BRICS backs a carbon markets partnership and rejects CBAM at the New Delhi summit: what it means for importers

Leaders of the 18th BRICS summit adopted the New Delhi Declaration on Saturday 12 September, closing a meeting hosted by India under the theme Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. The bloc now counts 11 members and 10 partner countries. On climate, the declaration says BRICS countries support cooperation in carbon markets with a focus on capacity building and exchange of experiences, and that members look forward to implementing the Memorandum of Understanding on the BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership as a cooperative approach to support national climate strategies, complement mitigation efforts and mobilise resources. It also welcomes a new dialogue on aligning carbon markets with adaptation goals, an unusual framing that ties carbon revenue to resilience spending rather than to mitigation alone.

The trade language is sharper. The declaration states: "We oppose unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist measures that are not in line with international law, such as carbon border adjustment mechanisms, and express concern that such measures undermine efforts by countries, specifically the developing countries, aimed at addressing the adverse impacts of climate change, increasing adaptive capacity and resilience." The target is the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, in its definitive phase since 1 January 2026 for cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen, with the first certificate purchases due in February 2027, and the UK CBAM that starts on 1 January 2027.

For EU importers nothing changes legally. CBAM declarants still owe embedded emissions data at installation level for goods from India, China, Brazil, South Africa and the other BRICS economies, and the default values that apply when a supplier will not share data are set by the Commission, not by the exporter's government. What the declaration does change is the political weather around that data request. Exporters in BRICS countries now have a summit level statement to cite when they push back on questionnaires, and the bloc has signalled it will keep contesting border measures at the WTO and in bilateral trade talks.

The more consequential line for procurement teams is the carbon markets partnership itself. China's national ETS expanded to steel, cement and aluminium in 2025, India is building its Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, and Brazil legislated its regulated market in late 2024. A carbon price effectively paid in the country of origin can be deducted from CBAM liability, so the faster these schemes mature and the more comparable their prices become, the smaller the net CBAM bill on imports from those countries. Trishant Dev of the Centre for Science and Environment told Down To Earth that the opposition to unilateral climate linked trade measures must be seen alongside the call for broader and equitable cooperation.

ESG managers and CBAM declarants should keep collecting actual embedded emissions from BRICS suppliers rather than falling back on defaults, document any carbon price those suppliers have paid domestically so the deduction can be claimed, and watch how the Carbon Markets Partnership MoU is implemented ahead of COP31 in November. The declaration is a negotiating position, not a change in the rules, but it is a clear signal that the supplier side of CBAM compliance will be contested rather than cooperative for some time.