The creation and development of the G20 was envisioned to address global problems more effectively and overcome blockages in global governance processes by more dynamic cooperation formats. Similar to other club governance formats, such as the G7 or the recently proposed ‘climate clubs’, the G20 has the potential to reach progress in critical policy areas of shared interest. Accounting for about 80% of global CO2 emissions and two thirds of global trade, the relevance and potential leverage of the G20 beyond their initial mandate of economic stability becomes increasingly evident with the urgency of “interwoven sustainability emergencies” (Stoddard et al., 2021). Still, recent developments have shown that in its current setups, also the G20 and other forms of club governance can reproduce non-cooperative politics and blockages, which they were initially meant to overcome.

In order to develop solutions to global challenges and foster sustainability transformations, despite and because of the immense challenges the G20 is currently facing, innovative ideas for future cooperation formats are needed. In this context, social imaginaries - collective ideas on how we might live – and ‘future literacy’ as the competence to “imagine futures that are not based on hidden, unexamined and sometimes flawed assumptions about present and past systems” (ISSC, UNESCO, 2013) – play an important role (Stoddard et al., 2021). In his 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, UN Secretary General António Guterres proposes to “envision the future”, carry out transnational and trans sectoral “Futures Labs”, and a “Summit of the Future” to “forge a new global consensus on what our future could look like, and what we can do today to secure it” (United Nations, 2021, p.5, 24, 45). These suggestions and their underlying narrative are also intrinsic to the goals the MGG network pursues in its various formats.

Against this background, the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, the Indonesian Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Managing Global Governance (MGG) network in cooperation with its PRODIGEES project organise a side event to the T20 Summit 2022 in Indonesia on ‘Utopias of Global Cooperation’. Building on the Think7 process and the concept of “Future Design” as a method to overcome deadlocks in today’s negotiations and policy making (Tatsuyoshi et al., 2022), the purpose of the event is to develop and discuss within the transnational policy communities of the G20/T20 innovative, big ideas and positive visions – utopias – of global cooperation fit for the future. The forum of the T20 is particularly suited for this exercise given the community’s great potential to “make ideas matter” (Stone, 2015). The side event is an interactive workshop to establish a “co-creative reflection and dialogue space” (Wamsler et al., 2020). The workshop aims to develop visions on chosen fields of transnational cooperation and "back cast" concrete steps to get there. Moreover, the format provides a space to practise the capacity of future literacy and jointly reflect on its potential and relevance for science-policy dialogues.

The side event is jointly organised by the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in the framework of the PRODIGEES project of the Managing Global Governance (MGG) programme with financial support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).