Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the sustainability implications of spatial shift that is taking place in the global capitalist economy with the rise of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economies and its further implications for the comparative development paradigms.

Paper long abstract:

The current crisis of global capitalism is the result of interlocking of crises in the financial markets, agricultural markets and the energy markets. Coupled with this three pronged nature of the global capitalist crisis is the spatial shift that is taking place in the global capitalist economy with the rise of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economies in the 'developing world'. This paper would explore the link between the current global crisis and this spatial shift. Further, this paper would interrogate the meanings being ascribed to this shift namely reverse dependency and the emergence of a just global economic order. The paper would focus on the sustainability implications of this spatial shift and would argue from that perspective that the emergence of BRICS economies does not deserve to be celebrated as some sort of just restructuring of the global economy. In stead the argument of the paper would be that new models of development that embed sustainability as the key feature of development need to be imagined and practiced. This argument of the paper will be the over-arching framework for a critical evaluation of the neo-classical, Marxian and Green perspectives on the current global crisis and its sustainability implications. Some examples of sustainability initiatives would also be provided to argue the case for ecologically informed models of development