The Other Side of ‘Development’
The long arc from 1972 Stockholm Conference on Environment (the watershed of modern environmental law) to the recent ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change (Opinion), is as much a narrative of exclusion as it is of cooperation. Twenty-five years back, the pre-Stockholm preparatory process had bifurcated the world into two blocs–the ‘developed’ Global North and the ‘developing’ Global South, which were divorced from each other’s priorities. The Global North being technocratic and conservationist laid-out Action Plan for the Future on pollution control and scientific monitoring, while Global South insisted on economic development in their FounexReport, according it primacy over environmental protection.
This dichotomy foregrounds a fundamental contestation over the place of ‘development’ in environmental governance: whether development is antithetical (and must yield to) sustainability concerns as Global North claims, or whether ‘equitable’ development is itself integral to sustainability, as insisted by Global South. While both perspectives may hold validity depending on contextual imperatives, the global power asymmetries often render North’s view more dominant. This piece espouses South’s view by representing ‘other’ side of development, i.e., where equity-based development anchors climate justice. It primarily locates the contestation between growth and ecological responsibility within the recent ICJ Opinion, which is the first authoritative articulation of States’ legal responsibility delivered in response to a 2023 UNGA request. It affirmed States’ binding obligations under international law to prevent, mitigate and redress climate change and its adverse effects, especially limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. However, its reasoning has reignited long-standing disputes over equity, differentiated responsibility and climate reparations, that lie at the heart of North–South climate politics.
In contemporary Socio-Legal discourses on climate governance, the tension between climate justice and distributive-equity is central. Agarwal & Narain describe this inequitable dynamic as ‘environmental colonialism’, arguing that developing countries suffer the most, contribute the least and lack adaptive capacity against climate change. Similarly, Guha and Martinez-Alier also note the systematic externalisation of environmental costs to Global South. In this register, ‘development’ itself becomes contested: the IMF and World Bank equate it with economic modernisation while scholars like Amartya Sen reconceptualise it as securing basic socio-economic rights.
The Opinion materialised this tension when it unequivocally affirmed climate change as ‘urgent and existential threat’, demanding action under full corpus of international law, including customary norms and human rights. The majority viewed ‘environmental sustainability’ as overarching core norm and ‘development’ as subordinate to it. Bhandari J (in a separate opinion) critiqued such reasoning for creating generalised obligations without sufficient engagement with equity, differentiation or finance. For example, EU’s deforestation, pesticide and carbon regulations undermine farmers’ market access by restricting palm oil exports in Thailand, increase compliance-costs in Kenya’s floriculture and vegetable exports, and threaten livelihoods in Ghana’s cocoa sector forcing smallholder farmers to poverty. These examples illustrate how power imbalances render developing countries collateral damage. In effect, this reflects what Anghie terms ‘legal technologies of dispossession’, where end of formal colonialism did not dismantle its structures, but merely reconstituted them within international law. Building on this, TWAIL (Anghie, Chimni) and law-and-development scholarship (Kotzé, Grear) shift law making to its interpretation and application, showing how adjudicatory reasoning operationalises historical hierarchies of norm-making.
The opinion also situated environmental protection within the human rights framework (para 371) by expressly recognizing a stable climate as ‘foundational’ (or pre-conditional) for enjoyment of right to life. Prof. Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom, maintains that a core function of human rights is to remove ‘unfreedoms’ or conditions that prevent individuals/communities from exercising substantive life choices. Yet, ICJ’s opinion effectively imposes such unfreedoms by mandating undifferentiated, onerous mitigation obligations, compelling a poverty-stricken Global South to pursue deep emission cuts without assured finance, welfare safeguards or technology transfer.
Sen also insists measuring development through real freedoms and ‘capabilities’, rather than by economic growth or formal entitlements. However, the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ which is meant to protect these capabilities, has been hollowed-out in ways that deny them. In practice, Global North’s procedural non-compliance, rampant policy reversals and higher per-capita emissions remain the structural driver of South’s reduced capabilities. Small-island states like Tuvalu or Maldives face rising seas with minimal support/finance while wealthier states stall on climate finance promises. The unfulfilled $100 billion climate finance pledges and ongoing resistance to the new post-2025 goal exemplify Northern strategies of delay and dilution, prompting closed-door claims for equitable reparations. This formalism embodies what Upendra Baxi calls post-Cold War “market-friendly canon of rights,” wherein socio-economic urgencies are eclipsed by frameworks palatable to North.
In 1972 Stockholm, Indian PM Indira Gandhi stated that “Poverty is the greatest polluter”, highlighting the ‘other’ side of development. Her acquiescence for locating UNEP headquarters in Nairobi symbolised changing the epistemic location of UN-bodies to Global South to avoid repetition of neo-colonial impositions/ exclusions from agenda-setting. The 2025 ICJ Opinion stifles this ‘other’ side i.e. the welfare-based development for Global South. Today’s lesson from Stockholm is that any articulation must avoid structural exclusions to embed South’s priorities in both normative content and governance architecture.
About the Authors
Poorva Sharma
Poorva Sharma is a final-year law student at Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur. She reads and researches on the confluence of international environmental law, international trade law and human rights law, particularly how multilateral laws deal with questions of sustainability, development and justice in the Global South.
Vasujit Dubey
Vasujit Dubey is a final-year law student at Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur. His research narrows down on developments in environmental law, constitutional law and legal theory, especially regarding the relationship between constitutional governance, ecological regulation and contemporary international law debates.