The special issue “Locating the ‘Global South’ in Earth System Governance” is now completed.
The Earth System Governance network’s South-South Initiative aims to foster collaboration in underrepresented regions, promote South-South partnerships, and help overcome structural barriers to participation in knowledge production. As part of this initiative, a special issue has been published in the Earth System Governance Journal: “Locating the ‘Global South’ in Earth System Governance”.
This special issue takes its point of departure from the knowledge gaps and power asymmetries that persist in global sustainability science and governance. While the use of the ‘Global South’ framing is highly diverse and contested, the “[…] Global South has emerged as a geopolitical, economic, socio-cultural, and epistemic construct […] serving not only as a marker of power shifts but also as a site of alternative knowledge production, normative innovation, solidarities, and contestations in earth system governance” (Jayaram et al. 2025).
In this context, the special issue offers a broad view of the historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts shaping the Global South in earth system governance, and unpacks several key issues. Through a set of curated articles, it examines themes of marginalization, resistance, transformation, and decolonization, while also analyzing how institutions and actors engage with representation, inclusivity, diversity, justice, and equity at both global and local levels.
Editors: Dhanasree Jayaram, Cristina Inoue, Louis Kotzé, Ana Flavia Barros Platiau, Verônica Korber Gonçalves, Annisa Triyanti, Timothy A. Balag’kutu
