BRICS leaders used the New Delhi Declaration, adopted on September 12 at the bloc’s 18th summit, to commit to implementing a BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership and to open a new dialogue on aligning carbon markets with climate adaptation. At the same time, the grouping hardened its long-standing opposition to carbon border adjustment mechanisms, explicitly naming CBAMs among the “unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist measures” it rejects. For companies trading carbon-intensive goods and for investors watching the geometry of future carbon demand, the declaration sketches a two-track world: deeper South-South carbon market cooperation on one side, and an unresolved conflict over border carbon pricing on the other.
What the Partnership Actually Commits Members To
The declaration’s carbon market language is more operational than rhetorical. BRICS countries stated support for cooperation in carbon markets “with a focus on capacity building and exchange of experiences”, and said they look forward to implementing the Memorandum of Understanding on the BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership. The framing of that MoU matters: it is described as a cooperative approach to support national climate strategies, complement mitigation efforts and mobilise resources.
Read carefully, this is an interoperability project, not a common market. Nothing in the declaration proposes a shared cap, a pooled registry or a single trading floor. What it proposes is the plumbing: shared expertise, aligned practices and a channel through which national schemes, from China’s national ETS to India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme and Brazil’s regulated market, can learn from and eventually recognise elements of each other.
The genuinely new element is the adaptation dialogue. The declaration welcomes knowledge sharing through a dialogue on aligning carbon markets with adaptation goals, pulling adaptation and climate finance into a conversation that has historically been about emissions reduction and carbon pricing. If that dialogue produces anything concrete, it would be a first attempt to define how carbon market revenues or crediting activity can be steered toward resilience outcomes, a question no major jurisdiction has yet answered.
The CBAM Line, and the UK Nuance Beneath It
On trade, the declaration leaves no room for interpretation. BRICS opposes unilateral climate-linked measures “that are not in line with international law”, specifically citing CBAMs, and argues such measures could undermine developing countries’ efforts to address climate change and build adaptive capacity. The timing is deliberate: the EU’s definitive CBAM regime entered into force on January 1, 2026, covering imports of cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen, while the UK is preparing to launch its own CBAM on January 1, 2027.
The bloc’s position also carries an energy dimension. The declaration recognised the continuing role of fossil fuels alongside renewables and nuclear in meeting global energy needs, and stressed energy security, a stance unsurprising for a grouping that includes Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, read the combined signal bluntly: leading Global South economies “intend to define the terms of their own energy transition rather than have them imposed by others”.
Yet beneath the unified rhetoric sits a more transactional reality. The UK has published a list of qualifying overseas carbon pricing schemes for its CBAM, and India’s CCTS is on it. That means carbon prices genuinely paid in India can be deducted from UK CBAM liability, subject to evidence and verification requirements. The UK framework is precise about scope: it distinguishes qualifying carbon pricing from carbon credits and offsets, and requires proof of the carbon price paid and the emissions it relates to.
Trishant Dev, deputy programme manager at the Centre for Science and Environment, cautions against overreading the relief. The deduction reduces the risk of Indian exports being charged twice for the same carbon, but the financial benefit will be small if the effective carbon price under the CCTS remains far below the UK carbon price. He also notes the immediate benefit for smaller enterprises is limited, because the CCTS currently covers mainly energy-intensive, larger installations, and because the binding constraint for many suppliers will be measurement, reporting and verification rather than the carbon money itself.
What This Means for Buyers, Exporters and Developers
For exporters into the EU and UK, the declaration changes nothing in the near term. CBAM obligations stand, and BRICS-level opposition has no legal force in Brussels or London. The operational takeaway is the one Dev points to: embedded-emissions MRV is becoming a trade competency. Companies that can document emissions and any carbon price already paid will capture whatever deductions are available; those that cannot will pay the full border charge regardless of diplomacy.
For carbon project developers in BRICS countries, the partnership language is mildly positive. A capacity-building track among major emerging economies tends, over time, to converge on shared technical standards, and convergence lowers the cost of selling credits across jurisdictions. The adaptation dialogue is worth monitoring for a different reason: if members eventually steer a share of carbon market revenue toward adaptation, that creates a new, policy-backed demand channel for credits with resilience co-benefits.
For investors, the declaration is a reminder that carbon market architecture is fragmenting along geopolitical lines. The EU and UK are building border-adjusted compliance systems; the BRICS bloc is building a cooperative alternative that rejects the border adjustment premise. Both tracks are investable, but they reward different assets: MRV and compliance infrastructure in the first, national scheme build-out and registry capacity in the second.
What to Watch
Three markers will show whether this declaration has follow-through. First, the implementation schedule for the Carbon Markets Partnership MoU: named workstreams, a secretariat or pilot capacity-building programmes would signal substance. Second, the agenda of the adaptation dialogue, and whether it produces any proposal to link crediting or market revenues to adaptation finance. Third, the UK’s CBAM qualifying-scheme list: if more BRICS national schemes join India’s CCTS on it, the bloc’s unified opposition will coexist with quiet bilateral accommodation, which is likely the durable equilibrium.
