Most of the southern hemisphere is unexplored. We had more exploration ships down there during Captain Cook’s time than now… – Robert Ballard
As the global economy gets bogged down in the ever-extending chain of conflicts, there is one part of the world that appears to be far less susceptible to the shocks of our times. And this is not just some tiny island in the middle of the ocean that we are talking about – the focus of this publication is a truly non-trivial part of the world economy, accounting for more than half of the area of the planet[1]. While in the past the focus was mostly on the events in the Northern Hemisphere, political and economic developments were often viewed through the perspective of the relations between the Western and the Eastern Hemispheres. The part of the world economy that stayed in the shadow (not entirely to its disadvantage) seems to be doing better in many ways than the part of the world “basking” in spotlight. Well, it may be then the right time to adopt (even if a slightly inverted) a Southern perspective on our current plight and take a closer look at the Southern Hemisphere as a potential basis for building a better global economy.
The key idiosyncratic features of the Southern Hemisphere are that it is devoid of overly ambitious super-powers, nuclear arsenals, and large-scale international conflicts. The Southern Hemisphere harbors only around 10-13% of the world population (the vast majority of the population concentrated in developing economies)[2], leading to a population density that is notably lower than in the North. This is the part of the world that is also younger in many respects compared to its Northern counterpart, with the burden of the history of conflicts not weighing as heavily on its future. At the same time its economies are among the world leaders in key mineral resources and in the share of renewable energy generation. Another feature of the Southern Hemisphere is the greater prevalence of the ocean – more than 80% of the surface area in the Southern Hemisphere compared to nearly 60% in the North (the NH accounts for more than 2/3 of total land mass). This oceanic factor renders distance across the land masses of the Southern Hemisphere more significant, which poses a challenge to the intensification of trade linkages across that region of the globe.
To get a better sense of the distance factor in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres it may be instructive to look at the positioning of the most populous cities and capitals. Jakarta is the largest city in the world, but is the only city from the Southern hemisphere that is in the top 10 of the world[3]. All other cities in the world’s top-10 by population are in the Northern Hemisphere – Dhaka (Bangladesh) is #2 and expected to be #1 by 2050), followed by Tokyo, New Delhi and Shanghai. In the North, the most populous cities in the top-10 of the world are almost all located in Asia[4] (with the exception of Cairo – a city that is still quite close to Asia). In the South, the largest cities by population are Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Lagos – according to UN projections, all of the top-3 cities in terms of population in the Southern Hemisphere by 2050 will be located on different continents (Jakarta in Asia, Lagos in Africa and Sao Paulo in Latin America)[5].
In terms of the gravity model indications, the high distance separation may be less of a barrier in building economic ties across the Southern Hemisphere, if one accounts for the lower transportation costs via sea freight (crucial for connectivity in the Southern Hemisphere) compared to the higher costs of inland transportation that is more prevalent and critical for the Northern Hemisphere, most notably the inland regions of Eurasia[6]. An important peculiarity of the Southern Hemisphere is the relatively low share of intra-regional trade (including within Africa and South America) – most of the trade flows (partly due to the commodity trade specialization and partly due to enormous distances and separations) are directed towards the heavyweights in the Northern Hemisphere. The lack of global/regional heavyweights in the Southern Hemisphere also limits the force of the gravity pull that the region could exert on trade flows. Notwithstanding these limitations in boosting mutual trade, the economies of the Southern Hemisphere could forge closer economies ties through building more regional clusters of economic activity/centers of gravity via actively pursuing regional trade liberalization projects. Another possible area of focus is services trade liberalization, digital economy cooperation and mutual investment – areas that are less susceptible to the gravity of distance.
The contrast between the two Hemispheres is particularly glaring in the status and rivalry around the two geographic antipodes – the Arctic (a frozen ocean surrounded by land) and Antarctica (a frozen continent surrounded by an ocean). In the North recent developments around Greenland show a further escalation in the race to secure control of the Arctic. The competition in the Arctic is heating up not only in the defense sphere, but also in the quest to secure more mineral wealth (rare earth minerals) as well as economic prowess through controlling key connectivity pathways. At the same time, in Antarctica, the global community (via the adoption of the Antarctic Treaty (1961) and the Madrid protocol (1991)) proved to be successful decades ago in agreeing to a cooperative arrangement of not seeking territorial gains, refraining from the exploitation of the continent’s mineral resources and joining efforts in conducting scientific research.
In the sphere of North-South relations, the GDP share of the developing economies in the Southern Hemisphere is above 2/3 (based on several possible methodologies), while in the Northern Hemisphere the majority of regional GDP is still with advanced economies (based on market exchange rates rather than PPP). Furthermore, the relations between developed economies such as Australia and neighboring developing nations appear to be evolving more constructively in comparison to the crisis-ridden experience of the US and Europe with their respective regional neighbors from the Global South. Nevertheless, for the Southern Hemisphere to become a key platform for improving North-South economic relations, a more “Global South-focus” would need to be called for in the external economic priorities of the two members of the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (ANZCERTA).
In this respect, with the vast majority of the developing economies in the Southern Hemisphere not entering into military blocs, there may be scope for a Hemispheric neutrality zone to be created – something that would further reduce the susceptibility of the region to conflicts and that may constitute one of the key preconditions for this Hemispheric project to succeed. The benefits of such a neutral positioning may also include greater possibilities to act more effectively (as a Hemispheric bloc) in international dispute settlements and in building economic alliances. The largest developing economies of the region such as Brazil (largest in Latin America), South Africa (largest in Africa) and Indonesia (largest in ASEAN) could lead the efforts in advancing the principles of neutrality in the Southern Hemisphere.
Overall, in terms of the possible modalities of creating a coordination framework across the economy of Southern Hemisphere, there may be several tracks to explore:
- A Southern Hemisphere FTA: this route would in part attenuate the severity of distance in boosting trade between the main economic centers of the region; given the relatively high import restrictions in the developing economies of Latin America and Africa, there could be scope for a measured reduction in tariff and non-tariff barriers; one of the key focus areas of a Hemispheric FTA could be a targeted liberalization undertaken with respect to Africa in coordination with AfCFTA – this in turn raises the importance of the focus on the cooperation among the regional integration blocs of the Southern Hemisphere (SH)
- Integration of integrations: a common SH platform could bring together Mercosur and Pacific Alliances from Latin America, SADC/SACU from Africa, ASEAN from Southeast Asia as well as the PACER Plus agreements between Australia, New Zealand and the PIF members.
- Sectoral alliances: with the largest economies of the Hemisphere such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Indonesia all among the leaders in some of the most critical mineral resources for the world economy, there could be scope for greater coordination within sectoral platforms on matters pertaining to trade and sustainable production as well as supply-chain resilience.
- An environmental alliance: the economies of the “ocean hemisphere” could prioritize joint initiatives in COP and other global platforms to safeguard the environmental state of the world’s oceans; there may be potential to work together with existing initiatives and platforms targeting the reversal of land degradation (BRICS created such a platform in 2025 during Brazil’s Presidency in the bloc[7]).
In exploring common initiatives across the Southern Hemisphere, one may take note of the lower number of national capitals and countries positioned in the Southern Hemisphere – there are less than 40 national capitals in the Southern Hemisphere (notably less than in Africa or in Europe), with more than 150 situated to the North of the equator. The proportion of national economies lying entirely in the Southern Hemisphere compared to the North is broadly similar. Also, the population in the Southern Hemisphere is somewhat more evenly distributed across the main landmasses/continents (Asia and Oceania, Africa, South America), while in the North the weight of Asia significantly exceeds other parts of the Hemisphere. In this respect, there may be lower coordination costs and scope to attain agreement in the South in launching common initiatives and building new platforms as compared to the much more complicated matters in the Northern Hemisphere.
In light of the above considerations on the possible trajectories of South Hemispheric coordination efforts, it is important to observe that there has been a similar “close to Hemispheric effort” to build economic cooperation across a significant part of the global economy, namely the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The rivalries of the great powers have impeded progressed towards sweeping goals such as APEC-wide free trade and the forum largely performs the role of bringing leading regional economies for contacts and diplomacy. The current mega-regional projects that are more effective in launching real initiatives and that are comparable in scope are the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The key niche for the South Hemispheric project in the emerging array of mega-regionals would be in building a different, broader geography of economic cooperation that is not confined to the Pacific rim (as is mostly the case with RCEP and CPTPP), but that extends economic connectivity across the economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The openness and inclusivity of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) framework may provide for SH+ formats and extensions that involve a widening circle of economies into this economic/environmental platform. One possible extension is the “equatorial circle” – approximately 1000 km to the south and to the north of the equator – that includes areas of tropical forests for which sustainability and environmental policies are particularly important. In fact, such an equatorial alliance focusing on the protection of tropical forests has already been launched by Brazil with the participation of Indonesia and Congo (thus covering the tropical forest areas in Africa, South America and Asia)[8]. Apart from the possible environmental accords covering the protection of oceans and tropical forests, there may also be scope to extend the spirit of the Antarctic accord to the Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere, most notably in areas of Arctic environmental protection and scientific research cooperation.
From the point of view of globalization, a Southern Hemispheric integration project would not be yet another division line, but rather an open platform that may support the globalization process through market openness and superior practices/models of international economic and environmental cooperation. The paradigm underpinning such a regional project may be referred to as “semi-globalism”, reflecting the scale of the project whose area coverage exceeds even mega-regionals such as RCEP or CPTPP. It may be perceived as seeking to establish a “constructive bi-polarity” (as compared to the hyper-competitive bipolarity dominated by the US and China), where the Southern Hemisphere becomes a benchmark for the North in some of the key development themes for our planet.
In a way, a framework of economic cooperation across the Southern Hemisphere may be seen as a Blue Ocean Strategy for the region and for the broader global economy – instead of competing in the congested areas dominated by the super-powers in the Northern Hemisphere, the South may focus on creating its own “uncontested market space”. It could develop new frameworks and paradigms for economic cooperation focusing on sustainability rather than global domination – thus balancing to some degree the more competitive/less cooperative market space in the North.
In the end, adopting a South Hemispheric perspective may prove to be a productive way to single out the part of the global economy that could attain a critical degree of consensus and coordination without as heavy a load of past conflicts and bitter historical rivalries. Such a regional framework may forego the need for representation in global organizations or any hyper-global ambitions for that matter – rather it could focus on resolving existing regional conflicts and disputes with the view to creating a powerful role model for the rest of the global community. Through building its own hemispheric “soft power” and expanding the best practices in economic policy and governance, the Southern Hemisphere could breathe new life into the waning international economic cooperation, while also serving as a platform for transforming the global economy bottom-up (in the geographic sense) towards a more inclusive and sustainable model of development.
[1] Southern Hemisphere is actually larger in surface area than Northern Hemisphere – as planet Earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather an oblate spheroid that is somewhat pear-shaped: https://www.astronomy.com/science/ask-astro-can-planets-be-pear-shaped-or-are-they-all-spheres
[2] https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/167446/SI61Sthn_hemisphere_power.pdf
[3] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Countries-Regions/International-Statistics/Data-Topic/Population-Labour-Social-Issues/DemographyMigration/UrbanPopulation.html
[4] In most cases this is South Asia or Southeast/East Asia, making distances less extreme with such a geographic concentration of the largest cities
[5] The distances across these cities and continents are at times indeed extreme – the distance from Jakarta to Sao Paulo is more than 15.5 thousand km. https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2025_data-booklet_world_cities_in_2025.pdf
[6] The geography of the Eurasian Economic Union: from challenges to opportunities. Y Lissovolik, V Sutyrin – Valdai Discussion Club report, October, 2017
[7] https://brics-plus-analytics.org/brics-to-create-a-platform-for-land-restoration/
[8] https://www.gov.br/en/government-of-brazil/latest-news/brazil-indonesia-and-congo-formed-an-alliance-to-protect-rainforests
Yaroslav Lissovolik, Founder, BRICS+ Analytics
Image by nali_wike via Pixabay