Climate change both reflects and transforms global development. Asymmetries of responsibility, impact and capacity reflect historical and current development hierarchies. At the same time, the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions perversely empowers high-emitting newly industrialising counties. As inter-state negotiations enter a new post-Kyoto paradigm involving emissions reductions for ‘all Parties’ to the UN climate change convention, relations between industrial and industrialising countries, and more broadly between North and South, are re-orientated. This article charts these relations through two decades of United Nations climate negotiations, arguing the need to secure emissions reductions across the industrialising world opens up new possibilities for climate justice.
