The Brics economic bloc approved its first joint climate finance framework on Thursday, the group’s most coordinated effort to date on funding climate action and setting the stage for a shared position – a first for the group – ahead of Cop30 in Brazil. The nonbinding framework – agreed during a high-level meeting on climate change and sustainable development – outlines Brics priorities including the reform of multilateral development banks, the scaling up of concessional finance and the mobilizing of private capital to support climate efforts in the Global South. The document will be submitted to Brics heads of state at their July meeting. Cop30, the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties, the latest United Nations climate change summit, is scheduled for November in Belem, Brazil. In a statement, the Brazilian presidency said that the bloc’s latest climate effort reflected a shift from defensive posturing to proactive coordination in international negotiations. Although this marks Brics’ first formal initiative as a negotiations bloc on climate finance, its core members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – have coordinated informally for years. Brics’ climate ambitions intensified with the 2024 Kazan Declaration, which analysts described as the farthest-reaching statement the bloc has yet produced. It placed the Paris Agreement at the Centre of its strategy, rejected unilateral trade measures taken under the guise of environmental policy, and linked sustainability to development and equity. Source: SCMP