The Think 20 came together in Buenos Aires on 17 and 18 September 2018 to convey its public policy recommendations to the Argentine G20 presidency. President Macri received the Communiqué on Monday morning.

In an event where there were almost a thousand participants, and with the presence of T20 Task Force co-chairs, the Advisory Board and the Steering Committee, the T20 Argentina presented the Communiqué,  a document containing its public policy recommendations and vision, to the president of Argentina Mauricio Macri.

Adalberto Rodríguez Giavarini, the president of CARI, and Jorge Mandelbaum, the president of CIPPEC, lead the two institutions presiding the Think 20 (T20) and were the officials who presented the document to the president. The Communiqué contains the engagement group’s public policy recommendations which the group believes should be priorities at the G20 Leaders meeting at the end of the year.

“Today I came to receive the packet of policies that was created after many months of work. I know you have addressed nearly all of the topics on this year’s G20 agenda. I am sure that this document will be useful for the constructive work for this year,” said Mauricio Macri.

In his speech, he added: “On the G20’s path, the role of engagement groups is fundamental. It is you who bring us a new perspective to this dialogue process that we are taking to civil society. Global solutions need a compromise and action from all sectors of society. It means a collective construction, which is why it is so important that their contributions are concrete recommendations orientated towards action. This is the only way to have a positive impact on reality. The main aim of this exercise is to construct a better future for our people.”

“This process highlights to the Argentine people the need for multilateral governance that is only possible if our pillars are democracy, transparency and sustainable trade. History shows us that dialogue and consensus of countries is the only way for us to build a better world. This recommendations are a perfect example of this,” said Adalberto Rodríguez Giavarini, president of CARI.

In her speech, Julia Pomares said: “Think tanks need to step up to the challenge and show that technical knowledge is at the service of building consensus on global urgent issues. But we need to abandon the comfort zone of the technocratic analysis and involve in the global conversation. Here in this building there are more than 1,000 thinkers from 68 countries. The T20 provided a critical and independent vision on those issues that are shaping global governance.”

The handover of the document took place on September 17 during the T20 Summit in which nearly 200 international experts took part, along with almost a thousand participants including specialists from the main think tanks of the world, Argentine government officials and representatives from international organizations and the business community.

T20 Summit

Experts from the main think tanks of the world, Argentine government officials, representatives from international organizations and the business community participated in panels and presentations at the CCK in Buenos Aires.

At the event, T20 officials presented to president Mauricio Macri the Communiqué, a document with the engagement group’s vision on global governance and recommendations on policies. The objective is to collaborate with the G20 leaders meeting at the end of the year.

The Summit is also an opportunity to strengthen the conversations on relevant Think 20 topics and map the view to the future of the open and independent network of think tanks.

The debate involves six world renowned speakers: 

• Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University; 

• Nicholas Burbules, expert in Philosophy of Education and professor at the University of Illinois;

• Nora Lustig, economist and professor at Tulane University; 

• José Antonio Ocampo, Co-Chair, Central Bank of Colombia;

• Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA); and 

• Thomas Straubhaar, professor of economics with a research focus on international economic relations and former  director of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).

Experts will also discuss the priorities of the G20 Argentine presidency and other key topics in six plenary sessions, which will be on Climate Action and Infrastructure for Development, Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture, Social Cohesion, Global Governance & The Future of Politics, Future of Work & Education for the Digital Age, Gender Economic Equity and International Economics & Finance.

During the two days, Task Force members will meet to address the topics they worked on throughout the year during the three daily parallel sessions. There will also be parallel events organized by the institutions that lead the T20 and others they are actively involved in.

At the close of the event, the final words will be given by the Think 20 troika which will revolve around the future of the engagement group when Japan will take on the presidency in 2019.

The T20 Communiqué

There are a number of topics the recommendations focus on such as the future of work, education and politics, and how to combat the effects of climate change (LINK). The proposals also suggest policies to promote gender economic equity and tackle the original challenges of the G20: international financial stability, commerce and tax cooperation and more.

“The T20 Communiqué is the result of a great process of collective thinking. The work of 150 think tanks from 60 countries, who produced over 80 documents, is intended to propose recommendations to G20 leaders on the Global Agenda,” explained Pablo Ava, co-chair of the T20’s Policy and Research.

Martín Rapetti, another T20 Policy and Research co-chair, said: “The T20 Communiqué condenses the vision and core messages of the institutions that lead this years T20, CARI and CIPPEC. The main recommendations have been put forward by experts and researchers from the think tanks that participated in the T20 process, with the aim of creating a global governance for a more prosperous, fair and sustainable world.”

The proposals of the T20 Argentina for the G20

Proposal 1: Ensure that the menu of policy options for the Future of Work is flexible enough to address the heterogeneity of challenges that G20 countries face

Proposal 2: Develop a framework for data collection and artificial intelligence in the workplace to enable a socially acceptable introduction of big data and artificial intelligence

Proposal 3: Endorse the creation of a T20 platform for accelerating the jobs of the future

Proposal 4: Promote competency-based curriculum reforms and non-formal learning initiatives to ensure equal opportunities for quality education

Proposal 5: Scale up resources of development financial institutions and align the mandates of international financial institutions with international commitments to invest in sustainable infrastructure

Proposal 6: Empower cities as leading actors to mitigate climate change,develop new metropolitan governance mechanisms, and promote a new ecologically based urban agenda (NUA)

Proposal 7: Implement comprehensive green fiscal reforms to stimulate the development and use of cleaner energies

Proposal 8: Mobilize global resources, improve measurements of agriculture productivity and climate-related parameters and stimulate the transfer of technologies to promote a sustainable food future

Proposal 9: Establish principles that respond to consumer needs, measure reductions in food loss and waste and align finance to compliance with safeguards to encourage a global food system that is sustainable and promotes healthy diets

Proposal 10: Address food security concerns through special arrangements between systemically relevant countries

Proposal 11: Adopt policies that recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work to relax constraints on women’s time and achieve the 25 by 25 goal

Proposal 12: Initiate the dialogue for the redesign of the rules based multilateral trading system and promote reforms to multilateral trade institutions to make plurilateral agreements possible and provide adequate responses to the interventions and challenges affecting global trade

Proposal 13: Promote a trade system with mechanisms to compensate losers from trade

Proposal 14: Strengthen cooperation on corporate taxation and set up an intergovernmental panel on taxation in the digital economy to promote a fair international tax regime

Proposal 15: Establish global policy meetings among Central Banks and encourage a more extensive use of currency swap lines and Regional Financial Arrangements (RFAs) to promote a stronger and more resilient Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN)

Proposal 16: Design a cross-border framework to put crypto-assets (CAs) on a level regulatory playing field

Proposal 17: Improve global governance through a bottom-up approach

Proposal 18: Align G20 reporting with the 2030 Agenda and report collectively at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF 2019) on strategic priorities and approaches to domestic implementations of the 2030 Agenda

Proposal 19: Guarantee the continuity of the Compact with Africa and scale up cooperation between G20 and African countries

Proposal 20: Encourage cooperation among G20 countries and international migration organizations to monitor migration processes and promote regional migration agreements