This chapter centers on the 1967–1968 “Swedish initiative” in the United Nations that led to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The diplomatic initiative, underpinned by Swedish scientific expertise, and the Stockholm Conference’s four-year preparatory period marked the emergence of environmental diplomacy and global environmental governance, as well as the rise of North–South tensions over environment and development. The chapter also explains how the autumn 1967 environmental awakening in Sweden, prompted in part by a best-selling environmental polemic by biochemist Hans Palmstierna and an exposé on acid rain by soil scientist Svante Odén, set the stage for the UN intervention orchestrated by Swedish diplomats Inga Thorsson and Sverker Åström. Also that year, as examined in this chapter, the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) conference, hosted by the Meteorological Institute at Stockholm University, demonstrated Stockholm’s central place and Bert Bolin’s leading role in the growing international coordination of climate science.

Previous research has established Sweden as a case of environmental exceptionalism: a pioneering country with the Stockholm Conference in 1972, a long tradition of nature interest and out of door practices, and early reforms such as a ban on CFCs (1989), a carbon tax (1991), and early and strong advocacy for cap and trade solutions on the European level, to mention a few. However, many indicators demonstrate that Sweden’s vanguard position is no longer obvious, a change perceptibly manifested in the timid performance of Sweden in hosting the Stockholm+50 two-day commemoration conference in 2022. The chapter offers an analysis of why small-state progressivism and attention to Global South interests was a rational choice for the nonaligned nation-state of Sweden in the Cold War. The chapter argues further that as this position is now eroding, it should be seen as a consequence of a wider shift in the political landscape with conservative populist nationalism undermining the electoral base for exceptionalism, policies that after the change to a conservative government in 2022 have accelerated.

Identified by Immanuel Wallerstein as the first true hegemon, the Dutch Empire dominated maritime commerce in the seventeenth century. Amsterdam emerged as the world’s alpha city, the site of the first true global multinational corporations. In tandem with corporate activities including the founding of New York City, Cape Town, and Jakarta, Amsterdam established the first modern stock market. It also solidified the North–South power imbalance. European powers extracted the labor and raw materials of far-flung colonies, refining them at higher value. The under-populated Dutch Empire relied on forced migration and slave labor to produce valuable goods such as sugar, tobacco, and spices. This chapter traces the emergence of a city network in the Low Countries that prefigured its independence from Spain, and the construction of its own imperial network. The Dutch city network expanded globally, establishing critical nodes in West Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Asia to manage the flow of resources and labor. Amsterdam’s place at the top of the world city hierarchy led to rising inequality, prefiguring modern urban “command centers.”

The Introduction sets the context for the book and outlines the importance of its focus on sustainable development in international law. It offers background details and speaks to the inspiration for this book. These motivations derive from my professional experiences and research on international and environmental law in Africa and elsewhere. These experiences shaped my reflections on the history, the present state, and the future of the legal dimensions of the concept of sustainable development within international law.

The twin crises of 2008–9 and 2011–12 witnessed the largest GDP loss in Italian history, except the last two WWII years. In 2020, Italy’s GDP per person was still below the 2007 level. The economy was slow and uncertain in reacting to the crisis. The fiscal response proved to be inadequate, but it nevertheless resulted in a substantial increase in the debt/GDP ratio, which fed into uncertainty about the future of the country, affecting investments. The growth rate of the economy was low, spreading doubts about debt sustainability in the medium-long run. Zero growth accentuated the antagonistic mentality in politics. The traditional North–South gap widened, as did poverty, income inequality, and social divides. Distributional coalitions gained political leverage. The 2018 general elections yielded a populist majority.

The introductory chapter of this study parses the identity of the medieval North of England as a region desired for its role in defense at the Anglo-Scottish border and for the devotional culture cultivated, which significantly impacted the rest of England, and derided as a region defensive of its own autonomy, in frequent rebellion and, furthermore, a seat for lingering Catholicism in the wake of religious reform. For these reasons, this chapter claims, the North is necessary for understanding the larger negotiations of English identity and the English nation ongoing in the Middle Ages. The regionalism evident in the North of England and its literature both contests and, in a convoluted sense, enables an emergent English nationalism. If the English North–South divide is conceived by critics as a post-industrial phenomenon, then this chapter argues that the rift, and the discourse that makes it, grows out of these contests between region and nation in the Middle Ages.

The book’s conclusion briefly examines the Northern Rebellion  of 1569, a revolt centered again on the entanglement of centralization and religious reform with the South set against the North. This northern Catholic revolt proves a fitting culmination to the book because, here, we find the same convoluted dynamic of intimacy and revulsion, of derision and desire of the North of England evident in each chapter. The putting down of the revolt, the bloody and destructive retribution that followed by Elizabeth I’s government, recalls the “Harrying of the North” by William I exactly 500 years prior. But the aftermath of 1569 witnesses an emergent British identity form between England and Scotland, an identity afforded by the Northern Rebellion, that would drive England into the age of imperialism and, eventually, toward the Industrial Revolution from which so many critics claim the North–South divide originates. The chapter concludes by briefly pondering modern readings of a still-extant North–South divide in poetry, fiction, and film in order to illustrate just how essential North–South discourse, forged in the Middle Ages, continues to inform the modern rift.