G20 Rio Summit - Session II: Reform of global governance institutions

Sua excelencia, Lula da Silva, Presidente do Brasil, Parabéns pela sua excepcional liderança no G20 deste ano.

Excellencies,

We can put a dam on a river, but we cannot stop a river from flowing downhill. History, especially today, waits for no one. A few years from now, the world economy will be utterly transformed.

For one, it will be bigger. In the next 5 years world GDP will grow by $55 trillion, 70% of which will come from the Global South, together with the lion’s share of population growth. For reference, $55 trillion was the entire size of the world economy just twenty years ago, around the time the G20 was created.

Second, the future will be reshaped by digital and clean technology. Ten years from now, the clean tech market will be the same size as today’s crude oil market.

This could industrialize the South at a scale and speed we have never seen before. But for that to happen, we need pro-renewable trade policy, debt relief and massive investments flowing southwards into the developing world and forwards into the economic sectors of a sustainable future.

Lastly, the future will be more multipolar. Multipolarity is not a choice. It is a fact. What is a choice is multilateralism. In September, in the Pact of the Future, we made that choice. Today, in this summit, we must continue making that choice. Tomorrow, we must act on that choice and build a more inclusive global governance that reflects today’s geopolitical and geo-economic realities, as said by the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

Your excellencies,

Change is the only constant. But within that change lies the power to choose. To choose right, we need vision and courage. Let us choose a future where multipolarity means cooperation, not conflict. Where technology empowers, not divides. Where women and youth find jobs and opportunity, not frustration and violence. Where the planet is preserved, not plundered. And where growth finally, once and for all, defeats poverty and hunger.

I thank you.