The geopolitics of regionalism: The Valdivia Group and southern hemispheric environmental co-operation

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a recently formed regional organisation called the Group of Temperate Southern Hemispheric Countries on Environment (the Valdivia Group) and its attempts to devise common environmental strategies on a range of issues such as biodiversity, climate change and ozone depletion. It is suggested, however, that this organisation and other elements in the southern hemispheric regional agenda are problematic because of two assumptions: first, that the state is the principle agent in the creation and maintenance of regional contact and agreement and, second, that the different priorities of member states such as Australia and Chile can be subsumed within a broader post-cold war regional agenda. There appears to be little scope for NGOs and other non-state organisations to contribute to these regional debates. Using the examples of climate change and the illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing of the Patagonian Toothfish, the paper concludes that southern oceanic regionalism remains fraught with contradiction and difficulty.