Brics summit declaration highlights plans for joint carbon market framework

During the 18th Brics Summit hosted in New Delhi on 12 September, participating countries announced their readiness to enact the Memorandum of Understanding on the Brics Carbon Markets Partnership. The commitment was outlined in the official New Delhi Declaration. As the final quarter of India's presidency of the group approaches, efforts are centering on establishing technical guidelines for member states. Rather than building a single shared platform for trading, experts note that the priority lies in developing unified procedural guidelines. The primary objective for the initiative involves constructing a shared framework to handle measurement, reporting, and verification across participating nations. At present, eight countries within the expanded Brics block maintain active voluntary carbon trading systems. Furthermore, registered projects located within Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia account for more than one-third of all global carbon offset developments. Domestic policies among member countries continue to progress alongside the multilateral effort. Under its national Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, India has established specific emission-intensity targets covering 490 individual entities distributed across nine economic sectors. The national scheme has also introduced a dedicated offset mechanism to facilitate carbon credit transactions.