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Despite geopolitical fractures, the Rio Summit repositions BRICS as an architect of developmental multilateralism.
As the world’s leading emerging economies gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the 17th BRICS Summit in July 2025, tensions ran high and expectations ran low. Debates over bloc expansion, strategic fragmentation, and the soft-pedalling of geopolitical tensions dominated the weeks leading up to the summit. Russian President Vladimir Putin stayed away due to an active ICC arrest warrant; China’s Xi Jinping opted to join virtually, while India and Brazil remained lukewarm on the fast-track inclusion of new aspirants. These fissures exposed the fragility of a coalition that remains consensus-driven, non-binding, and often caught between ambition and coherence.
Rio 2025 may be remembered as the moment BRICS matured into a credible engine for achieving the SDGs.
Yet despite the backdrop of fractured unity, the summit surprised observers with a renewed sense of purpose. Brazil, taking on the rotating chair, redirected the conversation—anchoring the summit’s identity around sustainability, inclusive development, and climate leadership. Under the theme “Strengthening Global South Cooperation for a More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance,” the Rio Declaration emerged not just as another diplomatic document, but as a turning point that could reorient BRICS from a reactive bloc to a proactive development coalition.
The centrepiece of the summit was the adoption of the Leaders’ Framework Declaration on Climate Finance—a first-of-its-kind collective BRICS commitment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. The declaration proposed mobilising US$300 billion annually by 2035 for climate-related investments, with an explicit emphasis on ensuring that such finance is “accessible, timely and concessional.” In doing so, it directly responded to the long-standing concerns of developing countries over the high thresholds, slow disbursements, and debt-heavy conditions that have characterised existing global climate finance mechanisms.
Earlier this year, Brazil unveiled the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF), a results-based initiative expected to channel as much as US$4 billion annually into forest-rich countries that maintain deforestation below 0.5 percent. With COP30 slated to be held in Belém later this year, this move strategically situates Brazil at the nexus of climate diplomacy and South-South cooperation. Notably, the fund’s success hinges on attracting donor capital; however, no specific commitments were made in Rio, leaving questions about implementation and political will open-ended. The summit further launched the BRICS Multilateral Guarantee (BMG) facility, aimed at de-risking private sector investments in sustainable infrastructure projects across the Global South.
Beyond finance, Brazil focused on operationalising sustainability through concrete institutional mechanisms. The summit announced the establishment of a BRICS Climate Research Platform to harmonise data, share best practices, and advance joint modelling. A Laboratory on Trade, Climate Change and Sustainable Development was also introduced to examine emerging green trade barriers—particularly carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs) imposed by Global North economies—and assess their developmental impacts. Furthermore, a BRICS seminar series on Sustainable Government Procurement is scheduled to mainstream ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria across public procurement policies. Parallel to this, a Partnership for the Elimination of Socially Determined Diseases was launched to bridge health and development policy, recognising the links between climate vulnerability, poverty, and disease burden.
BRICS is moving beyond broad political declarations toward crafting thematic, measurable, and replicable development models—something the Global South sorely needs.
The Rio summit also ventured into one of the most transformative arenas of global governance: artificial intelligence (AI). In a geopolitical climate where AI debates are increasingly shaped by the binary of US commercial dominance and China’s centralised digital control, BRICS introduced a third way that is anchored in development. The BRICS Leaders’ Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence emphasised that AI must serve as a tool to advance inclusive development, reduce digital inequalities, and empower the Global South through multilateral, UN-led frameworks.
This approach explicitly links AI to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as SDG 4 (Quality Education) through equitable access to digital learning platforms, SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) via productivity-enhancing automation in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) by prioritising capacity-building and localised innovation. While the statement remains high-level and light on regulatory detail, it reflects a growing consensus within BRICS that technology must not be governed solely by market mechanisms or strategic competition—but by the broader imperatives of sustainability, human rights, and equitable development.
Rio’s innovations build on the foundation laid in Russia’s 2024 Kazan Declaration, which had created a Contact Group on Climate and Sustainable Development but lacked clear timetables or funding lines. Together, these recent initiatives position BRICS as more than a critic of Western-led institutions—they signal its emergence as a builder of parallel frameworks grounded in green development and equity.
Despite its ambitions, Rio 2025 also laid bare BRICS’ unresolved contradictions. The Rio Declaration offered no commitment to phasing out fossil fuels—instead, it reaffirmed their continued role in just and inclusive energy transitions. Additionally, key initiatives, such as the TFFF and BMG, remain unfunded, dependent on undefined donor contributions. The absence of firm timelines, fund flows, or monitoring frameworks raises concerns about the bloc’s ability to implement its proposals.
India’s presidency of BRICS in 2026 comes at a moment when the global community is falling perilously short of its 2030 Sustainable Development Goal targets and is in urgent need of a renewed multilateral drive.
Still, the Rio Summit may prove to be more than just a narrative refresh. It lays the groundwork for BRICS to function not just as a counterweight to the West, but as a constructive engine of South-South cooperation. More than symbolic, it marks a shift in the bloc’s working style: by aligning its cooperation pillars with the SDGs, BRICS is moving beyond broad political declarations toward crafting thematic, measurable, and replicable development models—something the Global South sorely needs.
India’s presidency of BRICS in 2026 comes at a moment when the global community is falling perilously short of its 2030 SDG targets and is in urgent need of a renewed multilateral drive. Against this backdrop, India’s assumption of the chair offers a crucial test of BRICS’ claim to be more than a geopolitical counterweight—namely, a developmental coalition capable of closing implementation gaps that other forums have struggled to bridge. Drawing on the institutional confidence it gained during its 2023 G20 presidency and its reputation for scalable digital solutions, New Delhi is uniquely positioned to shepherd the Rio commitments from aspiration to practice, thereby demonstrating how South–South cooperation can accelerate progress on climate action, poverty reduction, and inclusive growth.
If India can harness the bloc’s collective financial heft, scientific capacity, and demographic weight to keep the Rio agenda in clear public view—tracking resources, timelines, and outcomes—Rio 2025 may be remembered as the moment BRICS matured into a credible engine for achieving the SDGs. Failure to do so, however, would consign the initiative to the growing catalogue of ambitious but unrealised multilateral efforts, underscoring once again the widening chasm between global development promises and on‑the‑ground realities.
Soumya Bhowmick is a Fellow and Lead, World Economies and Sustainability at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Soumya Bhowmick is a Fellow and Lead, World Economies and Sustainability at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) at Observer Research Foundation (ORF). He ...
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