Coordination between G7 & G-20 explored to address global challenges

Cooperation and coordination between the advanced country grouping G7 and the developed country-emerging economy multilateral strategic platform G20 is crucial to find innovative, viable and effective solutions to the ongoing global challenges including food insecurity, public health crisis, supply chain disruption and fossil fuel dependency, according to officials and experts from India and Germany.

“G7 and G20 cooperation and coordination is crucial for ideas in this regard (to address the above-mentioned challenges),” said Dammu Ravi, Secretary (Economic Relations), Ministry of External Affairs, India. He was speaking at a hybrid mode seminar jointly organised by the RIS and Embassy of Germany in India on Tuesday.

The event was aimed at advancing common goals through German and Indian presidencies of G7 and G20 respectively as well as widening the basis for a global and regional partnership between Germany / G7 countries and India.


Ravi said it is a challenge for the Global South to expedite green transition unless advanced economies help them with technology and finance and make the process a commercially viable proposition through win-win strategies. He said regulations such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism will affect market access for goods from developing countries including India and affect their economic growth, adding that therefore, it was important to make the green transition smooth through coordinated actions.

On food insecurity issues that have emerged especially after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, he referred to the proposal from some countries including India ahead of the WTO’s forthcoming Ministerial Conference (MC) to permit food grain sales from public stockholdings to address the food crisis and food inflation. It is crucial to revisit the agriculture debate and the MC will provide opportunities, Ravi said, adding that the rules-based trading system should be made more flexible to facilitate solutions to assist countries needing food, fertilizer and all the components of the food system.

Speaking on the occasion virtually, Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary, Germany, said it is vital to build trust in international cooperation to address long-lasting challenges like climate change and biodiversity crisis. He added there is a need to ensure more sustainable support to developing countries through open knowledge-exchange platforms such as the Global Alliance for Food Security by involving countries, think-tanks, research institutions and civil society organizations and by bringing out tailor-made solutions that are appropriate to each country in need. Referring to Germany’s development cooperation efforts, he said “our partner countries are in the driving seat, and we as financiers do our best to support.”


Flasbarth said efforts such as India’s trilateral cooperation (partnership with a developed country to help the Global South) and plurilateral forms of cooperation can ultimately build trust and help the multilateral process.

In his welcome remarks, Professor Sachin Chaturvedi, Director General, RIS, talked about the need to address global governance issues and better manage them by including wider concerns of all the countries as well as by looking at a collective future.

The event also included a roundtable discussion co-chaired by Dr. Stephan Grabherr, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, New Delhi and Sandeep Chakravorty, Joint Secretary (Europe West), Ministry of External Affairs.

Chakravorty said bilateral initiatives such as the Indo-German Green Hydrogen Task Force as well as India’s Trilateral Cooperation initiative and the related pilot projects in Africa could be seen as efforts to ensure green and digital transitions in a just manner. Dr. Grabherr mentioned the importance that Europe is giving to ending its fossil fuel dependency including with Russia.