The G20 is on, and all eyes are on South Africa, the anchor runner on Relay Team South, much as all eyes were on V.K. Vismaya when she grasped the baton from Arita Gayakwad during the 2018 Asian Games. The world’s most powerful multilateral organization, the G20 has had four southern Presidencies in a row: Indonesia (2022), India (2023), Brazil (2024) and now South Africa (2025). Much has been achieved, including the first-ever admission of a new member — the African Union — under India’s watch. Yet much remains to be done as southern populations continue to suffer greatly from poverty, hunger, disease, pollution, inequality, debt, violence, exploitation, and corruption. And there isn’t much time, as the G20 Presidency will rotate to Trump’s USA in November.
South Africa has wisely chosen continuity over originality in setting its three priorities. It will guide the G20 to focus on (1) inclusive economic growth, industrialization, employment, and inequality reduction; (2) food security; and (3) artificial intelligence, data governance, and innovation for sustainable development. These keywords indicate crucial monumental challenges for humanity, particularly for the global South, and they were prominent in G20 proceedings in the preceding three years. The crucial task now is to capstone the work under the Southern presidencies with precise, actionable reforms.
To clarify, let me give two examples, one serving South Africa’s first two stated priorities, and the other serving the third.
Universal School Nutrition
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates for all countries the minimum cost of a healthy diet — $3.36 PPP (₹72.70) per person per day in India in 2022 — and finds that 35.4% of humankind (72.2% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 55.6% in India) cannot afford one. Children are especially affected. Malnutrition impairs their development and thus their future health and performance. Moreover, 25 crore children are out of school as many impoverished and often highly indebted families put their children to work. Some 16 crore (2.63 crore in Central and Southern Asia) children are engaged in wage work, many others help their families with household chores or farm labour, others again live in war zones or, as girls, are not allowed to go to school. This colossal waste of human potential continues, even though economic growth has raised the gross world product, assessed at purchasing power parities (PPP), to about $63 PPP (₹1362) per person per day.
The G20 should prioritize the completion, by 2030, of a global programme of universal school nutrition. Wherever healthy food is lacking, each child must have a full, healthy meal, locally sourced, on every school day. Strongly backed by human rights and the SDG-maxim Leave No One Behind, this is a widely recognized imperative, given humanity’s enormously enhanced technological, economic, and administrative capacities.
School meals have proven their worth, with 41.8 crore children already getting them, including 11.8 crore in India. They improve children’s mental and physical development and thus their future opportunities and performance. They motivate parents to send their kids to school, raise the family’s nutritional status, and inculcate healthy eating habits. Locally sourced, they create jobs and build agricultural and administrative capacity. They also enable states, using the power of procurement, to move producers toward more sustainable agricultural practices. The proposed programme thus serves many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): By eradicating poverty (1) and hunger (2), promoting health (3), education (4) and access to decent work (8), it reduces social and economic inequalities (10), promotes responsible consumption and production (12), and creates fairer, more inclusive societies (16) through an international partnership (17) in which experiences are shared and reliable need-based support is available to all lower-income countries to enable and incentivize their participation.
The proposed programme would advance a central ambition of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, which the G20 launched last November — school meals are its first of six 2030 “Sprint” priorities. Linked to the Alliance, a broad-based School Meals Coalition has already been formed which is well-prepared to calculate the need-based financial support due lower-income countries as well as the capacity-based contributions from higher-income countries — while also serving as a repository of data and best practices from national school lunch schemes around the world, setting standards of adequacy for such schemes, and monitoring and auditing them. The key stumbling block is the financial condition of the often heavily indebted lower-income countries in which, thus far, only 18% of primary school kids get a meal. The key remaining task for the G20 therefore is to mobilize adequate support, guaranteeing that every lower-income country willing to expand or enhance its domestic school meals scheme can do so.
An Ecological Impact Fund
Though much worse is yet to come, climate change is already upon us, increasing the severity and frequency of “natural” disasters: floods, fires, storms, droughts, mudslides, heat waves, rising sea levels, failed crops, and spreading tropical disease vectors. Thus far, however, other pollution-caused harms do even much greater damage to human health — air pollution from burning fossil fuels, for example, is estimated to cause 87 lakhs human deaths annually (25 lakhs in India), accounting for 15% of all deaths 8% of the global burden of disease.
We must, evidently, reduce harmful pollution fast. Realistically and morally, this cannot be achieved by drastically reducing the human population or by excluding people from the conveniences of modern life. What we need then are green technologies that serve the needs and interests of — ideally — all human beings without degrading our environment. Such technologies must be developed and improved, and they must also be widely and effectively deployed and used.
Here the global South is a crucial battleground. In the remainder of this 21st century, many lower-income countries are likely to undergo massive economic growth, intensified by large population increases. The technologies they will use, the practices and habits they will form, and the roles they will be prepared to play in the fight for a livable planet will matter far more than any choices today’s affluent nations will make within their borders. Rapid pollution reduction requires that highly effective and locally appropriate green technologies — many yet to be developed — be widely and rapidly deployed throughout the developing world.
One idea for achieving this — emerging in the T20/G20 Global Alliance for Life Economies Research and Innovation (GALERI) and Lifestyles for Environment (LiFE) workstream — is the Ecological Impact Fund. Complementary to the patent regime, the EIF would enable originators of any patentable green technology (“greenovation”) to permanently forgo patent-based monopoly privileges in the lower-income countries (“EIF-Zone”) in exchange for five annual reward payments based on harm averted — assessed as a weighted sum of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) and lost quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) — with their greenovation’s deployments in that EIF-Zone.
The EIF would make preannounced annual disbursements divided among registered greenovations according to pollution-caused harm averted in the EIF-Zone in the preceding year. With registration optional, the EIF reward rate would be endogenous and predicably equilibrated to a stable and fair level.
By paying impact rewards and by avoiding patent markups, the EIF would greatly increase the benefit of greenovations in the global South. It would also stimulate the development of additional greenovations that — tailored to EIF-Zone populations’ needs, cultures, circumstances, and preferences — would be especially impactful there. By thus stimulating diffusion and innovation in and for the global South, the EIF would also expand local capacities to develop, manufacture, distribute, deploy, operate, and maintain greenovations.
The G20 should initiate the EIF and organize a reliable funding stream for it from the industrialized countries, including China, which have become affluent during decades of high pollution. Additional funds might come from international offset markets and eventually from a capital endowment built from treaty-based state contributions, bequests, and donations by firms, foundations, and philanthropists.
Conclusion
As the US withdraws from the World Health Organization, the Paris Agreement, and its foreign aid commitments, we must not slink away with trifling rear guard actions but must boldly set a signal for multilateralism and morality, for Solidarity–Equality–Sustainability, counteracting mounting national selfishness and international distrust. Universal School Nutrition and the Ecological Impact Fund are suitable candidates that could attract wide support in the South, in Europe and beyond. Let’s grasp the opportunity, let’s bring this relay home!
Leave a Reply