BRICS is emerging as a platform for developing countries to collectively counter Western-origin trade-climate measures. Critically evaluate with reference to CBAM.

The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which entered its definitive phase on 1 January 2026 requiring importers to surrender emission certificates [2], has turned carbon pricing into a trade barrier. BRICS has increasingly become the forum where developing countries contest such measures — though its capacity to actually alter them remains limited.

BRICS as an emerging counter-platform

• At the 12th BRICS Environment Ministers' Meeting (New Delhi, 18 August 2026), held under India's chairship, ministers jointly termed EU carbon border measures "unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist" [1][5].
• It supplies a collective normative vocabulary — CBDR-RC, climate justice — reframing CBAM from environmental policy into a North–South equity dispute, as with the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap demand to mobilise USD 1.3 trillion for NDCs [3].
• Expanded membership (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, UAE) [5] widens its representational claim; the 2021 New Delhi Statement on Environment shows continuity of the environment track [4].
• Stakes are concrete: CBAM covers iron & steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, hydrogen and electricity, with India's steel exports most exposed [1].

Limits of the counter-platform

• Outputs are declaratory — joint statements, not enforceable action; no BRICS member has taken CBAM to WTO dispute settlement despite MFN and national-treatment concerns.
• Divergent interests: China and Russia are large fossil exporters; the UAE and Brazil retain deep EU trade stakes, limiting a common retaliatory position.
• BRICS lacks a substitute market — the EU remains indispensable, so exporters must still comply, bearing verification and reporting costs regardless of the rhetoric.
• Compliance burden falls on firms, which diplomacy alone cannot lighten; domestic decarbonisation is unavoidable.

BRICS is therefore an effective agenda-setting and norm-shaping platform, but not yet an instrument of leverage. Its value lies in coupling protest with construction — pressing for CBDR-RC-consistent rules multilaterally while India accelerates its own carbon market and green steel transition, converting a defensive grievance into competitive advantage.