Green Development Compact: Bridging North-South Climate Ambitions for a Sustainable Future

According to the brief, these "Atlantic strategies" position the Global South mainly as a consumer market or supplier of intermediate goods, an approach that is "politically unsustainable for developing economies and economically inefficient for achieving the scale required for the global energy transition."

Authored by Amitabh Kant and Samir Saran, the paper titled 'The Green Development Compact: Atlantic Ambition, Southern Scale' calls for a fundamental shift away from competition-driven green industrial policy toward a more collaborative model.

Amitabh Kant is former G20 Sherpa, India and former CEO, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) and Samir Saran is President, ORF.

The Green Development Compact is a framework designed to integrate Northern capital, innovation, and corporate capacities with Southern scale, speed, and renewable energy endowments. In the authors' words, this aims to create "co-development and shared prosperity across regions" rather than perpetuating a dynamic where the South remains dependent on Northern technologies and investment.

The brief highlights that while the Global North has increasingly adopted state-backed green policies, it often does so through a lens shaped by economic security and competitiveness. This risks marginalising developing economies in global climate action unless those strategies are re-oriented to recognise the scale and renewable resource potential of Southern countries. The proposed compact seeks to rebalance this relationship by making both sides "mutually dependent" in advancing a greener industrial architecture.

Practical instruments outlined in the compact include long-term offtake guarantees to provide demand certainty for green exports from the South, shared innovation commons to pool intellectual property and research, and financial mechanisms to de-risk Southern projects. These tools are intended to lower barriers for Southern renewable initiatives while ensuring equitable access to capital and technology.

Proponents of the compact argue that merely exporting Northern green technologies to the South without integrating local industrial capacity will not achieve the scale needed for global decarbonisation. Instead, combining the North's innovation and investment with the South's renewable potential and rapid growth trajectories could accelerate the energy transition while fostering sustainable development and economic resilience.

The brief also implicitly critiques the continuation of models that view climate action primarily through the prism of market competition. In doing so, it reflects broader debates in climate diplomacy over how to align climate goals with development priorities, particularly for countries still seeking robust economic growth.

In sum, the Green Development Compact sets out a vision of shared responsibility and co-development between the Global North and South. By proposing collaborative mechanisms that leverage complementary strengths, Northern financial and technological capacity with Southern renewable resources and scale, the framework aims to reshape how global climate policy and industrial strategy advance together in the coming decade.

- ANI