lines, including that President Biden, grappling with a debt ceiling crisis back home, had to cancel a planned trip to Australia and to Papua Guinea in what would have been the first visit by a United States president to a Pacific Island nation.

In addition to the public relations blitz, Mr. Zelensky achieved another goal. He pleaded for more weapons support, and got it: at the end of the meeting, President Biden announced an additional $375 million in weapons aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky visited the Hiroshima peace park that commemorates the dropping of the atomic bomb by the United States in the closing days of World War II and laid a wreath at the memorial. After visiting the museum at the site, he told reporters that the images of the bomb victims had brought tears to his eyes and reminded him of images coming out of Bakhmut, an eastern Ukrainian city that has been destroyed by Russian forces.

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“We call on Russia to allow the grain form Ukraine to reach global markets via the Black Sea,” she said, referring to Moscow’s decision to withdraw from a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain across the Black Sea despite a wartime blockade. She added: “The leaders of the G20 have the responsibility and the tools to enable the flow of grain to where it is needed.”

There is “general recognition that they are not fit for purpose in the 21st century,” Summers and Singh said, noting that the current funding — at $192 billion for 2022 — is now equivalent to a third less as a fraction of the world’s developing countries’ GDP than it was during the financial crisis.

If the banks are going to justify themselves for generations to come, they say, deeper pockets will be needed, along with a greater focus on cross-border challenges like climate change and pandemics.

The summit is likely to expose deepening fault lines over the war in Ukraine.

The divisions have only deepened since then.

China has strengthened economic ties with Russia and its leader, Xi Jinping, made a state visit to Moscow in March. In February, a meeting of the G20 finance ministers ended with Russia and China refusing to sign parts of a joint statement that referred to the war.

India, this year’s host, has been strengthening its relationships with the United States and other Western nations but has been reluctant to directly criticize the war. New Delhi has been buying large amounts of discounted oil from Russia and depends on it as a source of weapons.

“The Ukraine crisis has cast a large shadow on the G20,” said Manjari Chatterjee Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

While India has cast itself as a bridge between Western nations and the rest of the world, it seems unlikely that it will be able to broker a joint statement at the summit, Ms. Miller said in an interview before the summit started. Such a failure would diminish the group’s history of reaching a consensus among disparate members, she added.

Other major economies in the G20 are in positions that are similarly complicated to India’s. Brazil relies on Russia for fertilizer and fuel, and has refused to send to Ukraine any weapons destined for the front lines. South Africa has longstanding ties to Russia and has been accused by U.S. lawmakers of covertly supplying arms and ammunition to Moscow. Turkey has sold weapons to Ukraine but refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow, and has served as a conduit of goods to Russia.

The situation within the G20 contrasts with that of the smaller and more closely aligned Group of 7 nations, which includes mainly wealthy Western democracies. (Russia was barred from what had been the Group of 8 after President Vladimir V. Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.)

At the G7 summit in May in Japan, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made a surprise appearance and received a red-carpet welcome. The leaders came together to discuss providing Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, and pledged to toughen punishment on Moscow and redouble efforts to choke off funding for its war.

India has not extended an invitation to Ukraine, which is not a member of the G20. At last year’s gathering, Mr. Zelensky addressed the leaders by video link, calling for accountability for Russia’s violations of international law.

Neither Mr. Xi nor Mr. Putin is expected to attend this year’s meeting. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who is attending in Mr. Putin’s place, said last week that there would be no “general statement” from all countries at the summit unless Russia’s position is reflected, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency.

However, on the eve of the summit, Indian officials expressed confidence that the leaders would overcome their differences and put out a joint declaration, something that has been in doubt in recent weeks. Negotiations on the declaration were expected to continue into Sunday, when the summit closes.

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Modi’s divisive religious politics threaten India’s moment on the world stage.

Not far away, however, were the remnants of bitter division: grieving families, charred vehicles and the rubble of bulldozed shops and homes. Weeks before, deadly religious violence had erupted in the Nuh district, the site of the resort. The internet was shut down, and thousands of troops were rushed in. Clashes quickly spread to the gates of Gurugram, a tech start-up hub just outside New Delhi that India bills as a city of the future.

These scenes summed up India’s contradictions as it basks in its moment this weekend as host of the Group of 20: Its momentum toward a bigger role in a chaotic world order is built on increasingly combustible and unequal ground at home.

On one hand, Mr. Modi is trying to turn India into a developed nation and a guiding light for the voiceless in a Western-dominated world. The country, now the world’s most populous, is the fastest-growing major economy, adept digitally and awash in eager young workers. It is also a rising diplomatic power that is seeking to capitalize on the frictions of the superpower competition between the United States and China.

On the other hand, Mr. Modi is deepening fault lines in Indian society with an intensifying campaign to reshape a vastly diverse country, held together delicately by a secular constitution, into a Hindu state. His party’s efforts to rally and elevate Hindus — both a lifelong ideological project and a potent lure for votes — have marginalized hundreds of millions of Muslims and other minorities as second-class citizens.

The question for India, as Mr. Modi seems poised to extend his decade-long rule in an election early next year, is how much the instability caused by his religious nationalism will hinder his economic ambitions.

Tensions deepen between China and India as Xi skips the summit.

In recent years, the two nuclear-armed neighbors have had deadly clashes on their disputed frontier, banned some of each other’s companies and imposed visa restrictions on each other’s journalists.The hostility has increased with New Delhi’s participation in a security grouping called the Quad that includes the United States, Australia and Japan, all of which have an uneasy relationship with China.

Last week, strains worsened further when China released a map that asserted jurisdiction over the entire northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin region, a high-altitude plateau claimed by both countries.The controversy illustrated how 19 rounds of military talks have failed to ease tensions over the border.

Any chance of a quick rapprochement seems to be fading, with the latest sign being the decision by the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to skip the G20 summit, taking a bit of the shine off Mr. Modi’s party.

Jabin T. Jacob, a professor of international relations at Shiv Nadar University outside New Delhi, said that Beijing, while trying to aggressively build its presence in South Asian countries, was refusing to acknowledge India as an important player on the global stage.

“China is just trying to deny India’s rightful place under the sun,” he said. “Domestically, China portrays India as a client state of the United States, and on international forums, it suggests New Delhi has nothing to add or contribute.”

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Expect more pressure on rich countries to help poorer ones deal with climate change.

Last year, rich countries agreed at a climate summit in Egypt to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by pollution from wealthy nations. But many of the details of how the fund would work were left unresolved, and the agreement said that nations could not be held legally liable for payments.

European and other Group of 7 countries are interested in reserving this money for two groups: the “small island developing states” (ones that are at risk of sinking under rising sea levels, like Tuvalu) and “least developed countries” (the poorest of the poor, like Chad). That would exclude countries like Pakistan, which suffered an estimated $40 billion in losses during devastating floods last year.

Some of the most populous countries are making the case that their citizens are among the worst-affected victims of climate change and most deserving of aid. But compensating the likes of Pakistan would leave little for Pacific island nations, most of which have fewer than a million residents.

In an article published in Indian newspapers on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India appeared to signal that climate finance would be a priority this weekend. “Ambitions for climate action must be matched with actions on climate finance and transfer of technology,” he wrote.

But a meeting of climate ministers from G20 countries in India earlier this summer failed to produce consensus on climate-mitigation targets. Among other sticking points, the ministers were reported to have differed on whether to agree to set 2025 as the year when global emissions peak and then start to decline.

A turgid “outcome document” from that July meeting said only that the delegates urged countries that had not yet aligned their emissions with goals of the Paris climate agreement to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 targets by the end of this year. (Under that 2015 accord, nearly 200 countries agreed to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions through 2030 as part of a joint promise to hold total global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to preindustrial levels.)

There was some progress on climate finance at a G20 summit in Rome two years ago, where leaders said they would end the financing of coal power plants overseas. But their joint communiqué included no new commitments on curbing the use of coal domestically.

What is the G20 and what does it do?

In addition to the United States, its members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey. The African Union is also poised to join after an invitation on Saturday from Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

Collectively, the group’s members represent more than 80 percent of the world’s economic output.

It is a creation of the more select Group of 7, an informal bloc of industrialized democracies. Supporters argue that as national economies grow ever more globalized, it is essential that political and finance leaders work closely together.

The G20 summit is held annually.

The G20 meeting brings together finance ministers and heads of state representing the members. It bills itself as the “premier forum for international economic cooperation.”

The heads of state first convened officially in November 2008 as the global financial crisis began to unfold. The summit meeting is hosted by the nation that holds the rotating presidency; this year, it’s India.

The meeting produces a joint statement.

The two-day summit usually focuses on several core issues around which its leaders hope to reach a consensus for collective action.

The goal is to conclude the gathering by issuing a joint statement committing its members to action, although the declaration is not legally binding. But one-on-one meetings between leaders on the sidelines often overshadow official business.

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As the G20 invites the African Union to join, the ‘Global South’ continues its advance.

But as Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India announced on Saturday that the G20 had invited the African Union to become a member of the grouping — becoming the second regional bloc included, after the European Union — the Global South seems to be on the advance. Its frustrations and ideas around flaws in great-power politics, while still coalescing, are already altering global debate.

“These countries are not thinking about ‘southern solidarity’ — they are just pursuing their interests,” said Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank. “And as they do that, it adds up to more than the sum of their parts.”

What unifies the Global South — a term coined in 1969 by an American activist writing about the Vietnam War and now used to describe a diverse group of more than 100 countries from Saudi Arabia to Guatemala — is a sense that its own priorities have been sidelined in global discussions.

At a time when India has the world’s fifth-largest economy, when economic growth in Vietnam and Senegal is outpacing that of much of Europe, many Global South countries are asking with a louder voice: Where are our interests represented?

Seeing a multipolar world already in bloom, they have rejected a return to the Cold War model of choosing a side between capitalists (the United States) and communists (China). They have also ignored and protested U.S.-led sanctions against Russia for its aggression in Ukraine, drawing attention instead to rising food prices and to long-term problems like climate change that wealthier countries do more to cause and less to ameliorate.

In January, India hosted a virtual Voice of Global South Summit as its G20 presidency began. Last month, some of these countries gathered in South Africa for the BRICS summit, where China and India both presented themselves as Global South leaders while the United States was largely absent.

Professor Shidore said these kinds of alternative gatherings would probably grow, both challenging Western leadership and adding new policies to the global mix.

“These forums matter,” he said. “They create vehicles for like-minded countries to put forward different ideas.”

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India promotes the G20 summit with barnstorming flair.

But India, and its governing party, were primed to capitalize on the moment.

The G20 has arrived just as India is asserting itself as a rising geopolitical and economic force, courted by an array of global powers and offering itself up as a leader and model for developing nations. Mr. Modi has seized on the G20 presidency as confirmation and celebration of India’s ascent — a rise to which he has fused his own image — as he seeks a third term in an election early next year.

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Here’s the latest on the G20 gathering in India.

But the group managed to reach consensus a day earlier than expected on a joint statement coming out of the meeting — seemingly because of language that appeared to be tempered in that it dropped past condemnation of Russia’s aggression.

At last year’s G20, the third paragraph of the leaders’ joint statement declared that the group “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine.” That line is nowhere to be found in the statement issued on Saturday in New Delhi, nor is any other mention calling for a Russian withdrawal.

The softened language suggested waning interest in the muscular stand against Russian aggression that the United States and much of Europe have long favored.

Here is what else to know:

• India, a growing diplomatic and economic power that has stuck to neutrality over the Ukraine conflict, has painstakingly tried to limit discussions about the war to the economic distress it has caused, with energy and food prices rising around the world. After consensus on the joint declaration was announced, Indian officials said they had succeeded in that task.

• The agreements reached by the G20 leaders included language on the issue of global debt and overhauling institutions like the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of dealing with climate change; and the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.

• The summit opened with the declaration of the African Union as the latest member of the G20. The African Union’s addition alongside the European Union could help India claim to have led the Group of 20 to be more inclusive of the Global South. It also gives the African Union a greater voice on the global stage — a move that its representatives said was long overdue.

• On the sidelines of the G20, President Biden joined other leaders in announcing a project to create a rail and shipping corridor linking India to the Middle East and, eventually, Europe. It was a promise of new technological and trade pathways, they said, in a part of the world where deeper economic cooperation was overdue. The project lacked key details, including a time frame. Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters that leaders had committed to establishing “working groups” within the next two months, and the planning would go from there.