Some people may not have noticed yet, but Turkey will be executing a rather valuable “global” duty by presiding over the G20. In my columns, I had previously highlighted the significance of this at various times, as we cannot get a hold of time which flies by and we have to immediately realize the importance of this limited opportunity.
We must do this in order to embrace, take pride in and more importantly, make different contributions in this regard… For the sake of showing that concrete results, democracy and consciousness are incorporated during Turkey's G20 presidency…
For the purpose of serving this cause, a fresh initiative was put into practice, with the idea of evaluating the G20 agenda and policies by academics through an intellectual perspective: Academy-20 or A20 in short.
This significant initiative was started last Saturday in the city of Gebze, with the participation of Fikri Işık, Turkey's Minister of Science, Industry and Technology. The Municipality of Gebze was the host of the superb program, which was put together in cooperation with the Bosphorus University, Istanbul Sehir University and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA).
There is no doubt that the A20 initiative –which displayed an intellectual feast regarding where the world is headed to by questioning the global powers, politics and the economy- will bring a brand new dimension to Turkey's G20 presidency, with more activities to follow.
Growing inclusively
We have previously talked about how much it will mean to focus on the issue “growing inclusively” as Turkey is overtaking the G20 Summit for this term. Let's take a look at what we mean by this issue, which had constantly been highlighted at the A20 conference by taking a more detailed look at it.
We come across different definitions when we look at exactly what growing inclusively is about. Furthermore, if we are to generalize the point where all views intersect, we can summarize it as the distribution of economic growth in an egalitarian manner.
We could actually refer to the current income gap between the world's wealthiest and poorest as “the inclusiveness gap.” In that case, what we mean by embracing is to allow those in the low-income range to take advantage of the economic growth and benefit from it, “at least” as much as the rest of the society.
Alright, but how can we measure inclusiveness? There is no doubt that one of the basic dynamics of this is fighting poverty. Having said that, the concept called inclusive growth goes beyond this. Because even if poverty was to be reduced, it does not mean that prosperity is equally and fairly distributed to society as a whole.
Making a living on 1.25 dollars per day
The example of Asia overtly explains this. We know about the economic performance in Eastern Asian and the Pacific countries in the last few decades. And we see that a serious distance was covered regarding poverty with the economic growth in question. In the 1990s, over 60% of the population of the region earned 1.25 dollars a day, but this number receded to around 10%. China is the most obvious example of the development…
Alright, if you ask about how much “equality” was improved as growth rates have increased in the region and poverty was reduced region-wide, the answer is a big “nothing.” As a matter of fact, inequality has actually increased!
In other words, growth was not inclusive; as the rich became richer, the poor segment of the society did not get their share of the pie. China is one of the most unsuccessful countries in this regard… There were also countries where inequality was not as exaggerated, but a general overview displays a rather pessimistic image.
On the other hand, Turkey is one of the countries which has shown improvement in inclusiveness. Here, poverty was on a decline, as inequality was also reduced. In the early 1980s, the income of the most wealthiest segment of Turkish society was 20 times more than that of the poor, but the latest data shows that this gap has decreased to 7.7 times. We also experienced positive developments in terms of the Gini coefficient, one of the measurements used for inequality in income distribution. Furthermore, we are aware that we should improve the current levels and make the effort.
The 80 wealthiest people of the world
Going back to the situation in the world, we can say that injustice does not only hold true for Asia alone. There are numerous examples of non-inclusive growth from around the world.
According to the latest data, the world's richest 1% owns 48% of the total global income, a hefty sum. On top of that, as of 2009, they have increased their share and are expected to continue to do so. The 80 wealthiest people of the world have the total income of 50% of those who are at the bottom of the global scale. This situation too was somehow riveted in the post-2009 period, while all of these data indicate that there is unfair growth in the world and the situation is getting worse.
This difficult-to-swallow situation shows that it is about time to change the mindsets, and to go further by taking concrete action. The most recent academic works have also concluded that growth and equality cannot be held separately. There are findings about the fact that inequality slows the rate of economic growth. More importantly, it is necessary to remember that this does not only have economic implications, but has a serious social dimension.
Therefore, economic growth should strongly be accompanied by improvement in equality, both in global and national terms… Otherwise, the situation in the world will not improve. In that case, we must make more use of our G20 presidency and focus on this issue with all possible means to resolve the matter.
Because a president who will listen to his conscience to direct the G20 will not easily come again.
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