Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
Global North countries maintain control over climate technologies, hindering knowledge transfer to the Global South. This reinforces financial dependency, perpetuates colonial legacies, and fuels exploitation of resources for the green transition, undermining true global climate justice.
Paper long abstract
The global green transition is marked by significant epistemic asymmetries and geopolitical imbalances, where the Global North continues to control access to critical climate technologies and knowledge. These power dynamics hinder the Global South’s ability to implement effective mitigation and adaptation strategies, as they often face restricted technology transfer and exploitative financial mechanisms, such as predatory loans and exorbitant interest rates. This perpetuates a cycle of dependency, particularly in countries who not only seek to address their respective climate vulnerabilities, but are also most impacted by an increasingly warming world.
Case studies from the Philippines illustrate how these dynamics play out in practice. TDespite being rich in mineral resources essential for renewable energy technologies, the country remains locked in an extractive relationship, where the benefits flow primarily to the Global North. Local communities face displacement and significant environmental degradation due to resource extraction, yet do not receive the benefits of the green transition, such as technology and knowledge transfer. Nationally, the Philippines struggles with the high costs of green technologies, even though these resources are extracted from its own land.
This paper examines how these intersecting dynamics create a contested terrain for the Philippines in the green transition. By exploring these issues, it argues for the need to reframe global climate policies to address the colonial legacies of knowledge, power, and resource extraction, ensuring that the Global South is not merely a passive recipient but an active agent in shaping a just climate future.
G(local) political economy of green transition: Actors, institutions, and power shifts