G20 Summit Overview and Critique

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where John E. Ruthrauff, Director, International Advocacy at InterAction, is speaking on "G20 Summit Overview and Critique: Tales from a G20 Veteran". The G-20 started as a meeting of the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. but is now a more general series of summits  of major governments. Mr. Ruthrauff pointed out that the summit is a venue for announcing previously agreed decisions and advocacy groups needed to be lobbying long beforehand. He described the series of meetings and activities carried out by advocacy groups in advance. The process described involved action though the nation where the advocacy organisation is based and through then to the other nations. There are also informal opportunities after the G20 meetings. Mr. Ruthrauff also described other ancillary meetings around the G20.

The G20 process as described sounds like a waste of time and effort for any organisation with limited means. It would seem to make more sense to contact the government staff in the agencies which feed into the G20 process online and and influence the process that way. As an example, I post policy proposals to my blog, so that government people can copy and paste whatever might be useful into their documents. This works well.