Abstract
The article examines the changing nature of politics in the United Nations climate negotiations through the lens of ecologically unequal exchange theory, focusing on the lead up to and aftermath of the 2015 Paris negotiations. We identify and discuss three areas of tension that have emerged within the G-77 coalition: tensions within the global semi-periphery, tensions between the semi-periphery and periphery, and tensions within the periphery. Together, these tensions challenge the main link of solidarity in the G-77 coalition: the idea that all countries in the global South share a common predicament in the global system, with the North solely to blame. Drawing upon this case, we offer three related insights to develop ecologically unequal exchange theory. First, theory and empirical work must better consider the role of the semi-periphery, and divisions within the semi-periphery, in reproducing ecologically unequal societies. Second, theory should account for how fragmentation between the periphery and semi-periphery may produce distinct challenges for peripheral states to resist governance forms which intensify ecologically unequal exchange. Third, theory should better account for the ways in which ecologically unequal exchange as mobilized as a collective action frame reflects and diverges from the real-world distribution of environmental goods and bads in the world system.
Highlights
We ask, what do contemporary developments between global South states within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process reveal for theory about the governance of ecologically unequal exchange, and avenues for resistance? We identify and discuss three areas of tension that have emerged within the G-77 coalition since the pivotal climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, Journal of World-System Research | Vol 23 Issue 2 | Splintering South and which were solidified as part of the Paris Agreements in 2015
One emergent tension within the G-77 has been between state coalitions such as the Least Developed Countries and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) on the one hand and rising industrial powers in BASIC on the other, especially about who should be required to commit to emissions reductions within the new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) framework solidified in Paris
The analysis suggest that ecologically unequal exchange theory must better consider the role of the semi-periphery in reproducing ecologically unequal governance forms
Summary
We outline how international climate politics were historically structured around particular ideas of inequality in the world system between the global North and South, how and why the old North–South alignments shifted in the pivotal negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, and the major tensions in the global South relevant to the politics of ecologically unequal exchange during the post-Paris period.
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