Achievements at G20 summit overshadowed by challenges ahead

Observers may have been taken aback by the pronounced G20 target of deficit reduction.

But analysts might have their eye-brows raised even further when G20 members actually beat the announced deadlines to reduce their deficits and stabilize their debt-to-GDP ratios.

Both observers and analysts have been in the belief that the challenges lying in the years ahead are much bigger than the achievements tucked away from the two-day summit in Toronto.

This is because actions to take dictate much exerting effort and resolve than promises to make.

HUGE CHALLENGE

To some, the biggest challenge arises from the fact that G20 leaders failed in Toronto to work out a much-needed coordination in a reformed global financial mechanism which is required to tackle the much-entangled financial and economic crises the world over.

These analysts doubt that without an in-place financial assessment and supervision system, the G20 members might take doctored figures as the agreed trend of reduction, which only results in more and severer bubbles that previously set off the credit crunch which in turn triggered the global round of financial and economic crises.

Other analysts take the G20 announcement in Toronto as segmented treatments.

What they believe would be effective and efficient enough is a comprehensive surgical operation which implants human and social security and environmental protection in the framework expected to cement strong and sustainable growth for not only a recovery but for overall sustained development as well.

John Kirton, who directs the research group for both the G8 and G20 at the University of Toronto, has pointed to the fact that G20 leaders had failed to do enough on the front of climate change control or of advancement in reduction of subsidies for unsustainable fossil fuels.

The big challenge for the G20 is how the group can govern the global development in a more environmentally friendly and economically feasible way.

David Shorr, a program officer from the U.S. think-tank Stanley Foundation, lamented the briefness of the summit.

"We're not yet to the point where they're agreeing on taking an absolutely coordinated action" as the G20 leaders only had a relatively short time to work on the framework, said the scholar.

【1】 【2】