"BRICS needs a common carbon-market rulebook rather than a common trading platform." Critically examine this with reference to the BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership.

The BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership (BCMP) is a non-binding MoU. The Rio Declaration (2025) noted it as a tool for capacity-building and experience-sharing [2], and the New Delhi Declaration (2026) promised to implement it [1]. It still has no trading framework, targets or timeline. The real question is what should come first: shared rules or a shared exchange.

Case for a common rulebook

• Different designs: China's ETS, recently extended to steel, cement and aluminium [4], and India's CCTS, which covers 490 obligated entities [3], set output-based intensity targets. Brazil's SBCE, created by Law 15.042 (2024), is a cap-and-trade system [5]. A single platform cannot fairly price units that measure different things.
• Environmental integrity: The target type (absolute or relative) must be reconciled before linking. Otherwise a traded unit may not stand for a real tonne of reduction [6].
• Sequencing: International ETS guidance treats linking as a later step. It comes only after MRV, registries and stringency have been aligned [7].
• Sovereignty-friendly: Common rules respect each member's NDC pathway and fit the soft-law character of an MoU.
• Answer to CBAM: Credible, shared MRV helps exporters show that they already pay a carbon cost at home. This supports BRICS's opposition to unilateral CBAMs [1].

Limitations of a rulebook-only approach

• Lowest common denominator: The expanded membership varies widely in market maturity. Rules set at the weakest level could lower the value of "BRICS-standard" credits.
• No liquidity gains: Without eventual linking, markets stay fragmented and prices diverge, so the cost-saving case for trading is lost.
• Domestic credibility gap: India's CCTS targets were notified only in 2025–26 [3]. The chair's own standards are still being built.
• Declaratory drift: The New Delhi text adds an adaptation-alignment dialogue but sets no deadline or working group [1]. Rules can stall as easily as platforms.
• Faster alternatives: Bilateral deals under Paris Agreement Article 6.2 may deliver trades sooner with partners that have high standards.

On balance, the statement is largely valid. A common rulebook is a prerequisite for, not a substitute for, an eventual trading platform. Before its presidency ends, India should lock in a common MRV standard, mutual recognition of offsets and safeguards on flows between intensity-based and capped systems. Pilot linkages under Article 6 can then follow. This order would make BRICS a credible Global South standard-setter, in line with SDG 13 and the principle of CBDR-RC.