Speeches
Excellencies,
Greetings from New Delhi.
My Namaskar to all of you!
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the 2nd Voice of Global South Summit. The success of our first Voice of Global South Summit carried us through this entire year of India's G20 Presidency. And it is crucial that we come back to this group of friends as we take stock of an extraordinarily eventful year.
India took over its G20 Presidency in the backdrop of a deep divide in the international polity, devastation caused by the Covid pandemic, increasing stresses on global food, fertilizer and energy security and an intractable debt crisis. This context made us conscious of the great responsibility of assuming the G20 Presidency.
In fulfilling that task, India’s anchor was the Global South. Its voices inspired our priorities, fueled our efforts and galvanized a path-breaking consensus in a very diverse grouping.
We come back today, not just to thank you for your support and inspiration, but to deliberate further on the state of the world and the complexity of our challenges.
At the first summit, we heard your concerns about the rising impact of climate change, tightening global markets and an increasingly conditional and narrowing global resource mechanisms. As we speak today, conflicts around the world have only further exacerbated humanitarian challenges. Climate change continues to have a disproportionate impact on Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. Prospects for a global economic recovery remain challenging.
Excellencies,
The New Delhi G20 Summit refocused that body and the world looks at the global development agenda, linking it to every major agenda before us today, be it climate change, energy transitions or technological transformations.
Even the contours of the climate debate were redefined by anchoring it in a holistic narrative, looking also at the demand side of polluting our environment. We democratized the narrative by bringing focus on individual actions through the LiFE initiative i.e. Lifestyle for Environment initiative.
We imbued the Energy Transitions discussions by emphasizing that it must be a globally just one.
We highlighted that the localization of SDGs needs to be accompanied with internationalizing of its resourcing.
We created templates for progress in SDGs by harnessing digital tools and infrastructure.
And finally we have brought back G20’s focus to its original mandate which is Sustainable Development. This is demonstrated amongst others by the consensus on the G20 Green Development Pact (GDP). It is about achieving major global agendas in an interconnected manner.
The New Delhi Summit also highlighted the need for restoring trust in multilateralism. That there is a strong expectation in the Global South, which must be further built upon through its messaging today.
By securing a permanent membership for the African Union in the G20, we have shown that global groupings are amenable to change. The same spirit must now pervade the reform of the United Nations.
Excellencies,
Prime Minister Modi firmly believes that the success of our G20 Presidency is the success of the Global South. As we mark the end of this year, we urge you to keep our collective voices robust as we take our mission forward.
The endeavours undertaken during India’s G20 Presidency, under our theme of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’, will not end on November 30th 2023. With your support it will continue to be heard as we work to realize our vision for a world where truly no one is left behind anywhere in the world .
Recognizing our shared past, the Global South will continue to make efforts for One Earth and to strengthen the voices of the developing countries.
As One Family, the Global South will continue to act with everyone’s interests in mind and drive transformations while building synergies.
Creating our One Future will need making our international institutions future-ready and increasing their effectiveness and representativeness of their decisions.
The theme of today’s Voice of Global South Summit, which is "Together for Everyone’s Growth, Together for Everyone’s Trust’’ is a mantra for our future actions in this direction. The world listens to the Voice of Global South; we saw that in New Delhi this September. I thank you for joining this effort to make sure that this voice continues to resonate around the world.
Thank you.
