BRICS wants its own climate finance rules. Here’s the bill
BRICS nations discussed climate finance priorities in New Delhi while representing under 3% of global adaptation funding flows.
By The Ledger · · 5 min read
Senior officials from BRICS countries met in New Delhi this month to set priorities for climate finance and sustainable development. The bloc represents roughly 45% of the world's population and about 40% of global carbon emissions. It contributes a fraction of that share to the funds that pay for climate adaptation.
What actually happened
The Environment Working Group and the Contact Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development convened senior officers from BRICS member states in New Delhi to align positions ahead of upcoming international climate negotiations. The meeting, reported by ddnews.gov.in and orissadiary.com, covered environment policy, climate finance mechanisms, and sustainable development coordination among the ten-member bloc: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
No new funding commitment was announced. The value of the meeting sits in what it signals: BRICS states are building their own coordination architecture on climate finance, separate from the UNFCCC-led negotiating tracks that have historically set the terms. That matters because the existing system already has a documented shortfall, and BRICS members are among both its largest emitters and largest unmet claimants.
The UN Environment Programme's 2024 Adaptation Gap Report put global adaptation finance needs at $215 billion to $387 billion a year for developing countries. Actual international public finance for adaptation reached $28 billion in 2022, according to the same report — a gap the UNEP itself describes as widening, not closing.
Who pays, who gains
The immediate financial exposure sits with the countries most reliant on external adaptation finance. India, South Africa, and Ethiopia depend heavily on multilateral climate funds and bilateral commitments to finance flood defences, drought-resistant agriculture, and coastal protection. China and Russia, by contrast, are net contributors to some multilateral climate mechanisms but have pushed back against binding emissions-reduction targets that would carry direct cost to their industrial base.
This is the fault line inside the bloc itself. BRICS is not a uniform bloc on climate finance; it is a coalition of net payers and net claimants negotiating jointly against the OECD-dominated funds. The New Delhi talks are, in effect, an attempt to standardise that internal negotiating position before it reaches Belém, Brazil, for COP30 in November 2025.
Households in vulnerable BRICS members will feel the outcome first through insurance and reconstruction costs, not through headline pledges. When adaptation finance arrives late or underfunded, the cost of extreme weather shifts from prevention — sea walls, irrigation retrofits — to recovery, which is reliably more expensive per event. The World Bank has estimated that adaptation investment returns $4 in avoided damage for every $1 spent, a ratio that erodes the longer financing is delayed.
The mechanism
Climate finance flows through three broad channels: multilateral funds (the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund), bilateral government-to-government commitments, and increasingly, blended finance that pairs public money with private capital to de-risk projects like renewable grids or resilient infrastructure.
BRICS coordination changes none of these channels directly. What it changes is negotiating leverage. A bloc speaking with one voice on finance architecture — rather than ten separate national positions — can push for reforms that individual members have sought unsuccessfully for years: faster disbursement timelines, fewer conditionalities on fund access, and greater representation on the boards that approve projects.
The New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai and founded by BRICS in 2014, is the institutional test case. It has approved over $39 billion in loans since inception, according to its own 2023 annual report, much of it for renewable energy and water infrastructure in member states. That is a genuine alternative disbursement channel — but it is still smaller than the World Bank's climate-related lending of roughly $42 billion in fiscal year 2023 alone, according to World Bank disclosures.
The arithmetic that matters here: adaptation gets roughly one-tenth of global climate finance, with the rest directed at emissions cuts, a split this desk has flagged before. BRICS coordination on finance priorities is, functionally, an attempt to renegotiate that ratio — pushing multilateral funds toward the adaptation projects that member states with large vulnerable populations actually need, rather than the mitigation projects that donor countries prefer to fund because they show up better in national emissions accounting.
What happens next
Watch for a formal BRICS position paper ahead of COP30 in Belém. If the bloc produces a joint adaptation-finance demand — a specific dollar figure or disbursement-speed target — that is a measurable escalation from coordination talk to negotiating leverage. If the New Delhi meeting produces only a communiqué reaffirming "priorities" without numbers, the internal payer-claimant tension inside BRICS has likely stalled consensus.
Separately, India's own domestic climate finance need — estimated at $2.5 trillion between 2015 and 2030 by its Nationally Determined Contributions filing — gives it a strong incentive to push the bloc toward adaptation-heavy demands, even as China's position as a net contributor to alternative funds pulls the bloc toward mitigation financing that suits its export position in solar and battery manufacturing.
FAQ
Does this BRICS meeting create new climate money?
No. It sets discussion priorities among senior officials. Funding commitments, if any emerge, would come through separate instruments like the New Development Bank or bilateral deals, not from this working-group session itself.
Why does the adaptation-versus-mitigation split matter?
Mitigation finance cuts future emissions; adaptation finance pays for damage already locked in — floods, droughts, heat. Developing BRICS members face the second bill sooner, but most global climate finance still targets the first.
Is the New Development Bank a real alternative to the World Bank?
It is real but smaller. Its $39 billion in cumulative approved lending compares with the World Bank's roughly $42 billion in climate lending in a single recent fiscal year. It's a growing channel, not yet a replacement.