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Contribution short abstract

This paper examines green development paths for the Global South amid inequality and climate constraints. Using OECD data, it argues for technology and finance transfers from the Global North and for progressive taxes and subsidies within the Global South to address inequality and climate risks.

Contribution long abstract

Ever since the 1960s, there has been a rise of neo-liberal capitalism, characterised by lesser and lesser government restriction on the climate. This has also been characterized by stagnancy of wages while profits have boomed. The emergence of China as a significant world actor since the 1980s have threatened the status quo and the USA. But all of this is happening in a world which faces the threat of climate change. Thus, the question arises regarding the development of global south in a world with a fixed carbon budget.

This paper explores the debates regarding the development path that the global south must take to ensure a green development path. The global north must aid the green development in the global south through the transfer of technology and finances, in light of the carbon space left for global south. Global south itself is characterised by high level of income and wealth inequality. Using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, this paper explores the transition, in form of tax and subsidy that must place within the global south countries to reimagine a development path that solves the twin problems of inequality and climate change.

Stern (2006) points at the costs of not acting would be much lesser than the cost of adaptation. There exists inequality even in adoption, putting the vulnerable population at a much larger risk. The paper explores a reimagined development that must cater to these inequalities in adoption, through progressive taxations and redistributions.