The majority of people on our planet live in the Global South, where most of the world’s natural resources are located but where challenges related to poverty, social marginality, and fragile environments are daunting. Global sustainability challenges cannot be solved without enhancing the transformation pathways in the Global South that are intricately linked to the development trajectories in the rest of the world. Therefore, novel pathways need to be co-designed through innovative interactions and ways of co-learning between the Global South and North.
The Global South thematic under HELSUS provides a unique platform exploring the conditions, limits and pathways for sustainability in different post-colonial contexts. In addition to bringing Global South researches together in Helsinki, one important goal of HELSUS is to facilitate student and staff mobility between the University of Helsinki and the universities in the Global South. HELSUS will also enable knowledge exchange between its own overarching research themes (Arctic, Global South, Urban, Consumption and Production, Theory and Methodology).
There is a wide disciplinary expertise and ongoing research on this thematic in the University of Helsinki. The current aim of the HELSUS Global South theme is to further mobilize this through interdisciplinary projects that will be identified through a participatory process in the beginning of 2018.