Getting beyond the lowest common denominator : Developing countries in global environmental negotiations

This study explores the collective negotiation behavior of the developing countries of the South in international environmental politics. The so-called 'South'-represented in global negotiations by Group of 77 (G77)-is an unwieldy and unlikely collective made up of over 130 countries displaying dramatically different economic conditions, ideological persuasions, political systems and geographic features and environmental endowments. Yet, for over 30 years now, the collective has demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of internal divisions as well as external threats. Although sometimes described as an economic collective 'of the poor', the South is, in fact, a political collective 'of the marginalized'. Its resilience stems from its member's strongly shared sense of exclusion from the international system and their collective desire to change the 'rules of the game'. This resilience, however, has often come at the cost of having to slip into 'lowest common denominator' positions. In following an 'asymmetrically prescriptive-descriptive' research approach, this study seeks to explore the nature of the 'South' as a negotiating collective and understand why it tends to slip into lowest common denominator positions. The study uses the case of global negotiations on the Desertification Convention and twelve experimental runs of a simulation-game (The Chlorine Game; conducted in four countries, with 191 players of 59 different nationalities).

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2001

Author dc:creator

• Najam, Adil

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lawrence E. Susskind.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8685

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8685