{"id":2113,"date":"2025-06-12T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/?p=2113"},"modified":"2025-06-06T15:09:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T12:09:40","slug":"developing-countries-or-global-south-the-politics-of-naming-in-the-fight-for-climate-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/?p=2113","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Developing Countries\u2019 or \u2018Global South\u2019? The Politics of Naming in the Fight for Climate Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonn Juego<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Senior Lecturer in International Development Studies, University of Jyv\u00e4skyl\u00e4<\/em><\/p>\n

[This think piece was originally published in Just Ecological Political Economy: The HELSUS Global South Blog<\/a><\/em>.<\/em>] \"\"<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in a name? For nations on the frontlines of the climate emergency\u2014where coastlines drown and forests burn\u2014the answer may mean the difference between survival and extinction. During the Paris Agreement negotiations, when the UN designates a nation as a \u2018developing country\u2019, it becomes eligible for Green Climate Fund<\/a> financing. But when that same government joins the Group of 77, it lobbies for equity under the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities<\/em>. 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 \u2018Global South\u2019, they demand reparations for centuries of colonial injustice \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2018developing countries\u2019 or \u2018Global South\u2019 are not mere semantics; they are acts of discursive politics that either reinforce or challenge the very structures perpetuating global inequality. Critics rightly expose<\/a> \u2018developing countries\u2019 as a colonial creation whereby progress is framed as a mimicry of capitalism in the USA and Europe. Advocates<\/a> of the \u2018Global South\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

But this is not a binary choice. From a strategic-relational approach<\/a> and critical-realist lens<\/a>\u2014aimed at revealing and transforming the power relations in the language game\u2014we must wield both terms with intentionality. \u2018Developing countries\u2019 can be leveraged where institutional pragmatism necessitates it; \u2018Global South\u2019 can be utilised to mobilise collective action of a critical mass. Wisdom lies in discerning which term serves the struggle, and when.<\/p>\n

Developing Countries as a Colonial Invention<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The label \u2018developing countries<\/a>\u2019 has never been neutral. Invented and propagated by U.S. and European colonisers during the mid-20th<\/sup> century\u2014an era of supposed decolonisation\u2014it\"\" 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 \u2018programme of development\u2019<\/a> became a de facto<\/em> doctrine of recolonisation.<\/p>\n

Promoted by modernisation economists<\/a> and U.S. policymakers<\/a> since the 1940s, the notion of \u2018developing countries\u2019\u2014or \u2018underdeveloped areas\u2019\u2014rests on the assumption that development unfolds in linear stages. Vast regions of the world were cast as needing to \u2018catch up\u2019 to the modernity of the North\u2014specifically 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 \u2018good life\u2019 was reduced to material prosperity, and the myth of a singular trajectory to capitalism\u2019s industrial production system and mass consumption culture was sold as destiny.<\/p>\n

Embedded in the construction of \u2018developing countries\u2019 is a colonial gaze in which the \u2018superior\u2019 North dictates terms to the \u2018inferior\u2019 South. This framing obscures how maldevelopment was produced through slavery, genocide, and extractivism<\/a>. 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<\/a> rather than as aid or grants, while corporate-initiated climate actions amount to little more than greenwashing.<\/p>\n

The Global South as an Anti-Colonial and Decolonial Project<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If \u2018developing countries\u2019 is a colonial inheritance, the \u2018Global South\u2019 is a decolonial reclamation. More than a geographic designation, the \u2018Global South\u2019 is a political project that confronts enduring structures of coloniality and seeds alternatives to capitalist modernity.<\/p>\n

Unlike the name \u2018developing countries\u2019, which was an externally imposed tag on the colonised territories of the subaltern, the \u2018Global South\u2019 emerged from counter-hegemonic and anti-imperialist movements of the Third World<\/a> \u2013 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 \u2018Global South\u2019 thus carries a historically grounded and politically resonant significance. It represents a self-determined identity for formerly colonised nations \u2013 an empowering network forged through a spirit of mutual solidarity. In international and multilateral arenas, the Global South\u2019s coalition of G77 countries explore avenues for South\u2013South cooperation, advocating for climate justice, debt cancellation, trade preferences, and a just transition.<\/p>\n

However, the \u2018Global South\u2019 is not a monolithic entity. It is a diverse<\/a> geographical formation encompassing a variety of political and cultural orientations. Not all countries within the Global South share identical colonial experiences\u2014consider, for instance, the differing trajectories of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia\u2014nor 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> permeated by globalised capitalist relations<\/a>, these non-democratic governments can reproduce the extractivist violence of colonialism and the dehumanising exploitation characteristic of capitalism. In many contexts, environmental defenders\u2014including investigative journalists, land rights activists and Indigenous communities\u2014face mortal danger. They are frequently displaced, disappeared, or killed. State-sanctioned environmental violence<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n