North-South Politics Research Articles

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Nuclear Energy, Environment and Public Safety: North-South Politics

While many believe that the biggest problems today are the world's struggling economies, the increase in terrorist cults, or growing populations, the greatest predicament concerns fossil fuel consu...

An Overview on Climate Change Displacement: Exploring New Principles and Frameworks for Funding

Climate change displacement is probably going to be one of the biggest global challenges for the future in the wake of the worrying state of the global environment and the never-ending North-South politics manifested by blame-games and weak wordings in the Paris Climate Change Agreement. This challenge thus comes with several securities, funding and human rights implications. For these reasons, it has become important to address these issues beforehand and be prepared for the future. Several studies have been carried out in this regard, mostly dealing with the human rights implications involved. This article seeks to go a step further and analyses how a practical framework could be drafted. In particular, this article would arrive at this framework based on two main themes. Firstly, what could be the principles in underlying the future course of action which could accommodate such human rights and secondly, how the funding for this cause could be assimilated based on the very principles. Based on these two themes, the Southern countries should build arguments to bank on as and when questions regarding this issue arise at the global fora.

“The Basis of a New Internationalism?”: The Institute for Policy Studies and North-South Politics from the NIEO to Neoliberalism

“The Basis of a New Internationalism?”: The Institute for Policy Studies and North-South Politics from the NIEO to Neoliberalism

Sustainable Development in a Global Context: A Success or a Nuisance?

AbstractThis article argues that the evolution of, and challenges to, sustainable development cannot be understood completely outside its contemporary global context, consisting mainly of three interconnected spheres, i.e., the global governance system, the North-South debate, and global trade liberalization. As the boundaries of these three spheres get more and more blurred in a context of an intensifying globalization, the project of sustainable development is very often faced with obstacles that set back its evolution and might very well bring it to a halt. Above all, sustainable development is now caught in the crossfire between the push for exponential economic growth, on the one hand, and a compelling need to reverse catastrophic ecological threats and social exigencies, on the other. More often than not, the current structure and scope of global governance constitutes more of a hindrance than a help to the emerging paradigm of sustainable development. Accordingly, this article seeks to pinpoint the different challenges to the implementation of sustainable development in the field of global governance and to discuss to what extent these challenges are inherent in the structure and scope of this system. In a similar vein, this article examines and discusses the challenges to sustainability within two other highly interrelated spheres, namely global trade and the North-South politics. With this end in view, a special focus is placed throughout this paper on the interconnectedness of, and overlap between, these three global spheres and the determinant role played by the major actors therein.

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. By J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 384p. $65.00 cloth, $28.00 paper.

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. By J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 384p. $65.00 cloth, $28.00 paper.

Nuclear Intelligence and North–South Politics

Nuclear Intelligence and North–South Politics

The Greatness of Human Possibilities: Competing Orientations and Their Solutions

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Review of "A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy," by Timmons J. Roberts and Bradley C. Parks

Review of "A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy," by Timmons J. Roberts and Bradley C. Parks

J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks, A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North–South Politics, and Climate Policy

In their superb contribution to scholarly and political debates about the future of international efforts to cope with climate change, J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks offer a carefully developed, richly documented, and convincingly supported account of the origins, dynamics, and implications of the current North–South impasse. In contrast to most mainstream international environmental political approaches to the topic, the authors place inequality at the center of their argument. In order to understand generalized mistrust and diametrically opposed notions of fairness among climate change negotiators, Roberts and Parks call attention to the ‘‘triple inequality’’ of responsibility for human-induced climate change, vulnerability to its consequences, and mitigation of its impacts. This perspective, which is ultimately tied to developing countries’ colonial history and their resulting marginalization in the international political economy, implies that climate justice is inextricably linked to broader economic development concerns. Consequently, the authors suggest, any attempt to come to terms with climate change mitigation and adaptation will need to address the root cause of climate injustice. The theoretical breadth, systematic development, and empirical richness of A Climate of Injustice makes this book required reading for scholars, students, and practitioners alike. Roberts and Parks posit two causal paths through which inequality drives noncooperative behavior between the North and South. The first involves poverty and powerlessness which directly deprive developing countries of the technical, financial, and administrative capacity to effectively negotiate with the North and meaningfully address their own greenhouse gas emissions. The second path, analyzed in greater depth, evolves around the historical experience of poorer nations, which has produced and reinforced a worldview at odds with that of richer nations, generating widespread mistrust, risk aversion, and divergent expectations about how to address climate change. During the last three decades, the authors argue, the North’s persistent ‘‘callousness and opportunism’’ in matters relating to international political economy has spilled over into international environmental politics, where countries of the South use the unprecedented leverage they possess.

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy, J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 384 pp., $65 cloth, $26 paper.

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy, J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 384 pp., $65 cloth, $26 paper.

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North–South Politics, and Climate Policy by J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks

<i>A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North–South Politics, and Climate Policy</i> by J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks

Colonialism’s Climate?

A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. By J. Timmons Roberts, Bradley C. Parks Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 384 pp., $65.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-262-18256-4), $26.00 paper (ISBN: 0-262-68161-7). In A Climate of Injustice , J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley Parks identify global inequality as the root cause of the failure to adequately address global climate change. In short, they believe that the distrust emanating from inequality makes North-South cooperation on climate change impossible. In response, they advocate a broad set of reforms addressing inequality as a foundation for making adequate progress on climate change. They assert, for example, that more international aid and the reform of global economic law will be needed to make progress on climate change possible. We can only hope that they are wrong. Climate change negotiations by themselves have proven daunting enough, thanks to the US fetish with emissions trading and the inherent complexity of the climate change problem. If the world must remedy unfairness in global intellectual property law and agricultural protectionism before we can make real progress, we are truly in trouble. Unfortunately, Roberts and Parks may be right (see, for example, Gupta 1997; Goldstein and Keohane 1993). Roberts and Parks devote most of their energy to developing a picture of global inequality and how it affects the various impacts of climate change and the policies designed to deal with them. This picture blends insights from the literature (primarily structuralist accounts of globalism as exemplified in Krasner 1985 …

Review: A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy by J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks

Review: A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy By J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks Reviewed by Byron Anderson Northern Illinois University, USA J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007. xi, 404 pp. ISBN: 978-0-262-68161-2 (paperback); US$26.00. Printed on recycled paper. In studies conducted from 1990 to 1998, the World Bank established that 94 percent of the world's disaster deaths occurred in developing countries, and that when geographically plotted these deaths showed a major North-South divide. Roberts, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mellon Environmental Studies Program at the College of William and Mary, and Parks, Development Policy Officer in the Department of Policy and International Relations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, examine broad patterns in climate disasters over the last two decades focusing on hydrometerological disasters, including windstorms, drought, floods, and heat waves. The authors attempt to synthesize theories, examining both political causes and social and historical determinants of vulnerability to climate disasters. Authority is enhanced throughout by referencing one or more of the twenty-eight indices used that present intervening variables in climate change, such as the Total Carbon Emissions by Nation, Gini Index of Income Inequality, and GDP per Capita. From these indices, disasters are modeled, using multivariate analysis and correlations, standardized regression coefficients, and other rubrics. Synthesizing theories and modeling disasters, while effective, may be suspect to some researchers and challenging to lay readers. The book's premise is that the issue of global climate change is fundamentally about injustice and inequality, causing poor countries to suffer the effect of a problem to which they contributed virtually nothing (p. 97). There is a bias against rich countries when examining causes of climate change, and

The North–South politics of necessity: regulating for basic rights between national and international levels

The paper explores three key initiatives at the international level in relation to access to water that demonstrate a convergence between consumerism, markets and a right of access to basic goods and essential services. It argues that these initiatives are an instance of a regulatory politics that is increasingly the common coin of debates about providing basic necessities in the context of a strong policy preference for market-based systems of provision. The paper begins with an overview of some key contemporary policy issues relating to access to water, followed by a conceptual analysis of how these issues link regulation, markets and rights. The second half of the paper draws an empirical map of current developments in the area, focusing in particular on the political implications—both explicit and implicit—of the global politics of necessity for relationships between developed and developing countries.

How far are developing countries from the call of ecological tax reform? A review of environmental fiscal policy for Kenya

The main objective of this paper is to determine whether the ecological tax reform paradigm that hitherto is employed by a section of industrialised countries as an instrument of environmental management has potential applications in developing countries. The paper focuses on a case study of environmental management policy in Kenya and reveals that there is strong evidence of global environmental policy convergence. However, ecological tax reform does not have free way into the Kenyan policy environment. The hurdles include an over-reliance on standards and enforcement, north-south politics, the industrialisation myth and the double-dividend flaw. The overall conclusion is that ecological tax reform is possible and perhaps desirable for a developing country situation, but with requisite contextualisation.

The Ralph Bunche Centennial: Peace Operations Then and Now

Abstract A century after the birth of a father of peacekeeping, Ralph Bunche, UN peace operations have changed dramatically. The narrowly defined, lightly armed, strictly neutral operations of Bunche's day have become complex, multidisciplinary state-building operations. Then, peace- keeping buttressed essentially self-enforcing cease-fires; now, it aims to build the foundations of a self-renewing peace. These changes reflect six deeper shifts: the end of the Cold War; engagement with “internal” conflicts; rising regional organizations; North-South politics; the U.S.-UN relationship; and changes in peace operation mandates. These shifts create three future challenges: state building; the reconception of sovereignty; and the need for realism. The December 2004 High-Level Panel report proposes modest steps toward meeting those challenges, but the burden of realizing the proposed framework rests squarely with UN member states.

Patents and pills, power and procedure: The North-South politics of public health in the WTO

Developing countries have limited control over the distributional and substantive dimensions of international institutions, but they retain an important stake in a rule-based international order that can reduce uncertainty and stabilize expectations. Because international institutions can provide small states with a potential mechanism to bind more powerful states to mutually recognized rules, developing countries may seek to strengthen the procedural dimensions of multilateral institutions. Clear and strong multilateral rules cannot substitute for weakness, but they can help ameliorate some of the vulnerability that is a product of developing countries’ position in the international system. This article uses the contemporary international politics of intellectual property rights (IPRs) as a lens to examine North-South conflicts over international economic governance and the possibilities of institutional reform. Lacking the power to revise the substance of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), developing countries, allied with a network of international public health activists, subsequently designed strategies to operate within the constraining international political reality they faced. They sought to clarify the rules of international patent law, to affirm the rights established during the TRIPS negotiations, and to minimize vulnerability to opportunism by powerful states. In doing so the developing countries reinforced global governance in IPRs.

Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's "Turawa"

Trevor Clark, ed. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's Turawa. Bristol: British Empire Commonwealth Museum Press, 2002. xi + 352 pp. Photographs. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. 5 £25:00. Cloth. 5 £15:00. Paper. This is a remarkable book. Yet it may discomfit many Americans, for it makes clear why the boy scout approach to imperialism may in the end be more successful than the bluntly commercial variety. Indeed it is possible that the subtleties of Indirect Rule, as demonstrated so brilliantly in Turawa (White Men) may yet gain appreciative consideration in Washington as options are pondered in these increasingly difficult days of post-Saddam occupation in Iraq. Aside from compiling a masterly portrait from an enormous variety of highly individual, brightly colored creations the Turawa canvas, Trevor Clark has edited a book with several strengths. First, from his selection of topics and arrangement of contributions, the reader gains a panoramic yet detailed feel for the country of the north, a land of astonishing variety, great power, and appeal. I was particularly captivated by descriptions of the well-forested and watered Cameroonian border territories: their wild, remote, mountainous terrain and their fiercely independent animist peoples, many of whom have managed to hold out over the centuries against the sword of Islam and dominance of the Fulani. To the consternation of the correct, these same peoples voted against independence in the U.N.-monitored 9 199 59 plebiscite. Turawa's second major contribution is the picture it conveys of the north-south politics of colonial Nigeria, and more specifically, of Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, leader of the north's approximately 30 million people during the turbulent, politically intense 1950s and early '60s, who figures in nearly every section. What comes through is the extent to which Bello was a fiery autocrat of almost lethal force, with the result that successive governors had to handle all administrative matters-which perforce were almost always highly political-very carefully. Supported by most of the Muslim north and many fiercely loyal British officials, the Sardauna wanted nothing to do with the south, with democracy, or with Nigerian independence. To the Sardauna, opposition party leaders were enemies of the state. One British DO who spoke up for the opposition leader Joseph Tarka so enraged the Sardauna that he demanded his execution. Yet it was along the democratic path that Whitehall had decreed Nigeria must go, and quickly. How then to keep the Sardauna, supreme leader of the vast and numerically dominant north, on board? Comments made by many contributors offer compelling insights into the persistent efforts requiredingenious initiatives at which the British, under pressure, excelled. The concluding observations in chapter 30 add still another dimension. Rather surprisingly, the immediate public response of many northerners to the assassination of the Sardauna in the January 1966 coup was not one of shock and sadness, but rather indifference, even suppressed elation, as though a great weight had been lifted (312). Yet at a deeper level, other more powerful and dangerous feelings connected to regional pride and outrage at perceived religious sacrilege had been ignited. We are all-too-aware of the horrific results that came about when these burst forth. …