E-Paper
When climate narratives lag behind climate reality
This article is by Girish Balachandran, founder, ON PURPOSE and Vaishali Mishra, director, Asia Communications and Global Special Projects, GEAPP.
A few months ago, one of us sat in a room full of climate experts. Speaker after speaker talked about the Global South. Vulnerable. Exposed. In need of help.
None of it was wrong.
But something was missing.
Outside the conference hall, a different story was unfolding. Countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America were deploying renewable energy at record speed. They were testing new ways to finance climate action. They were finding solutions that the rest of the world hadn’t thought of yet.
The room was talking about problems. The world outside was busy solving them.
For decades, the climate story has followed the same script. The Global North caused most of the emissions. The Global South suffered most of the consequences. That’s still true.
But it’s no longer the whole story.
For decades, climate leadership itself has been framed through a Global North lens. A 2023 study published in the journal Climate Policy examined how developed countries and emerging economies talk about climate leadership at UN climate conferences. It found that the very idea of leadership is built on the Global North’s experience, while the perspectives of emerging economies are often left out of the conversation entirely. The result is a quiet but persistent divide. The Global North is treated as the natural source of leadership and expertise. The Global South is cast as the place where expertise gets carried out.
That divides matter. Because narratives are not neutral. They shape who gets noticed. Who gets trusted. Who gets funded.
Across the Global South, climate leadership is increasingly taking forms that global narratives often miss. India achieved 50% of its installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources five years ahead of its Paris Agreement target. Kenya built a pay-as-you-go solar model that millions of households now use, which is studied by the governments around the world. Meanwhile, 88% of Brazil’s electricity is renewable and South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership is showing how a country can phase out coal while still protecting jobs.
These are not small achievements. They show the vision.
India, for instance, has elevated behavioural change as a key climate strategy through Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment), while women entrepreneurs in rural Uttar Pradesh are using rooftop solar systems to power small enterprises, overcoming unreliable electricity supply, expanding incomes and creating local employment. What begins as a response to an energy challenge quickly becomes a story of economic resilience, entrepreneurship and community transformation.
These places are not just where the climate crisis is felt. They are where climate solutions are born, tested, and scaled.
Here is the deeper problem. The people shaping global climate conversations are often far from the places where climate action is actually happening. Local knowledge rarely travels beyond local conversations.
This creates a blind spot.
When the Global South is seen only as vulnerable, its role as an innovator gets overlooked. That affects more than reputation. It affects access to investment, partnerships and a seat at the table where big decisions are made.
Leadership is still mostly linked to financing and agenda-setting. Implementation is treated as a lesser task. But that gets it backwards. Implementation is where climate ambition either works or falls apart.
The climate transition is no longer being designed only in boardrooms or negotiating halls. It is being built in villages, cities, startups, public institutions and communities across the global south.
The challenge is not whether climate leadership exists there.
It clearly does.
The question is whether the world’s narratives are ready to catch up with the world’s realities.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is by Girish Balachandran, founder, ON PURPOSE and Vaishali Mishra, director, Asia Communications and Global Special Projects, GEAPP.
