This week, Martin will be watching the Argentina summit closely. Trudeau, who will be present, says that what comes out of informal meetings between G20 leaders can sometimes be just as important as the official declarations of the summit.

“It is critical that leaders come together at every possible opportunity to show the importance of collaboration, and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in defence of our shared values and institutions,” he said. “We need to state aloud facts and principles that, not so long ago, we considered self-evident.”

On the southeastern edge of Buenos Aires sits the Villa 20 settlement, one of the most vulnerable neighbourhoods in the city. Not long ago, its main feature was an abandoned, inaccessible muddy field, sandwiched between a major avenue and densely packed, multi-storey square houses, rusting shells of cars off to the side. Today, neighbourhood children looking for a place to play can choose between a green Astroturf soccer field, a volleyball court and a park surrounded by a small, teal picket fence. A once-peeling white barrier wall is now covered with bright murals; saplings have been planted, supported in place by stacks of colourfully painted car tires.

Buenos Aires’s ministry for habitat and inclusion is responsible for this and various other facelifts undergone by low-income communities around the city. Officials work closely with local residents to promote active citizenship, offer sports and arts programming and, critically, provide education and jobs training.

The ministry’s undersecretary, Antonio Demarco, tells me his office is proud that Argentina is hosting the G20 and hopeful about what it will accomplish. But he doesn’t beat around the bush — far from preparing people in these poor communities for the jobs of the future, his team is focused on basic training for the jobs of today: literacy, language, computer skills. “Sometimes the future is far away, and we have to work for the present.”

A recent census revealed that the majority of people living in the city’s shantytowns lack proper sewage systems, running water and energy grids. For those most vulnerable members of society in Argentina and beyond — those whom the G20 is really meant to help — what can be expected from this week’s gathering?

Kirton would like to see the summit put its money where its mouth is: “We’re still living in a material world — to quote Madonna — and the G20 summits of late have really not been great global fundraisers.”

Martin points out that, aside from financial pledges, G20 countries can play a leadership role in supporting global initiatives that can then be brought to the United Nations or various other international fora.

Fried, Canada’s sherpa, says that the G20 can also make a difference domestically: “If you help countries run their finances well enough, then you increase what the treasury has at its disposal to give to the health minister and the education minister.

“That’s huge. And then you’re putting the responsibility not on some G20 directorate to look at every low-income neighbourhood, but every government to take that home and to do the right thing as a matter of domestic governance.”

Martin also believes that the G20, being a body that runs on consensus without an official secretariat, can be an example of an institution that does “not flinch if it doesn’t get total support.” The United States’ announcement of its intention to withdraw from the Paris accord, he said, was an important test for the group to pass.

For the G20 to be successful, both this week and going forward, the people intimately involved in its creation and its activities don’t see the need for anything as drastic as a significant restructuring; rather, they would like to see more continuity between summit priorities from year to year, and better implementation of the commitments that are agreed to.

The G20 has a “troika” arrangement, where the current, previous and next chair work together to ensure a flow through of ideas and projects from summit to summit. Nevertheless, “each host country wants to be able to say something dramatic [and] thinks that it has to bring forth a different agenda,” Martin said.

He adds that this doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be new items added to the summit agenda each year, but that if there’s been “a very strong” item brought at one meeting, it has to be dealt with at each summit until it has been achieved.

The G20 Research Group’s Kulik thinks that, beyond simply carrying ideas over from year to year, the G20 must push for better implementation of the ideas it commits to. She was excited by the Brisbane commitment in 2014 to narrow the gender gap in the workforce. But going into this year’s Argentina summit, she says, there’s been no formal self-reporting on the progress that has been made on this commitment, even though it’s been reaffirmed every year.

“It’s not enough to just say that you commit to those things,” Kulik said. “We need more than just platitudes at this one, especially when you’re bringing countries to the table that have poor records on protecting women’s rights and promoting gender equality. So, you claim that you reaffirm this commitment, but you have Trump at the table, you have India, you have Saudi Arabia…”

While many agree on the need for better continuity and implementation, what is less certain is what that would look like in practice.

“I think if we started creating a sort of institutional mechanism, we are going to bureaucratize the G20,” warned Pedro Villagra Delgado, Argentina’s G20 sherpa, in an interview. A proponent of the G20, which he credits as “one of the great Canadian inventions,” Villagra Delgado said there are “basically no rules to how you have to run the G20 or participate in the G20 — and I think that’s a very good thing.”

Fried would agree, noting that leaders, when they get together, want a “genuine conversation and exchange of views.” He’s also quick to argue that he doesn’t believe “everything gets dropped from previous years — it’s just that once it’s launched, the process continues without the same publicity or prominence or reporting.”

This speaks to the need for a better understanding, both from the journalists who cover the summits and from the public itself, of what exactly the G20 — for many people around the world, a kind of high-policy, nebulous, complicated instrument — actually does.

“Even people who study it regularly have trouble pinpointing that,” Kulik admitted. “A lot of people just view it as world leaders coming together, spending billions of dollars on security, a fake lake, a fancy gazebo in Muskoka…that’s all they see.

“People need to understand what their governments do for them, and what international institutions do for them,” she said. “And those international institutions have a responsibility to the public on that as well, it’s not just in the hands of the individual.”

When it comes to the Argentina summit, it’s clear Villagra Delgado is drawing heavily on his background as a diplomat. “What I have done personally as sherpa, and [how] we have conducted our presidency…has been to know the red lines of each of the members, the United States, China, European Union, South Africa, you name it,” he said. His hope is that if leaders are able to find some common ground this November on thorny issues such as climate change or trade, perhaps next year, when they meet again, it will be easier “to make a leap to further things.”

Martin learned from his father that the answers to the world’s most intractable problems are not to be found by going it alone. In Buenos Aires, the G20’s caballero underlines to me that — as I’d heard Villagra Delgado say that week during a meeting — it takes 20 to tango.

“People think that borders can keep problems out. But borders can’t keep climate change out. Borders could not keep the 2008 financial crisis out. Borders are not going to keep people who are living in countries that are subject to civil war, drought or misery out,” Martin said. “The only way this world is going to work is if we work together.

“I believe that the role of the G20 is to take the lead on this. It has done it on occasion, and I know it will rise to the occasion again.”

It seems like he’s optimistic, I venture.

“Yes, because I am,” he said. “If, together, your generation and my generation do the kinds of things that we’re talking about here, we’re going to open up a new world that you can’t believe.”

