International environmental negotiations often involve conflicts between developed and developing countries. However, considering environmental cooperation in a North-South dichotomy obscures important variation within the Global South, particularly as emerging economies become more important politically, economically, and environmentally. This article examines change in the Southern coalition in environmental negotiations, using the recently concluded Minamata Convention on Mercury as its primary case. Focusing on India and China, we argue that three key factors explain divergence in their positions as the negotiations progressed: domestic resources and regulatory politics, development constraints, and domestic scientific and technological capacity. We conclude that the intersection between scientific and technological development and domestic policy is of increasing importance in shaping emerging economies’ engagement in international environmental negotiations. We also discuss how this divergence is affecting international environmental cooperation on other issues, including the ozone and climate negotiations.

High-profile environmental summits like the recent Paris climate conference (COP 21) offer an opportunity to incorporate real-world, timely issues into teaching and learning about global environmental governance. Using COP 21 as an example, this Forum article summarizes the ways that contemporary environmental summits can be incorporated into university-level education, providing content and context to help address the challenges of interdisciplinary sustainability education. Faculty members have incorporated COP-21-related content in ways ranging from traditional lectures and discussions to field trips, which have contributed to a broad range of course content and learning goals. However, the challenges of including environmental summits in educational settings include knowledge-based, normative, and structural barriers. While environmental summits can be an effective way to incorporate knowledge of global environmental governance into interdisciplinary education, more resources, experimentation, and extensions beyond climate change are needed.