Environment on the Agenda at G-20 Meeting

After getting little more than a nod of acknowledgment during the Group of 20 meeting in Washington last November, the environment may feature somewhat more prominently in the final communiqué expected from the leaders of the world’s largest economies, meeting today in London.

A leaked draft of the communiqué, published this morning by The Financial Times of London, calls for the use of new fiscal stimulus to help expand the green economy. The draft also suggests the leaders will agree to lean on multilateral development banks to promote low carbon growth.

In an interview Thursday at the ExCel Centre in London, political scientist John Kirton, director of the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, gives Lord Malloch Brown, the British government’s summit envoy, “full marks” for pressing to include the environment on the G-20 agenda.