Opinion | BRICS' Climate Question: Who Gets to Write the Rules?

Updated: Sep 14, 2026 12:55 pm IST Published On Sep 14, 2026 12:55 pm IST Last Updated On Sep 14, 2026 12:55 pm IST

Published On Sep 14, 2026 12:55 pm IST

Last Updated On Sep 14, 2026 12:55 pm IST

The New Delhi Declaration puts debt, trade, and technology at the centre of climate politics, and that is where they belong.

The most important line in the 2026 BRICS New Delhi Declaration is not about climate alone, but about demanding a say in the rules of the green transition. By calling for a more representative international order and reform of global financial institutions, BRICS has placed the climate crisis inside the wider argument over who governs the world economy. What may sound like familiar summit language is, in fact, a first-time declaration that the Global South is no longer willing to be a rule-taker in a green transition it is still expected to finance.

For three decades, global climate diplomacy has survived on a polite lie, that the crisis can be solved without disturbing the economic order that helped create it. The declaration punctures that lie by insisting, even if carefully, that climate action is also about debt, trade, technology, minerals, and fiscal space.

The old bargain was always unfair. Developing countries are asked to decarbonise faster, adapt to disasters they did little to cause, protect........

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