Shaping a Global South in Harmony with the North Recent geopolitical developments confirm the Global South as a credible pillar of the new multipolar world that is swiftly becoming a strategic reality. This bloc, that evolved from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) into BRICS, wields a potent influence based on a formidable foundation of economic strength underpinned by its two global giants — India and China, the emerging economies of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), led by Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populated country, as well as Africa, the Middle East and South America. 

For the Global South to realise its full potential, its member nations can at their influential best when collaborating on issues such as health, the environment, gender and technology and education. For this collaboration to reach effective levels, member nations of the Global South can agree to set aside bilateral issues — even serious, long-standing ones – in order to collaborate for mutual prosperity in critical areas such as trade and investment.

Nowhere is the outcome of South-South Cooperation more effective than in the environmental arena where antagonists have come together to protect the interests of developing nations in issues such as ‘loss and damage’. Wiser, conciliatory approaches can also be adopted by the South in dealing with the Northern counterpart on burning issues of the day to preserve global harmony and enhance prosperity.

On such issues as development of the South, the aim will be to not just catch up with the industrially advanced nations of the Northern hemisphere, but also for an equitable reshaping of the financial institutions that govern the global economic system. This conference – built around the release of the 10th anniversary celebration of the foreign policy journal Global Dialogue Review – will discuss various aspects of cooperation within the South, and its need to reach out to nations of the North. One path to take is in enhancing economic engagement. Its potential already exists in the exploiting of natural, including human, resources, as well as through homogenous cultures built on the interaction of people of the region over centuries.

The South’s nations, even when facing geopolitical disputes, can raise trading volumes through practical measures, reviving ancient ties and promoting political pragmatism. In the ASEAN region for instance, these ties have been fashioned over a millennium; through Hindu, Buddhist and other spiritual impulses. In trade too their links go back over centuries.

ASEAN has in fact been central to efforts of the newly decolonised nations to seek unity of purpose following World War II. It was in Indonesia’s Bandung city that newly independent nations of Africa and Asia came together for a conference that developed into the NAM of neutrality in the Cold War years. Now, in the post-Cold War era, the region is again at the epicentre of adversarial conflict. It is not a coincidence that regions around the Pacific and Indian Oceans are at the core of global prosperity, heralding a shift in economic power from the Atlantic.

From this base, these nations can reach out to the Northern hemisphere and its allies in the South to create a just universal society through reform of the multilateral economic and political institutions; to build an inclusive global society. In the process, it may even mend a fractured global polity that manifests itself in conflict – from the Ukraine to the South China Sea to the Himalayas to Africa.