Locating the Global South across carbon borders

The category of the Global South is being used and constructed by a range of different actors in response to the introduction of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). State representatives from emerging-market economies use the ‘Global South’ as a rhetorical device to highlight what they perceive as an unjust unilateralist policy instrument. Such mobilizations benefit certain actors whilst overlooking other perspectives on climate justice and development, tending to conflate states with people as well as flatten regional power-struggles around energy transitions. Adopting a Thirdspace methodology to examine empirical dimensions of the Global South in this context sheds light not only on some of the geopolitical stakes of the green transition, but also, on the multi-scalar and uneven relations between core and periphery of the global economy that such discursive devices mask.