G20 summit: At G20, Climate Change and Vaccine Access Confront Leaders (Published 2021) (2024)

Leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations gathered in Rome on Saturday for the first in-person Group of 20 summit since the coronavirus swept across the planet, confronting twin global crises that have an outsize impact on the poor: the peril posed by climate change and the continuing failure to provide equitable access to lifesaving vaccines.

“We are now in the second year of a global pandemic that has killed four million people,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a speech before the meeting. “Extreme climate events regularly devastate vulnerable communities.”

“You have come together, to determine the course of some of the most pressing issues we face: access to vaccines; extending an economic lifeline to the developing world; and more and better public finance for ambitious climate action.”

On Saturday, President Biden scored a diplomatic victory at the summit, with leaders endorsing a landmark global agreement that seeks to block large corporations from shifting profits and jobs across borders to avoid taxes. The global agreement to set minimum levels of corporate taxation is aimed at stopping companies from sheltering revenue in tax havens like Bermuda.

“We reached a historic agreement for a fairer and more equitable tax system,” Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy said in remarks opening the summit’s first session.

Later in the day, Mr. Biden met with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany to discuss ways to get the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran back on track, one of Mr. Biden’s most elusive diplomatic goals since assuming the presidency. They also wrestled with ways to better unite to address the pandemic.

When the leaders at the summit posed for their “family photo,” they were joined on the platform by doctors in white coats and emergency medical workers from the Italian Red Cross.

Before Saturday’s meeting, health and finance ministers from the nations called for 70 percent of the world’s population to be vaccinated against the coronavirus over the next eight months — an ambitious goal that would require a sharp increase in the amount of vaccines being made available for the developing world.

It would mean addressing the stark inequity that has resulted in G20 countries receiving 15 times more doses per capita than countries in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the science analytics company Airfinity.

The United States has pledged to donate more than one billion doses, the most in the world. And Mr. Biden, who often refers to his skills as a negotiator and his decades of foreign policy experience, is seeking commitments from foreign leaders on other efforts to combat the pandemic.

But the promises of wealthy nations have repeatedly fallen short over the course of the pandemic.

So, too, have pledges by wealthy nations to address climate change. The urgency of the moment has been driven home time and again this year as nations struggled with flooding, fires and other extreme weather events.

The G20 meeting comes just before COP26, a worldwide summit on climate change in Glasgow that could be a make-or-break moment to save a warming planet.

While the gathering in Rome is a departure from the largely virtual diplomacy of recent years, two leaders are noticeable for their absence: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China, who are staying home from the conference over Covid concerns.

Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters traveling to Rome that the president saw those leaders’ absences not as an obstacle to coordination but as an opportunity to showcase that Western democracies can work together to meet current and future threats.

Gita Gopinath, the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said the most urgent economic task for leaders at the summit was slowing the pandemic — in large part, she said, by making good on promises to ship vaccine doses to less wealthy nations.

“To truly end this health crisis and its accompanying economic crisis, we need to get to widespread vaccinations everywhere in the world,” Ms. Gopinath said.

ROME — President Biden suggested on Saturday that talks to restart a nuclear accord with Iran, a delicate diplomatic deal struck in 2015 and unraveled by the Trump administration, may move forward.

“They’re scheduled to resume,” Mr. Biden said at the Group of 20 summit, just before he entered a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain to discuss rejoining the pact.

In a hastily released joint statement, though, the group seemed to put the brakes on Mr. Biden’s assertion that talks would definitely resume.

The statement said the leaders, whose nations are parties to the accord, “welcome President Biden’s clearly demonstrated commitment to return the U.S. to full compliance” with the agreement and “stay in full compliance, so long as Iran does.”

Mr. Biden’s advisers had said ahead of the summit not to expect a major development on the pact, but the president’s comments seemed to suggest an openness to move forward, if not a concrete step.

In the vortex of global challenges facing the Group of 20 leaders — the tenacious coronavirus, the disrupted economy and the warming climate — the breakdown of talks with Iran represents a less prominent but no less vexing problem for the United States and its European allies.

In Saturday’s meeting, which was closed to the news media, Mr. Biden and his counterparts were expected to discuss efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, which the president’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, abandoned in 2018, calling it insufficiently strict.

Under the agreement, Iran sharply curtailed its nuclear activities in verifiable ways, aimed at ensuring that it could not make an atomic bomb, and the United States rescinded some sanctions that had severely crimped Iran’s economy.

Since the U.S. repudiation of the agreement, and the restoration of sanctions, Iran is no longer abiding by its terms, either. According to U.N. monitoring reports, Iran has made significant advances in enriching uranium, the nuclear fuel that can be used for both peaceful pursuits and for weapons. It now has far more enriched uranium than it did in 2018, and has enriched it closer to the very high level needed to make a bomb.

Although Iran has repeatedly pledged that it will never become a nuclear-weapons state, it is believed to be close to crossing an important threshold, having amassed roughly enough uranium for fueling a bomb.

Mr. Biden has said he wants to restore U.S. participation in the agreement. The other parties to the accord — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — have been seeking ways to save it.

But talks with Iran on this issue have basically been stalled since the June election of Iran’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, who has insisted that the United States return to compliance first, promise to never abandon the accord again and give up any thought of renegotiating its terms.

Biden administration officials have suggested that time is running out to salvage the agreement.

On Wednesday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said that Iran intended to participate in talks in Vienna on reviving the accord before Nov. 30, but as of this weekend, a date had not been set.

Outside experts who have followed the ups and downs of the accord’s history have turned increasingly skeptical about the prospects for saving it.

“Iran’s continued intransigence and the acceleration of its nuclear program will make it difficult for even the most forward-leaning negotiators to revive the agreement next year,” the Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk advisory firm, said this past week in an assessment written by its Iran analysts.

The Biden administration said Saturday that it had reached a deal to roll back tariffs on European steel and aluminum, which officials said would lower costs on goods like cars and washing machines, reduce carbon emissions, and help get supply chains moving again.

The deal, announced in Washington as President Biden and other world leaders meet at the Group of 20 summit, is aimed at easing trade tensions that had worsened under former President Donald J. Trump, whose administration initially imposed the tariffs. The agreement appears carefully devised to avoid alienating U.S. labor unions and manufacturers that have supported Mr. Biden.

It leaves some protections in place for the American steel and aluminum industry, by transforming the current 25 percent tariff on European steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum into a so-called tariff rate quota, an arrangement in which higher levels of imports are met with higher duties.

The agreement will also avert additional European tariffs on American products that were set to go into effect on Dec. 1.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, in a briefing with reporters, said the agreement allows the United States and the European Union to take carbon intensity into account when producing steel and aluminum, meaning they could manufacture “cleaner” products than the ones produced in China.

Several thousand protesters marched in Rome on Saturday afternoon, dancing, drumming and singing “Bella Ciao,” a song identified with the resistance movement during World War II.

And they vented their rage and disenchantment with the current world order: “You are the G20, we are the future,” they chanted, as they wound down a Rome avenue, setting off red and green flares.

At least 5,000 people joined the march, according to police officials, though organizers said the number was more than twice that.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Group of 8 summit that Italy hosted in the northern city of Genoa that was marred by rioting. It is also a moment of tension between the authorities and opponents of the Italian government’s coronavirus vaccination requirements, which have resulted in violent clashes.

“The level of attention is maximum,” said Giovanni Borrelli, a local government official, adding that 5,500 extra law enforcement officers had been deployed this weekend in response to the protests.

Protesters on Saturday represented a broad range of groups and causes: students and vaccine skeptics, labor union members and climate-change activists, Romans opposing the government health pass required for workers and representatives of groups like Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

“It’s Oct. 30, and it’s super hot. And that scares me,” said Valeria Cigliana, 18, one of the many people voicing discontent over what they see as inaction on climate change. Wearing a T-shirt on a warm autumn afternoon, Ms. Cigliana spoke in front of a banner that read “The alternative to G20 is us.”

That sentiment was expressed time and again by protesters.

Holding a handmade cardboard placard that read “No $ for instruction, no future for the country,” Sara Degennaro, a 20-year-old archaeology student said the G20 leaders did not “represent the concerns we face in our future.”

Naida Samonà, 39, who traveled from Sicily to attend the protest, said, “In a locked-down city behind closed doors, they decide on our skin.” Sicily was ravaged by a cyclone in the past week, she noted. “The climate crisis is happening under my eyes every day,” she said. “We are clearly on the brink of collapse.”

Felipe Gonzalez, 27, who came from Spain to join the protest, was dressed in a skeleton costume and held an inflamed paper planet and a banner that read “Capitalism is death.”

“We are destroying the planet, and the leaders do not do anything to address that,” he said.

Some protesters had optimistic views. Sara Mastrogiovanni, a librarian from Rome, brought her 8-year-old daughter Ambra to the march. “I want her to better understand the world,” she said, adding: “And I want her to see that we all have a right to express our ideas. It’s the only way to arrive at solutions.”

His face streaked with green, Mauro Cioci, a 19-year-old high school student, arrived with friends from Pistoia, Tuscany, to march. Many days, he said, he is pessimistic about what lies ahead. “But on days like today,” he said, looking around at the thousands in the crowd, “I am optimistic.”

Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy officially began the Group of 20 summit of the world’s most powerful nations in Rome on Saturday with a clear rejection of unilateralism and nationalism, which he said were dividing the world in a time of great peril.

He advocated an unapologetically multilateral approach to get coronavirus vaccines to the developing world and to set up a fairer global tax structure.

“The pandemic has kept us apart — as it did with all our citizens — and even before, we faced protectionism, unilateralism, nationalism,” said Mr. Draghi, speaking in English at the head of an oval-shaped table of world leaders. “But the more we go with all our challenges, the more it is clear that multilateralism is the best answer to the problems we face today.”

“In many ways,” he said, “it is the only possible answer.”

His remarks were a clear rejoinder not only to the approach of former President Donald J. Trump, but also to two of the leaders who are not attending the conference in person, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China.

“Going it alone is simply not an option,” Mr. Draghi said.

Mr. Draghi, revered in the European Union for having helped save the euro as leader of the bloc’s central bank, has emerged as a leader on the continent since taking office in February after a political crisis. In his short speech, he set the agenda for the weekend’s talks.

Regarding the pandemic, he said the world could now “finally look at the future with great — or with some — optimism.”

In Italy, the vaccination rate is well over 80 percent, and Mr. Draghi noted that more than 70 percent of the population of high-income countries had received at least one dose. That has cleared the way for economic rebounds, he said, in part thanks to a European recovery plan that has allowed countries to “reduce inequalities, promote sustainability” and build “a new economic model.”

But he noted that the poorest countries had a vaccination rate of about 3 percent. “These differences are morally unacceptable, and undermine the global recovery,” he said. Calling for a global vaccination rate of 70 percent by mid-2022, he urged the elimination of trade barriers, the strengthening of supply chains and the local manufacturing of vaccines to make that possible.

President Biden and other world leaders endorsed a landmark global agreement on Saturday that seeks to block large corporations from shifting profits and jobs across borders to avoid taxes, a showcase win for a president who has found raising corporate tax rates an easier sell with other countries than with his own party in Congress.

The announcement, in the opening session of the Group of 20 summit, was the world’s most aggressive attempt yet to stop opportunistic companies like Apple and Bristol Myers Squibb from sheltering profits in so-called tax havens, where tax rates are low and corporations often maintain little physical presence beyond an official headquarters.

It is a deal that was years in the making and was pushed over the line by the sustained efforts of Mr. Biden’s Treasury Department, even as the president’s plans to raise taxes in the United States for new social policy and climate change programs have fallen short of his promises.

In the session, every national leader expressed support for the global minimum tax, and Mr. Biden emphasized the importance of the deal, a senior administration official said.

The revenue expected from the international pact is critical to Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda, an unexpected outcome for a president who has presented himself more as a deal maker at home rather than abroad.

The agreement was negotiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with nearly 140 countries signing on. It would impose a minimum 15 percent corporate tax rate in nearly every country in the world and punish the few holdouts who refuse to go along. The O.E.C.D. estimates the accord will raise $150 billion per year globally from tax-fleeing companies.

As President Biden and other leaders gathered on Saturday to discuss plans to protect against future pandemics, health experts and activists said that rich nations were still not doing enough to help people in poor nations survive the current one.

White House advisers said the president would spend his time at this weekend’s Group of 20 summit focused on fixing supply chains, securing a blessing on a global tax deal, and pushing to explore debt relief and emergency financing for poor countries whose economies have been battered by the pandemic.

From the start of the summit, leaders tried to telegraph the importance of ending the pandemic: During a group photo, they were joined on the dais by doctors in white coats and emergency medical workers from the Italian Red Cross. Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, in his remarks opening the meeting, also pointed to the stark disparity in access to vaccines between richer and poorer countries.

While wealthy nations are offering people third doses and increasingly inoculating children, poor countries have administered an estimated four doses per 100 people, according to the World Health Organization.

And although Mr. Biden has promised to make the United States an “arsenal of vaccines” for the world, White House officials tried to manage expectations heading into the summit that there would be any large announcements on vaccine sharing.

Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One en route to Rome that “the main thrust of the effort on Covid-19 is not actually traveling through the G20.” He said that a virtual summit that Mr. Biden convened in September had set “more ambitious targets” for countries to pledge to share doses of vaccines.

Although Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to host a meeting of dozens of countries and nongovernmental organizations later this year to secure commitments on vaccine sharing, Mr. Sullivan said the focus for the G20 was on the future.

Mr. Biden said in June that the United States would buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for poorer nations. He followed up in September by announcing an additional 500 million Pfizer doses, along with the promise of an additional $750 million for vaccine distribution, roughly half of it through a nonprofit involved in global vaccinations.

Only about 300 million of those doses are expected to be shipped this year, a number that experts say falls short of the amount needed for meaningful protection against the virus.

“You really have a failure of developed countries’ leadership post-Covid,” said Célia Belin, a visiting foreign policy fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “This is going to have consequences.”

Since arriving in Rome, Mr. Biden has already heard a personal appeal to do more: During a meeting at the Vatican on Friday, Pope Francis pushed the president on the issue, a senior official said after the meeting.

And in an open letter to the G20, the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the leaders of the world’s largest economies to “help stem the pandemic by expanding access to vaccines and other tools for the people and places where these are in shortest supply.”

President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday called for “mutual recognition” of Covid-19 vaccines by global health authorities.

Both leaders delivered the remarks by video to the Group of 20 summit in Rome after deciding not to attend the meeting in person.

Mr. Putin said global access to Covid vaccines was suffering “in part because of protectionism, because of inability and unwillingness by some countries to recognize and register vaccines,” according to a video posted online by RT, a state-controlled Russian TV network.

A Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, has been authorized by 70 countries, Mr. Putin said. But it has not been authorized by the European Union’s main drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency, or the World Health Organization. Markus Ederer, the European Union’s ambassador to Russia, said this month that the Russian authorities had delayed inspections.

“The Russian side has repeatedly postponed the timing of the inspection requested by the E.M.A., which slows down the process,” Markus Ederer told the local outlet RBC. “These are the facts.”

Mr. Putin called on the W.H.O. to expedite the vaccine registration process. “As soon as this is done,” he said, “we will be able to restore and restart the economy.” He said he would also like the Group of 20 to “address the problem of mutual recognition of vaccine certificates.”

Over the summer, many countries opened to international travel, but the patchwork of rules regarding which vaccines would be accepted led to confusion and frustration for travelers, especially those who had received vaccines that were not widely accepted.

Two vaccines made by China, Sinopharm and Sinovac, are on the W.H.O.’s emergency authorization list. Across Asia and South America, millions of people have received doses of those vaccines, and millions more have received doses of vaccines, like Sputnik V, that have been authorized by individual governments only.

On Saturday, Mr. Xi said China had provided more than 1.6 billion shots to the world and was working with 16 countries on manufacturing vaccines, according to a transcript published by the official Xinhua news agency, Reuters reported.

Mr. Xi expressed support for a World Trade Organization decision that waived intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, Reuters said, and he called for vaccine manufacturers to transfer technology to developing countries.

— Vimal Patel

President Biden received communion on Saturday evening at St. Patrick’s Church in Rome, a day after he announced that Pope Francis had told him during their long private meeting at the Vatican that he should continue taking the sacrament.

Some conservative bishops in the United States have said the president, a Catholic and a regular churchgoer, should be denied communion because of his support for abortion rights.

Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, attended Mass at St. Patrick’s, an English-speaking church dedicated to the American Catholic community, after a day of high-level negotiations at the Group of 20 summit.

“It meant a lot to the American church in Rome that he made this special effort to be there to be present and to worship with us,” said the Rev. Steven J. Petroff, the church’s rector, who offered Mr. Biden communion.

Father Petroff had heard of Mr. Biden’s remarks about Francis telling him he was a “good Catholic” and that he should keep receiving communion. But that news, the priest said, changed nothing for him.

“If the pope had said nothing, I would have done nothing differently,” Father Petroff said. Still, he said, the pope’s remarks, as relayed by Mr. Biden, were “important and clarifying” and “reassuring.”

The Vatican had declined to confirm or deny Mr. Biden’s account, saying it was a private conversation.

Earlier this month, Nancy Pelosi also visited St. Patrick’s, near the American Embassy, but was forced to leave before taking communion because security officials determined that a violent protest nearby over a health pass constituted a threat.

Father Petroff said he would have given Ms. Pelosi communion and was proud to have offered it to Mr. Biden. He simply did what he was trained to do, he said, which was offer the eucharist, which he called a “gift to be shared,” to the president, who was in line with the few dozen other worshipers on Saturday evening.

“He was in line like everyone else,” Father Petroff said. “People in front of him and people behind him.”

At the end of Mass, Father Petroff acknowledged the attendance of Mr. Biden, who stood in a back pew with his wife. He welcomed him and thanked him — and said he prayed for him and for the work he did.

The parishioners applauded, he said.

As the Bidens left the church, Father Petroff joked to Mr. Biden, who often talks about his Irish heritage, that he had no choice but to visit a church named St. Patrick’s. The president, he said, joked back that he had Italian roots, too.

It was as if Mr. Biden “had it all covered,” he said.

Playing host to leaders from around the world, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy has already had meetings with President Biden, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. But the most delicate may have been one on Saturday afternoon with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

It was only a few short months ago when Mr. Draghi, newly sworn into office but already a leading voice in Europe, called Mr. Erdogan a dictator.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, had just been denied a chair to sit on during an official visit to Turkey, and while the snub upset many around the continent, it was Mr. Draghi who spoke up about it.

“I felt very sorry for the humiliation that European Commission President von der Leyen had to undergo,” Mr. Draghi said during a news conference in April. But then he went further.

“I believe it wasn’t appropriate behavior,” he said, turning his attention to Mr. Erdogan. “With these — let’s call them for what they are — dictators, which we however need to cooperate with,” he said, “one has to be frank in expressing a diversity of views, opinions, behaviors, visions of society.”

Mr. Erdogan responded at the time, accusing Mr. Draghi of behaving with “impertinence and disrespect.”

Since then, the two have talked on the phone about Afghanistan, with Turkey offering support in managing a possible wave of migrants. But on Saturday afternoon, they had their first face-to-face meeting since the contretemps.

According to a person with knowledge of Saturday’s conversation, the leaders talked about Afghanistan again. They also discussed Libya, which is important to Italy’s energy needs and security, and where Turkey has emerged as a potentially decisive force among the foreign powers battling for dominance in the Middle East’s proxy war.

The two discussed more granular trade issues as well, with Mr. Erdogan inquiring about Italian companies working on major Turkish infrastructure projects.

No mention was made of their previous tense exchange, the person said. Mr. Erdogan even gave Mr. Draghi a gift, a book about Mr. Erdogan.

Over a two-hour breakfast of tea and pastries at the Hotel Amigo in Brussels in July, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen tried to persuade Paschal Donohoe, the Irish finance minister, to abandon Ireland’s rock-bottom corporate tax rate and join the global deal the Biden administration was racing to clinch.

The closing pitch was simple: The days of American companies moving their headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes were largely over, and more than 100 countries had already agreed in principle to join the agreement.

That meeting kicked off a three-month push to hash out the most sweeping changes to the international tax system in a century, which culminated in an agreement that President Biden and other leaders of the Group of 20 nations are expected to complete this week in Rome.

Getting to yes was not easy. In the end, the United States had to convince Ireland that its economy would be better off raising its cherished 12.5 percent corporate tax rate rather than remaining a tax haven and leaving the global tax system under a cloud of uncertainty. With the European Union needing all 27 nations to be on board, the pressure was on to get Ireland to come around.

Officials from countries involved in the negotiations said the outcome was not clear until hours before the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced on Oct. 8 that Ireland and two other holdouts — Estonia and Hungary — had joined the pact.

Nearly 140 countries agreed to adopt a global minimum tax of 15 percent and settled on terms to tax large, profitable multinational corporations based on where their goods and services are sold, rather than where they operate.

It’s a signature achievement for Ms. Yellen, who spent eight months trying to persuade nations to agree on a global tax pact that sputtered during the Trump administration.

“I think the world had come to understand that at the end of the day, all the countries trying to raise tax revenue are the losers, the companies are the winners, and the workers are the losers,” she said in a recent interview. “No country really feels it can act independently to raise taxes, because its firms will be uncompetitive, so the only way to do this is to hold hands and say enough is enough.”

The annual Group of 20 summit meeting, which brings together President Biden and other world leaders, is intended to foster global economic cooperation. But with so many top officials in one place, it also serves as an all-purpose jamboree of nonstop formal and informal diplomatic activity.

This year’s meeting is taking place in Rome on Saturday and Sunday and is expected covering issues like climate change, the global supply chain, the pandemic and the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. If the members can reach consensus on such subjects, they will produce an official joint declaration at the end.

Here is a look at what the Group of 20 is and does, and some of the important things to watch during the summit.

What is the G20?

The Group of 20 is an organization of finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 individual countries and the European Union.

In addition to the United States, those countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey. Collectively, its members represent more than 80 percent of the world’s economic output.

Established in 1999 after a series of major international debt crises, the G20 aims to unite world leaders around shared economic, political and health challenges. It is a creation of the more select Group of 7, an informal bloc of industrialized democracies.

Supporters argue that as national economies grow ever more globalized, it is essential that political and finance leaders work closely together.

What is the G20 summit?

Formally the “Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy,” the G20 meeting is an annual gathering of finance ministers and heads of state representing the members.

It bills itself as the “premier forum for international economic cooperation.” The heads of state first convened officially in November 2008 as the global financial crisis began to unfold.

The annual summit meeting is hosted by the nation that holds the rotating presidency; this year, it’s Italy.

What happens at a G20 summit?

It is focused on several core issues around which its leaders hope to reach a consensus for collective action.

The goal is to conclude the two-day gathering by issuing a joint statement committing its members to action, although the declaration is not legally binding. But one-on-one meetings can overshadow official business.

Many of the protests on Saturday in Rome at the Group of 20 summit focused on the threat posed by climate change. The leaders gathered there, including President Biden, were discussing that issue, as well as moving toward a more equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines and a global minimum tax for corporations.

— The New York Times

Gala dinners typically reflect the host’s style, and at the residence of Italy’s president on Saturday evening, world leaders gathered for the Group of 20 summit received homemade quality and sober elegance.

After attending a ballet and music show at the Baths of Diocletian with Roberto Gualtieri, Rome’s newly elected mayor, the leaders moved to Rome’s highest hill, to the storied Quirinal Palace that has hosted popes, kings and presidents for the past 450 years.

Cold appetizers — pear and goat cheese skewers, and chickpea balls with pistachio purée — were served before dinner in a grand hall, where guests sat more than three feet apart in accordance with coronavirus prevention measures.

The table centerpieces featured autumnal berries and fruits, such as grapes and pomegranates; peonies, a homage to the first ladies; and chrysanthemums, a symbol of peace.

“Imagination, sobriety and elegance is our motto,” said Mauro Piacentini, the garden designer who is in charge of the Quirinal gardens and flowers, as well as the other parks owned by Italy’s presidency.

Guests dined on dill-marinated salmon with a fennel and orange salad as a starter, followed by a pumpkin and Parmesan risotto. The main course was sea bass with a vegetable crust, with a few sides: stuffed artichoke, potato stuffed with a smoked carrot cream, and tomato stuffed with a celery cream. Vegetarian and meat-based options were also available.

Everything was prepared in the palace’s 7,500-square-foot kitchen, second only to the kitchen at Britain’s Buckingham Palace in size.

Fabrizio Boca, Quirinal Palace’s executive chef, said the produce and other ingredients had come from a variety of small producers — when they weren’t harvested directly from the vegetable gardens in the palace’s park or at Castelporziano, the presidential seaside estate about 15 miles south of Rome.

“We represent Italy and its many small producers, its vast selection of foods and beverages,” Mr. Boca said. “We want to make it shine.”

The evening featured four types of wine, though Mr. Boca declined to identify them.

“Many Italian producers are generous enough to send us their wines,” he said. “But we try to buy from small producers. Italy has so many. We shy away from expensive ones — it is simply not the palace’s style.”

Last but not least: a tangerine cream topped with chocolate and a pistachio sponge. Dark and white chocolate pralines were served with coffee.

All the trash cans were gone.

Stefano Bisceglia, 48, his arms full of garbage, was looking for one outside his apartment near central Rome on Thursday morning, but the authorities had removed all of them in his neighborhood before the Group of 20 summit for security reasons.

Mr. Bisceglia also suspected another motive.

“Maybe they were ashamed,” he said. “The trash situation here is a disaster.”

Many of the world’s most powerful leaders, swarms of policymakers and the international news media have descended on Rome to discuss some of the world’s most intractable problems — climate change, economic inequality and war. The gathering also comes at a moment when Rome has its own work cut out for it.

Wild boars and sea gulls have flocked to the city to feast on its garbage. Buses have come at unpredictable times, and some have spontaneously caught fire. Potholes have swallowed cars whole.

“The G20 can wait. The boars cannot,” wrote Corriere della Città, a local newspaper that reported on five boars that had tried to enter Rome’s courthouse this past week and were then trapped in a nearby villa. Readers wrote to the Roman newspaper La Repubblica wondering whether after the courtroom, the boars might attack the G20 leaders.

In September, the British travel news outlet Time Out crowned Rome, together with Bangkok, as the world’s dirtiest city.

Rome’s shabby state was an important election issue in the past month, and the city’s newly elected mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, largely campaigned on the promise of dealing with it. He promised what he called an “extraordinary cleaning” of Rome, including removing piles of trash, cleaning the streets and clearing storm drains, to be finished by Christmas.

Before the G20 summit, Rome’s municipal waste manager set up a 24-hour cleaning service in parts of the city. It also removed 500 trash cans for security reasons in the central area where the conference is taking place and in the neighborhood where many foreign delegations are staying.

In a city where trash cans are often unreachable behind piled-up bags of garbage, residents feared that the initiative could make the situation worse. Mr. Bisceglia said that he had taken his trash home, but added, “I am not sure everyone will do the same.”

But if the summit has exacerbated some of the city’s flaws, it has also filled its hotels to prepandemic levels. And it has given the newly elected mayor, who will greet the world’s leaders at the Baths of Diocletian, a good deal of optimism.

“The G20,” Mr. Gualtieri said this past week, “has represented the first step in a challenging and exciting path that will redefine the role of Rome.”

MOSCOW — Natural gas, already in short supply in Europe this fall, began moving away from Germany on Saturday and back toward the east in an unusual reversal in a major Russian pipeline, Russian media reported.

The action came as world leaders met at the Group of 20 summit in Rome, a gathering meant to strengthen global economic cooperation. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was not in attendance.

In themselves, the Russian reports were no cause for alarm, and the giant Russian energy firm, Gazprom, said Saturday that it was filling all European orders. One Russian news media report even suggested the flow reversal was a short-term problem caused by balmy weather in Germany over the weekend.

But the reversal is playing out against a backdrop of a politically charged explosion in gas prices in Europe and accusations that the Kremlin is restricting gas supplies for political purposes. One such purpose is to prod the E.U. into approving a new pipeline, Nordstream 2, that would bring gas from Russia directly to Germany, bypassing Eastern Europe.

The Kremlin may be sending a message about renewable energy, illustrating that too quick a pivot away from natural gas will leave the continent vulnerable to fickle wind and solar supplies, analysts say.

Russia has for weeks now been slow to supply fuel to make up for shortfalls, often by limiting deliveries to its own storage facilities, they say. The reversal of the direction of flow on the major Yamal-Europe pipeline was seen as a potential new wrinkle.