The 18th BRICS Summit, scheduled for September 2025 in New Delhi, is poised to become a pivotal moment for climate cooperation among developing nations, according to a report by South African news outlet The National. India's presidency of the bloc places climate adaptation, green finance architecture, and disaster resilience at the centre of this year's agenda.

Key Developments Ahead of the Summit

The New Delhi summit is expected to build on commitments made at previous BRICS gatherings. At the 2015 Summit in Ufa, Russia, member nations formally expressed readiness to tackle climate change at both national and global levels. More recently, at the 17th Summit in Rio de Janeiro, leaders endorsed the BRICS Leaders' Framework Declaration on Climate Finance and a broader Climate Leadership Agenda — documents that will likely form the foundation for this year's deliberations.

According to the report, the climate agenda within BRICS is increasingly shifting from discussions about the pace of emissions reductions toward practical adaptation measures — a transition that climate experts say is long overdue for high-exposure developing economies.

What the Summit Agenda Covers

A key pillar of the New Delhi Summit focuses on building resilience in agriculture and disaster risk reduction. Developing nations within the BRICS bloc face persistent climate-related risks — severe droughts, floods, heatwaves, and cyclones — that threaten food security, critical infrastructure, and macroeconomic stability. The summit is expected to advance coordinated disaster risk reduction frameworks and local-currency climate financing strategies to address these vulnerabilities.

Notably, the report highlights that across BRICS nations, a clean energy transition is already underway, with wind and solar projects outnumbering planned fossil fuel plants. What remains absent, the report argues, is a joint financial architecture to match that momentum.

Three Mechanisms India Could Accelerate

The report identifies three specific mechanisms that India, as BRICS chair, could push forward. First, amplifying the reach of Project Bridge — the blockchain-enabled multi-CBDC platform developed by BRICS central banks — as a settlement layer for climate finance transactions, reducing dollar intermediation and transaction costs for cross-border green investment within the bloc.

Second, India could advance a formal framework for strategically utilising Gulf Sovereign Wealth Fund co-investment in New Development Bank (NDB) climate projects. Third, accelerating the rupee bond programme across BRICS currencies, leveraging India's established expertise in building large-scale, low-cost digital public infrastructure (DPI) frameworks.

India's 'Viksit Bharat' Vision and BRICS Ambitions

For India as host, the summit carries additional symbolic weight. The concept of 'Viksit Bharat' — India's vision of achieving developed-nation status by 2047 — frames New Delhi's broader aspiration, one it hopes can serve as a model for all developing nations within the bloc. India's BRICS presidency, according to the report, is centred on moving beyond declarations and toward delivery on clean energy financing commitments.

With the September summit weeks away, the pressure is on India to translate the bloc's expanding global influence into concrete, bankable climate outcomes that developing nations can act on immediately.