Transitions in the Global South
The thematic group ‘Transitions in the Global South’ is a growing community of scholars working on sustainability transitions in developing and emerging economies around the world.
Transitions in Global South (TGS) Network is an emerging network of scholars, dedicated to investigating challenges and opportunities of sustainability transitions in the countries that are geographically located in the Global South (Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and Africa), and are often associated with “developmental issues”, high inequality, poverty and severe consequences of climate change. “Global South” is therefore a category as much geographical as it is contextual. The network aims to host debates and activities from an interdisciplinary perspective on the systemic challenges and opportunities of sustainability transitions in these contexts.
The network originated around 2015when the scholars attending the International Sustainability Transitions conference (IST) in Brighton felt the necessity to have sustained debates about developing and emerging economies’ transition trajectories. Over the past years, the TGS has grown in terms of the number of scholars and organisation of several activities. Over the years, TGS has organised dialogue sessions and dedicated tracks in the annual IST conferences to bring together scholars working on Global South issues and share knowledge and co-produce research agendas. We have also organised several webinar series to identify transition related issues in the Global South on topics ranging from informality, multi-scalar linkages, idealised energy futures and global diffusion of transformative innovations, and impact on Covid-19 on ongoing energy, mobility, urban and rural transitions in the Global South contexts, focussing on well-being, policy mobilities and multiple dimensions of coloniality that are constituent parts of the past and present of the Global South.
Between 2021 and 2023, TGS has facilitated creation of a hub in Brazil which is focused on sharing knowledge on transitions in Latin America and the Caribbean. As part of the local hub four online meetings are organised every year. In these meetings, the hub opens space for different researchers to show their work and get feedback from the audience. Similar hubs are also emerging in other parts of the world such as in India (Sustainability Transitions in India).
TGS has grown over the years: The google mailing group has more than 300 members and over 200 subscribers to TGS Youtube channel. The TGS Twitter account has more than 1000 followers.
Our email address is transitions.globalsouth@gmail.com. You can also join the TGS LinkedIn network and stay connected to be updated on the latest events organised by the network.
We have a few interesting events planned for this year. TGS is planning to host one of the themes at the NEST 2024 Conference scheduled in September 2024, besides our usual presence in dialogue sessions and dedicated tracks at IST2024. The network also plans to undertake a webinar series under the theme ‘AI and Transitions in Global South’ to identify the existing gaps in the understanding of the key concepts like transparency, ethics, data privacy etc. which are fundamental to AI tools and technologies. The hubs in Brazil and India are planning to organise exciting webinars and increase their outreach in their respective regions.
If you are interested in collaborating with the network or help us strengthen this community, please get in touch with Sumit Kumar (sumit.kumar@monash.edu) and Bipashyee Ghosh (bipashyee.ghosh@ucl.ac.uk)
