Towards a New Green World | Climate, trade and development: Economic resilience for the Global South in a warming world

November 07, 2025

We need to reinvent the climate agenda for the Global South. Calling for decarbonisation without economic resilience is no longer viable.

In this series, we highlight the climate, trade, and development link, and ask how countries of the Global South can participate and stay afloat in the new, green economy.

An overview paper by Sunita Narain analyses the geopolitical context in which change is being demand. In the subsequent three papers we have traced the Global South’s path through the green transition—from dependence on low-value agricultural exports, to the geopolitics of critical minerals, and finally to the challenge of clean-technology manufacturing. These are three strategic sectors, among others, in which structural inequities in global trade and finance regimes trap developing countries at the raw-material stage while advanced economies capture value through processing and innovation.

Through these papers we call for green industrialization rooted in diversification, localisation, strategic resource control, and reform of global trade rules. Collectively, the papers explore pathways towards equitable climate-compatible development that strengthens autonomy, economic resilience, and value capture in the Global South.

In this series:

Towards a New Green World | Climate, trade and development: Economic resilience for the Global South in a warming world | An overview by Sunita Narain
Agriculture and forest commodities: Addressing raw commodity dependence | By Rudrath Avinashi
Critical minerals: Moving up the value chain | By Sehr Raheja and Rudrath Avinashi
Clean technology manufacturing: Navigating the green industrialization dilemma | By Avantika Goswami and Trishant Dev