This study presents three key steps to enable the Business and Human Rights (BHR) research agenda to promote and advance greater applicability to the emerging challenges in the field. Drawing on research conducted on BHR sources (almost exclusively by Brazilian and Spanish-speaking authors), this article aims to demonstrate the need for further BHR scholarship to simultaneously: (i) identify and remedy epistemic biases through reflexive engagement with a victim-centred scholarship from the Global South that recentres BHR research on the perspective of affected communities; (ii) move from consideration to co-production by grounding BHR theory in practice via participatory methodologies and dialogue between communities, researchers and corporations; and (iii) by aligning with steps one and two, recontextualize Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) research into an integrated Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) approach that incorporates environmental and climate dimensions and ensure meaningful, victim-centred engagement with affected communities.

In the global waste trade, importers buy containers of waste and scrap to meet demand for raw materials, especially in the Global South. But post-processing leftovers generate localized negative externalities. I use the waste trade as a setting to establish that low-capacity states can and do use tariffs as a tool in their environmental policy repertoire. Product-level tariffs can serve as Pigouvian ’sin’ taxes that incentivize private market actors to limit transactions and/or increase state revenue, both channels that can result in improved environmental outcomes. For evidence, I leverage the ‘China garbage shock’: in 2017 China banned imports of twenty-six waste products (HS six-digit), which disrupted economic–environmental trade-offs in other, newly competitive markets awash in diverted imports. Using novel data on 179 traded waste products and product-level tariffs (1996–2020), I demonstrate that those that received the shock raised tariffs in ways consistent with environmental protection.

This study addresses the urgent need for low-carbon energy transition (LCET) in the Global South, where vulnerability to climate change is high and most countries have ratified the Paris Agreement and Nationally Determined Contributions. It emphasizes the importance of research in supporting this transition, particularly through the lens of digital technologies. Despite its relevance, existing studies on the topic remain limited and fragmented. This study reviews the literature on digital infrastructure in LCET, identifies key gaps and ambiguities and offers insights to inform future research and policymaking in the Global South.

Liturgies of Empire adopts a deliberately satirical, epistolary voice to examine the after-lives of Anglican imperialism as reconfigured in contemporary neocolonial activity. Some terms and turns of phrase assume an insider’s knowledge, and familiarity with socio-political definitions, the geographical regions and their specific religious registers and discourse would place the reader in a better position to appreciate the North/South epistemic critiques. Whilst the English narrator, recipient and institutional offices in the missive are entirely fictional, all events, statistics, and quotations are factual and have been verified against the sources cited. The memo casts an eye over three postcolonial Anglican dioceses as case studies to examine how the Anglican Realignment revives the spirit of empire through insistence on its monopoly of truth. It traces how conservative evangelical networks, under the banner of biblical warrant and “Global South” identity, reintensify imperial-era logics of propriety and paternalism. Attempting to supplant Canterbury’s more generous ecclesial disposition, these self-proclaimed guardians of truth are grounded in patriarchal authority, marked not by self-scrutiny but fixation on policing gender and sexuality. Theirs is an ecclesiology that cannot abide dissent, ambiguity, or difference, sanctifying conformity as faithfulness and exclusion as orthodoxy.

Will rising temperatures from climate change affect labour markets? This paper examines the impact of temperature on hours worked, using panel data from Peru covering the period from 2007 to 2015. We combine information on hours worked from household surveys with weather reanalysis data. Our findings show that high temperatures reduce hours worked, with the effect concentrated in informal jobs rather than in weather-exposed industries. These results suggest that labour market segmentation may shape how climate change affects labour outcomes in developing countries.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has been heralded by some as a transformational force in education. It is argued to have the potential to reduce inequality and democratize the learning experience, particularly in the Global South. Others warn of the dangers of techno-solutionism, dehumanization of learners, and a widening digital divide. The reality, as so often, may be more complicated than this juxtaposition suggests. In our study, we investigated the ways in which GenAI can contribute to independent language learning in the context of Pakistan. We were particularly interested in the roles of five variables that have been shown to be particularly salient in this and similar contexts: learners’ Generative Artificial Intelligence-mediated Informal Digital Learning of English (GenAI-IDLE) participation, AI Literacy, Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and Foreign Language Boredom (FLB), and their second language Willingness to Communicate (L2 WTC). Employing a structural equation modelling approach, we surveyed 359 Pakistani English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to investigate their interrelationships between variables. The results demonstrate that EFL learners’ GenAI-IDLE activity directly and positively influences AI literacy and FLE. Students’ AI literacy and FLE play a chain-mediating role in the relationship between GenAI-IDLE participation and L2 WTC. However, FLB lacks predictive power over L2 WTC. We discuss the implications of these results for language learning, in particular in low-resource contexts.

This article examines how subnational fiscal competition over foreign direct investment affects both the siting of new projects and the ability of local governments to raise tax revenue for social spending. We leverage a quasi-natural experiment, an unexpected declaration by the Brazilian Supreme Court in 2017 that reduced states’ ability to offer investors differentiated tax subsidies. Our results show that disadvantaged regions did not see a major shift in investment patterns after the change in investment law. We do not find a consistent relationship between the incentive law change and state revenue generation, but we do find that incentives are associated with less revenue. The results are consistent with arguments that investment incentives exacerbate inequality by reducing states’ capacity to collect revenue while doing little to affect investment location. Our results illustrate that economic agglomeration is difficult to reverse through tax policy and that fiscal federalism often cannot provide strong enough inducements to drive investment into less advantaged regions.

This article offers a Baradian–Butlerian reading of Arendse & 42 Others v Meta, a landmark Kenyan case on outsourced content moderation. Moving beyond structural and subjection-centred framings, it theorises law as a site of ontological reconfiguration – where labour, harm and personhood are co-constituted through intra-action. Drawing on diffraction as an onto-epistemological method, the paper examines how the Kenyan courts reclassified digital labour, pierced jurisdictional separability and temporarily unsettled transnational corporate insulation. Yet, this legal aperture also generated recursive violence: moderators lost employment, residency and psychiatric care, even as their trauma became juridically legible. The paper challenges linear emancipatory or subjection-based accounts of such cases, arguing instead that law functions as a diffractive apparatus – producing patterns of recognition and exclusion without closure. It contributes to the governance of content-moderation scholarship by showing how Kenya’s legal system intra-acts with global capital to generate contradictory but generative juridical formations.

Through the paradigmatic case of post-revolutionary Iran, this article argues critiques of power-laden human rights politics epitomised by Makau Mutua’s 2001 ‘Savages, Victims, and Saviors Metaphor of Human Rights’ when combined with states’ anti-imperialist victim branding, and uncritical anti-imperialist solidarities give rise to a reactionary politics I call the ‘Reverse Savages, Victims, Saviours metaphor of human rights’. Here, anti-imperialist-branding states and their constructions of culture are recast as victims, and the state is treated as synonymous with the population it rules. Western imperialism, the human rights corpus, and those deploying human rights conceived of as extensions of Western imperialism are recast as the savages. Finally, leftist thinkers, anti-imperialist thought, and the resisting victim state and its constructions of Indigenous culture become the saviors. This politics eclipses local populations’ agency and lived experiences by (1) diminishing the moral weight of both the state’s transgressions and the human rights paradigm, (2) interrupting a sustained focus on the anti-imperialist-branding state’s acts of subjugation, (3) defining non-Western populations through essentialist notions of their culture as traditional saviourism does (but valorising rather than vilifying it), and (4) adhering to notions of moral complexity which deny or obscure the elements of moral clarity encompassed.

This article argues that, as they are currently designed, UN climate talks fail to address the environmental catastrophe they aim to address. While dialogue is the primary means through which the world’s population can get together, discuss the scope and nature of the problem, and put appropriate measures into action, these talks are, year after year, employed as a way to create the illusion that democratic decision-making occurs. As a result, these kinds of events can only succeed in entrenching positions, exacerbating the impasse at which we currently find ourselves. This, in turn, solidifies the notion that we indeed need to engage in a dialogue about climate change, thus perpetuating a never-ending cycle that protects, under the veneer of planetary engagement, the continuation of capitalist business as usual. The article, therefore, proposes that a dialogic path to finding a solution to the climate catastrophe can only be successful if climate talks are rethought, placing at the helm voices from the most affected populations in the Global South. Otherwise, these talks will continue to fail in making a significant change that ensures the possibility of an environmentally just and viable future for the planet.

Plastics have come to symbolize the lifestyle and technological advancements of the 20th century, representing modern convenience and progress. In recent years, global plastic production surpassed 360 million tons in 2018 and is projected to reach between 500 and 600 million metric tons by 2025. This plastic accumulates as waste in freshwater, marine and land environments, leading to habitat disruption, alterations in nutrient cycles and harm to wildlife through exposure to toxic substances, entanglement and ingestion which pose significant ecological and health risks. The long-term ecological changes resulting from this pollution are likely irreversible. Developing countries in the Global South, including Bangladesh, are particularly vulnerable to the challenges of poorly managed plastic waste due to a lack of institutional, financial and technical resources to combat plastic pollution. The Aquatic Zoology Research Group has focused on addressing plastic pollution in Bangladesh and adopted a comprehensive strategy to tackle plastic pollution, starting with identifying the issue through various methods, followed by a thorough assessment of the plastic pollution situation and finally proposing solutions for mitigation. Our review of the current state of plastic pollution in Bangladesh’s aquatic systems highlighted significant research gaps, despite the country’s early ban on plastic bags. As a conservation research team from a developing nation facing the severe impacts of plastic pollution, we studied and listed specific expectations for the upcoming INC 5.2 meeting, highlighting challenges faced by many similar countries. We hope that INC 5.2 will move beyond mere statements to implement concrete and equitable actions.

This paper argues that security cooperation among neighbouring countries in the Global South is often hampered by domestic instability and fragmented territorial control resulting from state failures. Geographical proximity, characterised by porous borders and high levels of cross-border human mobility, directly impacts the security of neighbouring states. This creates a dilemma for security cooperation when one state lacks the capacity for effective governance. Empirically, the paper examines the evolution of Thailand’s security relations with Myanmar over recent decades, highlighting the profound impact of Myanmar’s political instability on Thailand. It analyses how the 2021 military coup and the subsequent collapse of Myanmar’s domestic political order have shaped Thailand’s securitisation of non-traditional security threats. By focusing on issues such as irregular migration, public health issues, drug trafficking, and transboundary pollution, the paper explores how these challenges have been securitised in Thailand and how they have complicated security cooperation between the two countries. The paper contends that the limited territorial control and legitimacy of Myanmar’s military government have significantly hindered Thailand’s ability to address its security concerns effectively. It further calls for security cooperation in the Global South beyond the conventional state-to-state level.