Beyond the North–South Divide?
Beyond the North–South Divide?
This chapter explores global shifts as they took shape during the 2009 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen. These negotiations marked the beginning of a new equation of power shift beyond the conventional North–South divide. Copenhagen provided a world stage where a new alignment of five of the largest countries—the United States, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China—created the opportunity to keep open their international development space. And critically, these new global shifts involve the hegemonic decline of the world's formerly undisputed superpower—the United States, the surging Chinese model of development, and the coordination of various economic interests that are integral to causing climate change. As such, these negotiations were far more about territorial fights to establish new alignments of power in a rapidly transforming geopolitical order than about mitigating climate change.
Keywords: global shifts, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2009, Copenhagen, North–South divide, United States, BASIC, Chinese model of development, mitigating climate change, alignments of power
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