By Guardian - Kevin Watkins - Thu 1 Aug 2024 09.00 BST

At its recent summit, Lula gave the G20 a chance to show its commitment to real change – and Britain can take the lead

Last week the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, shattered the mould of G20 meetings. In using the annual summit as a launchpad for a new effort to tackle hunger and extreme poverty, he has provided the world with a chance – a last chance – to breathe new life into a moribund sustainable development goal (SDG) agenda. He has handed the G20 a cause that could halt its slide into irrelevance.

For the UK, the creation of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty represents an opportunity to restore a deeply tarnished reputation on international development.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, has pledged to put cooperation with the global south at the heart of an agenda for “progressive realism”. Getting behind Lula and the Brazilian initiative would be a good place to start.

The G20 is not an obvious platform for an assault on the twin scourges of hunger and poverty. Like a riderless horse in the Grand National, the forum has plenty of economic and political muscle – its members account for more than three-quarters of world economic output – but no direction.

Since 2009, when the UK’s prime minister Gordon Brown used a G20 summit to avert a global economic depression, meetings have become fractious talking shops.

That’s a lost opportunity. In a multipolar world, the G20 should be a critical pillar of multilateralism and international cooperation, forging solutions to shared challenges. Instead, it deals in the currency of anodyne communiques designed to paper over political cracks.

Even in the constrained fiscal environment it has inherited, the Labour government can signal intent

The last summit, hosted by India, produced a 30-page epic reciting an endless stream of past commitments on the SDGs, the climate crisis, the rule of law, governance of the digital economy, and registering concern that war in Ukraine was a source of “negative impacts” on the world economy.

Lula has set a new direction. “Nothing,” he said in his G20 speech last week, “is as unacceptable in the 21st century as the persistence of hunger and poverty.”

The aim of the Global Alliance is disarmingly simple. It envisages a partnership approach under which governments will develop nationally owned plans for accelerating progress towards the eradication of malnutrition and poverty, with alliance members mobilising support and affordable finance.

The case for powerful action could hardly be more apparent. UN data shows that already limited progress has stalled, with more than 700 million people affected by hunger, including one in every five sub-Saharan Africans. On current trends, extreme poverty levels in 2030 will be double those targeted under the SDGs.

In effect, the Global Alliance is projecting on to the world stage the moral, political and economic imperatives that guided Brazil’s “zero hunger” campaign, first launched by Lula in 2003 and restored with his re-election last year.

Built on a mix of inclusive growth, redistributive cash transfers, investment in farmers, and a universal school meal programme, the campaign triggered one of the great human development success stories of the era – that could now be played out globally.

After the isolationism and withdrawal from multilateralism of Jair Bolsonaro’s rightwing populism, the Global Alliance is Brazilian soft power with a purpose – a reaffirmation, as Lula regularly puts it, that “Brazil is back”.

Translating the Global Alliance agenda into practical action will not be easy. A recent Overseas Development Institute paper for the Brazilian government, sets out some of the challenges.

Current aid for hunger and poverty – about $75bn annually – is not just falling for low-income countries, it is fragmented and delivered through mechanisms that weaken national ownership: only about 8% goes through national budgets. Unsustainable debt is crowding out public spending in nutrition, health, poverty reduction. In a rerun of earlier debt crises, failure to provide effective debt relief is pushing many of the poorest countries towards insolvency and a “lost decade” of development.

On the other side are the opportunities. An independent expert group has given the G20 practical proposals for unlocking $500bn in new affordable finance, one-third of it on concessional terms, with multilateral development banks playing a more prominent role.

The G20’s common framework on debt relief is a case study in failure and political inertia – but political leaders could change this picture, notably by adopting a more robust stance on commercial debt.

The ODI paper sets out areas in which practical initiatives could deliver big, results before the 2030 SDG deadline. Small amounts of targeted, efficiently delivered aid directed towards child and maternal health, cash transfers, and smallholder farming could deliver significant impacts.

With governments across poorer countries striving to expand school meal programmes, an investment of $1.2bn in aid could let them reach more than 230 million children, combating hunger, improving learning outcomes and reducing inequalities.

Which brings us back to Britain’s role. Even in the constrained fiscal environment it has inherited, the Labour government can signal intent. An early test will come with the financial commitment it makes to the World Bank’s International Development Association – the main source of affordable development finance for poorer countries.

The Treasury could play a critical role on debt. It was, after all, the UK Treasury (Gordon Brown again) that led the world in tackling the last debt crisis. It could lead again, in making the case for more comprehensive debt relief, and in ensuring the IMF programmes allow key social sector budgets to be protected.

After 14 years marked by aid cuts, the crass decision to merge DfID into the foreign office, and a culture of incompetence, inward-looking politics, and nostalgia about Britain’s place in the world, the UK can act as a powerful force for change. It is still the fourth-largest aid donor, with a budget of $19bn in 2023. It has a leading voice at the IMF-World Bank and the UN.

Reputations are easier to ruin than to restore, but the hard yards of recovery start now. Supporting the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty provides the Labour government with an opportunity to show that, like Brazil, Britain is also back as a progressive force for change.

•  Kevin Watkins is visiting professor of development practice at the London School of Economics