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The leaders of the 20 most important economies are scheduled to meet in London on April 2 in the midst of a worsening global recession. Expectations are high.

The summit's host, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, "will, understandably, feel under pressure to have some deliverables," said Daniel Price, who was the Bush administration's sherpa, or behind-the-scenes organizer, for the last G-20 gathering in November in Washington.

But Brown's ambition is systemic reform of the global financial system. This may be necessary. It may be wise. But it is not sufficient, either economically or politically, to ease financial panic in the next few months.

"If we only do short-term regulatory things," warned Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, "the public will say you took your eye off the ball."

The London meeting needs to deliver concrete commitments to stimulate economies worldwide; equitably share the burden of such an effort; provide additional funds for those that lack such resources; halt protectionist actions that would slow recovery; and curb discriminatory bank and industry bailouts.

"If we come out of the G-20 meeting without some of these fundamental changes," cautioned Stuart Eizenstat, deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, "it will have a cascading effect on world markets."

The International Monetary Fund now sees a "serious risk" that the global economy may actually contract this year. To forestall that calamity, it has called on each government to enact stimulus spending equal to 2 percent of its economy. In 2009, China and the United States will exceed that target. European spending will be less than half that amount, and Brazil, South Africa, and South Korea will also fall short of the IMF goal.

This failure of will poses a political problem for the G-20. Free riding by some nations is an invitation for recrimination against them for not doing their part. "We need burden-sharing to make it easier to communicate inside countries that we are all in this together" said Uri Dadush, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

In London, the G-20 leaders should publicly commit to the 2 percent IMF target. To lend credibility to their pledge, the leaders need to agree to some common criteria for measuring their spending. They should also follow the Obama administration's example and post every new project on the Internet so that others can judge their efforts.

Because some countries lack money, access to existing international resources should be eased. IMF limits on its loans, said Morris Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, are "way too low" to permit lending large enough to cope with today's multiple economic shocks. Likewise, payouts are not sufficiently front-loaded, repayment periods are too short, and the IMF's main lending programs require too many conditions, he said.

Some progress has been made on this front. At the November G-20 meeting, Japan lent the IMF $100 billion, boosting the institution's resources to $250 billion. European leaders have called for doubling IMF funds to $500 billion. It is time for the deep-pocketed Chinese and Arabs to step up.

In addition, Goldstein has recommended that the IMF immediately allocate additional "special drawing rights," the assets held in reserve by the organization in proportion to the amount of money each nation has on deposit with it. Countries in need could then exchange these SDRs for foreign currency. Washington has opposed such special allocations in the past, but it would be the fastest way to make additional resources available to economies in need.

With several Eastern European members of the European Union facing severe economic challenges, the greatest contribution that the G-20's European members could make at the April meeting would be to establish their own rescue fund.

Latvia's economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year, Estonia's by 3.5 percent, and Hungary's by 2 percent, according to forecasts by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. With more than four-fifths of Eastern Europe's bank assets held by Western European financial institutions, troubles in the East threaten systemic financial shocks in the West.

Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, has recommended creation of a $900 billion European Financial Stability Fund. Such a facility, housed in the European Investment Bank, could move quickly to raise money by issuing bonds. The fund could provide discounted credit to Eastern European banks and roll over credit lines that might otherwise be cut by risk-averse E.U. banks.

The G-20 could also act on the trade front. World trade, which has long been a driver of global economic growth, is expected to contract in 2009 for the first time since 1982. To slow that contraction, nations pledged at the November G-20 summit to take no new protectionist actions. Since then, 17 of the 20 have enacted measures that threaten to distort trade.

To halt this hypocrisy, Australian trade economists Peter Gallagher and Andrew Stoler have suggested that the G-20 countries promise no increases in any import duties, even if they are permitted under current international obligations; no hikes in any fees or taxes applying to imports; no new export restrictions; and no new regulatory requirements that would reduce market access for foreign suppliers.

Those promises might be welcome, but tangible immediate measures would likely be more trusted. Europe, Japan, and the United States, for example, could agree to eliminate all tariffs on green technologies. Washington and Brussels could commit to forgo all export subsidies for agricultural products, enabling farmers in developing countries to be more competitive. The E.U. and the United States could grant duty-free, quota-free access to their markets for products from the poorest nations. The industrial world has promised all of these actions upon completion of the stalled Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. So, why wait?

The many bailout programs for each country's financial sector, and for other hard-hit industries, could also be better coordinated by G-20 members. Many countries have already injected massive sums into their banking sectors and are gearing up to provide their auto manufacturers with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Both actions threaten to distort global markets. Because such intervention is inevitable given the depth of the crisis, the challenge facing the G-20 is how to structure or harmonize these bailouts.

"A starting point would be for G-20 governments to commit to state the objectives of each bailout, its expected duration, the measures chosen (including strings attached), and the rationale for so choosing," say economists Simon Evenett of Switzerland and Frederic Jenny of France.

They suggest that an even more ambitious approach would be for the G-20 leaders to define the types of subsidies that are allowable, the circumstances under which they could be used, and a timeline for their withdrawal. To avoid discrimination, G-20 members might also agree to refrain from imposing conditions on the recipients of state aid that require them to close down foreign factories, to forgo outsourcing, and to fire foreign workers first.

In the end, any commitments made by G-20 members in London will be judged by deeds, not words. They remain sovereign nations, so they cannot be forced to fulfill their pledges. Peer pressure is about the only leverage available to encourage globally responsible behavior.

The IMF and the World Trade Organization are probably best suited for the necessary monitoring of G-20 promises. But their work might be supplemented by some nongovernmental organization, such as Transparency International, which has a track record for "naming and shaming."

In London, Gordon Brown's plans for tougher financial supervision should proceed apace, of course. But getting Brazil, China, and India to agree to any joint action will require giving them a greater role in global decision-making. To show their good faith, Europe and the United States might announce their willingness to give up their claim to leadership of the IMF and World Bank when these jobs become available in 2012.

The G-20 leaders, however, should never forget that their meeting in London is essentially political. "There is a need to channel political energy along constructive lines," Price noted. If the G-20's deliverables are not tangible and immediate, the public and Wall Street will judge the gathering a failure.