7.3A - The Emerging Powers
A number of emerging countries, including Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) and other G20 members, are considered increasingly important to global economic and political systems, as well as global environment governance. (UN Climate Change Conference)
The global consensus is that some emerging powers will be increasingly important to global economic and political systems in the 21st century and the dominance of the USA will decline. The most likely rival to the USA's current hegemony is China, because:
- it has huge human resources
- its economy has grown massively since 1990, and shows few signs of slowing down
- it increasingly engages with other parts of the world, notably by investing in Africa in terms of mineral resources
- it has military ambitions to build a blue water navy, operating beyond its coast
- blue water navy = operates in the open ocean
- green water navy = operates close to the coast
- blue water navy = operates in the open ocean
Other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and G20 (international forum for the world's 20 largest economies) countries could become significantly more powerful in the future. Europe's and the USA's share of world GDP has been in decline since about 1945 and 1990 respectively (yet are both still around 20%). Having declined up to 1960, China and India are now becoming increasingly significant to the global economy, and that is likely to continue.
It is likely that emerging powers in the near future will:
- demand more say in global organisations like the United Nations: there is a case for India having a permanent seat on the UN Security Council
- have more influence over global financial decision-making at the World Bank, IMF and WTO.
- play a greater role in international peacekeeping missions and disaster response, as their military capacity grows
The BRIC countries account for 42% of global carbon dioxide emissions. This means a global environment governance agreement to tackle climate change has to involve these countries. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015 the BRIC countries were involved in the agreement in a way they had not been when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was signed, which only involved developed countries.