The View from the South : Developing Countries in Global Environmental Politics

The View from the South : Developing Countries in Global Environmental Politics

This chapter examines the collective behavior of developing countries in global environmental politics. In the now burgeoning literature on global environmental politics, no single aspect’s importance is acknowledged as consistently but treated as casually—even shabbily—as the role of developing countries. Although increasing attention has been paid to the behavior of specific developing countries (particularly large and fast-growing economies within this group, and most particularly China and India) regarding particular environmental issues, little analysis exists of how this group of countries—often referred to as “the South” or “the Third World”—tends to behave collectively in global environmental politics.

Of course, developing countries are far from being a monolithic, entirely united bloc. Indeed, this group of countries is and has been from its very beginning nonhomogeneous. Individual developing countries often differ, and sometimes bicker, on particular environmental issues. However, despite such specific differences and the growing significance of emerging economies within the South (for example, China has now become a preeminent economic power, and countries like India and Brazil are more than just “emerging” economies), which has itself brought South–South relations into sharper relief, there is a generally acknowledged, still prevalent, and easily identifiable sense of shared identity and common purpose among the developing countries of the South.1 Developing countries do not forfeit their national interests in choosing to act collectively, but they do form a distinct and identifiable collective within global environmental politics.

This chapter explores the history and nature of this shared identity and common purpose and how it manifests in global environmental politics. It also discusses the continuing relevance of the concept. Its four sections (a) outline a historical and conceptual understanding of “Southness,” (b) highlight the [Page 246]motivations and aspirations that developing countries have invested in global environmental politics, (c) review the experience of the developing countries in key aspects of these politics since the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)—also known as the Earth Summit—held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and (d) explain why developing countries continue to harbor frustration with global environmental politics. A core argument of this chapter is that the South’s recurrent desire for what could be described as a new international environmental order stems from the same hopes and fears that prompted its call in the 1970s for a new international economic order. Such reservations notwithstanding, countries of the South have become increasingly engaged and embedded in global environmental politics.

The flux that global politics finds itself in—including the rise of China, the pressures within the established Western coalitions, the emergence of authoritarian strongmen around the world who reject the idea of deep multilateralism, and the dramatic turns being taken in U.S. foreign policy by President Donald Trump—will no doubt put new pressures on the South. But it may also give these countries a new rationale to hold firm together, if only to weather the storms clearly brewing.2