Karl P. Sauvant is Resident Senior Fellow at the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and the Founding Executive Director of that Center. He retired from UNCTAD in 2005 as the Director of UNCTAD’s Investment Division. This text draws on Karl P. Sauvant, The Group of 77: Evolution, Structure, Organization (New York: OCEANA (now: Oxford University Press), 1982).