US President Joe Biden will attend his final summit of the world’s major economies, but as a lame duck that other leaders are already looking past.

The main star of the show is expected to be Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has presented himself as a global statesman and protector of free trade in the face of Trump’s “America First” agenda.

Left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will use his hosting duties to highlight his defense of Southern issues and the fight against climate change.

The summit location is the magnificent Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, located on the edge of the bay.

Security is tight for the rally, which takes place days after a failed bomb attack on Brazil’s Supreme Court in Brasilia by a suspected far-right extremist, who killed himself during the ‘operation.

The summit will cap a farewell diplomatic tour by Biden that took him to Lima for a meeting of Asia-Pacific trading partners and then to the Amazon in the first such visit for a sitting U.S. president.

Biden, who has sought to burnish his legacy as the clock runs out on his presidency, insisted his climate record would outlast another Trump term.

– Spotlight on climate –

The G20 meeting is taking place at the same time as the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, which has stalled on the issue of increased climate finance for developing countries.

All eyes are on Rio for a breakthrough.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on G20 members, who account for 80% of global emissions, to show “leadership and compromise” to facilitate a deal.

A Brazilian diplomatic source said fast-developing countries like China were refusing pressure from rich countries to join them in funding global climate projects, but added he hoped for progress at the summit.

The meeting comes in a year marked by another grim litany of extreme weather events, including Brazil’s worst wildfire season in more than a decade, fueled by a record drought blamed at least in part on climate change.

At the last G20 in India, leaders called for tripling renewable energy sources by the end of the decade, but without explicitly calling for an end to the use of fossil fuels.

One of the invited leaders who refused to come to Rio is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose arrest is sought by the International Criminal Court and who has said his presence would “ruin” the gathering.

Lula, 79, told Brazilian broadcaster GloboNews on Sunday that wars in Ukraine and the Middle East would be excluded from the summit’s agenda in order to focus on the poor.

“Because otherwise we will not discuss other things which are more important for people who are not at war, who are poor people and invisible to the world,” he said.

– Tax billionaires –

The summit will open Monday with the launch by Lula, a former metalworker who grew up in poverty, of a “Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.”

“What I want to say to the 733 million hungry people in the world, to the children who go to sleep and wake up not knowing if they will have food to put in their mouths, is: today, there is none, but tomorrow there will be,” Lula said this weekend.

Brazil is also pushing to raise taxes on billionaires.

Lula has faced resistance from Argentina on parts of his program, but on Sunday a Brazilian diplomatic source said negotiators from all G20 members had agreed on a plan final declaration to be submitted to their respective leaders.

The head of the Argentine delegation, Federico Pinedo, told AFP that Buenos Aires had raised some objections and would not, however, “necessarily” sign the text.