2009 Pittsburgh G20

We’re hosting a special conference call tomorrow at 8pm EST to recap last week’s Pittsburgh Summit and we want you to be on it.
RSVP here to save your spot (we’ll send you a reminder email.)
What: ONE member conference call to recap the G20 summit
When: Thursday, October 1st at 8:00pm
Call in number: 1-800-214-0694
Password: 787225

This summit of G20 leaders in Pittsburgh last week, a year after the Lehman shock, was always going to be about economic recovery and on whether we need to regulate banker’s bonuses. So, did they talk development, at all? The short answer is yes. First, they reaffirmed previous commitments that they have made to the poor. Second, the leaders called on the World Bank to develop a new trust fund to support the new Food Security Initiative agreed at L’Aquila G8 Summit in July.

Overall, the Pittsburgh G20 Summit appears to have made some progress towards reshaping global power structures to make them more representative but it still has some way to go before it becomes a truly representative global decision making body.
I spent the summit with our US Government Relations Director Tom Hart, who said:

Tom Hart and I just delivered ONE’s G20 petition to the US delegation here at the Pittsburgh summit. The petition, now signed by more than 75,000 ONE members from around the globe, asks the G20 leaders to host an upcoming G20 summit on the African continent.

The G20 has a lot to do tomorrow in Pittsburgh. But, I hope they take a moment to look north. Next June, some, maybe all of the members of the G20 will be about 300 miles north in Huntsville, Ontario for the next G8 Summit.