Bonn Juego
Senior Lecturer in International Development Studies, University of Jyväskylä
[This think piece was originally published in Just Ecological Political Economy: The HELSUS Global South Blog.] 
What’s in a name? For nations on the frontlines of the climate emergency—where coastlines drown and forests burn—the answer may mean the difference between survival and extinction. During the Paris Agreement negotiations, when the UN designates a nation as a ‘developing country’, it becomes eligible for Green Climate Fund financing. But when that same government joins the Group of 77, it lobbies for equity under the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities. When the UNFCCC extends support for capacity-building among developing country parties, it invokes a techno-managerial framework. Yet when peoples from these same countries and their supporters march into COP summits under the banner of the ‘Global South’, they demand reparations for centuries of colonial injustice – the theft and plunder of land, labour, natural resources, rare earths, and atmospheric space. This is no linguistic acrobatics. It marks the crucial distinction between technical fixes and historical justice.
In the fight for climate justice, the words we use to group nations can shape how we understand the world and how we act within it. Labels like ‘developing countries’ or ‘Global South’ are not mere semantics; they are acts of discursive politics that either reinforce or challenge the very structures perpetuating global inequality. Critics rightly expose ‘developing countries’ as a colonial creation whereby progress is framed as a mimicry of capitalism in the USA and Europe. Advocates of the ‘Global South’ reclaim the term as a post- and anti-colonial strategy of solidarity, uniting Africans, Latin Americans, and Asians through shared histories of extraction, resistance, and resilience.
But this is not a binary choice. From a strategic-relational approach and critical-realist lens—aimed at revealing and transforming the power relations in the language game—we must wield both terms with intentionality. ‘Developing countries’ can be leveraged where institutional pragmatism necessitates it; ‘Global South’ can be utilised to mobilise collective action of a critical mass. Wisdom lies in discerning which term serves the struggle, and when.
Developing Countries as a Colonial Invention
The label ‘developing countries’ has never been neutral. Invented and propagated by U.S. and European colonisers during the mid-20th century—an era of supposed decolonisation—it
branded non-Western societies as undeveloped, uncivilised, backward, and permanently lagging. This narrative was manufactured to rebrand colonialism and justify continued intervention in the economic, political, cultural, and ecological sovereignty of neo-colonies. At the same time, it advanced a capitalist development ideology aligned with the geopolitical interests of the United States and its allies, functioning as a Cold War instrument against the Soviet Union. In effect, the US-orchestrated ‘programme of development’ became a de facto doctrine of recolonisation.
Promoted by modernisation economists and U.S. policymakers since the 1940s, the notion of ‘developing countries’—or ‘underdeveloped areas’—rests on the assumption that development unfolds in linear stages. Vast regions of the world were cast as needing to ‘catch up’ to the modernity of the North—specifically to industrialised capitalist economies, ideally to become liberal-democratic polities, and possibly to adapt to Western cultural norms. In this schema, diversity was erased, the ‘good life’ was reduced to material prosperity, and the myth of a singular trajectory to capitalism’s industrial production system and mass consumption culture was sold as destiny.
Embedded in the construction of ‘developing countries’ is a colonial gaze in which the ‘superior’ North dictates terms to the ‘inferior’ South. This framing obscures how maldevelopment was produced through slavery, genocide, and extractivism. Today, the same logic of inequality and hierarchy persists: impunity shields global injustice, allowing wealthy nations and monstrous monopolies to skirt accountability. Major historical emitters extend climate finance and development assistance as loans rather than as aid or grants, while corporate-initiated climate actions amount to little more than greenwashing.
The Global South as an Anti-Colonial and Decolonial Project
If ‘developing countries’ is a colonial inheritance, the ‘Global South’ is a decolonial reclamation. More than a geographic designation, the ‘Global South’ is a political project that confronts enduring structures of coloniality and seeds alternatives to capitalist modernity.
Unlike the name ‘developing countries’, which was an externally imposed tag on the colonised territories of the subaltern, the ‘Global South’ emerged from counter-hegemonic and anti-imperialist movements of the Third World – most notably the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement. In that historical moment, newly independent nations sought to decolonise their socio-economies and break the chains of imperial dependency. The ‘Global South’ thus carries a historically grounded and politically resonant significance. It represents a self-determined identity for formerly colonised nations – an empowering network forged through a spirit of mutual solidarity. In international and multilateral arenas, the Global South’s coalition of G77 countries explore avenues for South–South cooperation, advocating for climate justice, debt cancellation, trade preferences, and a just transition.
However, the ‘Global South’ is not a monolithic entity. It is a diverse geographical formation encompassing a variety of political and cultural orientations. Not all countries within the Global South share identical colonial experiences—consider, for instance, the differing trajectories of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia—nor do they prioritise the same issues. Top greenhouse gas emitters like China and India, oil-rich Gulf states, small island nations threatened by ocean acidification, tropical archipelagos facing biodiversity loss, and low-emitting countries with minimal historical responsibility for climate change have divergent interests.
Moreover, the Global South is not uniformly progressive, in part due to the presence of authoritarian and autocratic regimes. Within the contradictory dynamics of a post-colonial world permeated by globalised capitalist relations, these non-democratic governments can reproduce the extractivist violence of colonialism and the dehumanising exploitation characteristic of capitalism. In many contexts, environmental defenders—including investigative journalists, land rights activists and Indigenous communities—face mortal danger. They are frequently displaced, disappeared, or killed. State-sanctioned environmental violence in the Global South is often deployed to serve the wealth accumulation interests of rent-seeking domestic elites and foreign capital invested in illegal logging, land grabbing, and mining.
Strategic Communication for Climate Justice
The choice between ‘developing countries’ and ‘Global South’ should be context-dependent and purpose-driven. After all, language is a tool shaped by the conditions—indeed, the context and purpose—in which it is used. In some cases, more specific descriptors—such as ‘former colony’, ‘service-oriented economy’, or ‘climate-vulnerable country’—may better reflect local realities and avoid homogenisation. Yet in many instances, a common vocabulary is needed for public discourse and, especially, for strategic communication.
For nearly 80 years, the ‘developed/developing’ dichotomy has been ingrained in global consciousness. Nowadays, these labels are conflated with income-based categories (low-, middle-, and high-income), but such economic determinism distorts complex realities. Still, communicating using these terms of classification is pragmatically useful: they are institutionally entrenched, widely used by intergovernmental organisations, encoded in multilateral treaties, and echoed by the media. Whether we agree with them or not, they remain relevant and will continue to matter across policy, research, theoretical, and political domains. But, in the end, what matters most is the strategic agency of countries in defining their own identities.
The debate over the appropriateness of using ‘developing countries’ or ‘Global South’ may seem semantic, but it is profoundly political—particularly when we consider both the facts of history and the normative imperative of pragmatism. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but several questions to ponder: Does the ‘Global North’ cling to the term ‘developing countries’ to evade the extra-economic costs of their intergenerational debt? Is the ‘Global South’ truly decolonial, given intra-South hierarchies such as China’s extractive ventures in Africa? Would replacing ‘developing countries’ with ‘Global South’ in the language and communication frameworks of the United States, European Union, and global governance institutions like the OECD, UN, World Bank, IMF, and WTO meaningfully alter material inequalities?
While ‘developing countries’ remains a practical shorthand in policy circles, ‘Global South’ actively contests colonial legacies and builds anti-colonial and decolonial solidarities. Both terms, however, require contextual and purposive grounding—anchored in conscientious considerations on whose agency is prioritised and whose wellbeing is cared for in our historiography and in our futuristic storytelling about dismantling structural inequality in the world-system. With a historical and global perspective, we can strategically use ‘developing countries’ where necessary, specific descriptors where apt, and ‘Global South’ wherever possible.
Toward climate justice and a just ecology, we must expand our vocabularies, amplify existing alternatives, and support decolonial movements and post-development projects like the pluriverse—not only to reckon with our dark histories, but to nurture present hopes and construct a brighter future.
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Author’s Bio
Bonn Juego is Senior Lecturer in International Development Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He currently serves as Chair of the Finnish Society for Development Research and is an invited contributor to the Great Transition Initiative. His recent societal engagements reflect the themes explored in this thinkpiece, including an interview with Maailman Kuvalehti on the politics of naming (‘Mitä sanaa “kehitysmaista” pitäisi käyttää?’ with Teija Laakso), a two-part podcast appearance on The Future of the Global South: Challenges, Justice, and Radical Possibilities by Global Visions ry (with Franklin Obeng-Odoom and Faith Mkwesha), and a panel discussion at the public forum on Confronting Climate Change: Justice, Solutions and Future Visions (with Anja Nygren and Senja Laakso). He will also be a speaker at Science for Sustainability 2025 with the theme ‘Bursting the Sustainability Bubble’.