BRICS condemns CBAM as punitive and protectionist while India preps its exporters

The 12th BRICS Environment Ministers' Meeting adopted a joint statement in New Delhi on August 18, 2026 that opposes carbon border adjustment mechanisms as "unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist". It is the strongest coordinated multilateral pushback against CBAM since the definitive phase began on January 1, 2026, delivered by a bloc that accounts for 26 percent of world trade, according to euobserver.

The counterpoint arrived within 24 hours. On August 19, India's Department of Commerce, part of the same government that chaired the ministerial, ran a CBAM awareness session for roughly 100 exporters at Vanijya Bhawan in New Delhi, The Tribune reported. For exporters and compliance professionals reading geopolitical risk, the two events, one day apart in the same city, set out the operating pattern: protest politically, prepare operationally.

What the BRICS statement says

The joint statement opposes carbon border adjustment mechanisms as "unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist" measures, calling them inconsistent with international law and harmful to developing countries' climate efforts. The ministers' framing brackets carbon border measures with other one-sided trade instruments that, in the bloc's reading, sit outside international law and shift the cost of the EU's climate policy onto developing economies.

The meeting ran under India's chairship and was chaired by Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav. Environment ministers of the BRICS nations, including India, China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa, took part, per euobserver. The ministers attached a fiscal argument to the legal one: projected CBAM revenue of roughly €10 billion per year by 2030 becomes an own resource of the EU budget, euobserver reported, which in the ministers' framing turns a climate measure into a fundraising tool. The statement couples the CBAM criticism with demands for greater climate finance for developing economies, and the meeting also adopted a roadmap on wildfire management and climate resilience. Business Standard, whose coverage is not freely accessible, framed the statement around the burden the mechanism places on developing economies.

The equity argument is not new. An earlier BRICS declaration on climate finance, agreed in July, had already flagged, as quoted by euobserver, "concern that such measures, as well as unilateral economic and financial sanctions, may undermine BRICS countries' capacities to invest in their own just transitions and development priorities". Who carries the cost of the mechanism, and why the burden falls unevenly, is mapped in our guide to CBAM and developing countries.

One day later: 100 exporters at Vanijya Bhawan

On August 19, 2026, India's Department of Commerce, together with the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB) and the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC), ran a CBAM awareness session for roughly 100 exporters and industry stakeholders at Vanijya Bhawan in New Delhi, according to The Tribune. The session was practical, not political. Per The Tribune, it covered five compliance topics:

• Covered products and the applicability of the CBAM framework
• Obligations that fall on exporters supplying the EU market
• Calculation of embedded emissions
• Data collection and reporting requirements
• Accreditation and verification mechanisms, with case studies on iron, steel and aluminium

Joint Secretary Amit Verma said the goal is that Indian exporters are "adequately informed and prepared" for sustainability-related requirements. That framing places the burden of readiness on data, not on diplomacy. The same gap between political noise and data readiness shows up elsewhere in Asia: a Korean survey found 99.3% of exporters face carbon-data demands while most still manage them on spreadsheets. The reference material the Delhi session drew on is growing too, even if the 430-page CBAM guidance package has drawn criticism for its sheer volume.

Protest politically, prepare operationally

The two events, held one day apart under the same government, show that BRICS members treat condemnation and compliance as parallel tracks, not alternatives. India is the clearest case. While chairing the ministerial that condemned the mechanism, India simultaneously negotiates CBAM accommodation through the India-EU FTA's dedicated CBAM annexure and seeks recognition of its CCTS carbon market, which could eventually reduce certificate costs for Indian goods. The stakes are documented in our CBAM India analysis: India's CBAM-exposed EU steel exports fell 24.4% in 2025, before a single certificate was surrendered.

The pattern repeats across the bloc. China has raised CBAM concerns at the WTO but has filed no formal complaint, per euobserver, while its ETS expansion, covered in our CBAM China guide, moves the country closer to a claimable carbon price. Brazil signed up to the New Delhi statement while building out the SBCE carbon market that creates a potential deduction opportunity, analysed in our CBAM Brazil page. Governments condemn the mechanism in communiques and build compliance infrastructure at home in the same news cycle.

The table below places the statement in its crowded month.

Background: DS639 and the US dispute run on separate tracks

The BRICS statement does not reference WTO dispute DS639, and the Russian litigation and the US-EU spat are background context, not part of the New Delhi text. Russia, a BRICS founding member, is separately litigating CBAM at the WTO. The EU blocked Russia's first panel request in DS639 on July 24, and under WTO rules a second request cannot be blocked; that second request is expected at the Dispute Settlement Body meeting reported for September 25. The legal arguments on both sides are analysed in our WTO DS639 dispute page.

The statement also landed six days after the US ambassador to the EU attacked CBAM as a tariff on August 12, with the Commission rebutting the characterization on August 13. The multilateral condemnation and the bilateral attack use overlapping vocabulary, but they are separate initiatives with separate remedies: one seeks negotiated accommodation and climate finance, the other feeds a WTO panel process. Whether any of the challenges can succeed turns on the question of whether CBAM is WTO-compatible, where the EU relies on the environmental exception in GATT Article XX(b).

One point of precision matters for readers weighing the rhetoric. In EU law, CBAM is not a tariff and not a carbon border tax: it is a certificate-based mechanism priced at the EU ETS level, adopted under the environmental legal basis of Article 192(1) TFEU. The labels chosen by its critics are part of the legal argument, not neutral descriptions.

What this changes for compliance teams

Nothing in the BRICS statement changes a single CBAM obligation: the definitive phase has been in force since January 1, 2026, certificate sales begin February 1, 2027, and the first declaration is due September 30, 2027. A joint ministerial statement has no legal effect on Regulation (EU) 2023/956. Three practical readings follow.

1. Treat the condemnation as negotiating posture, not regulatory risk. India condemned the mechanism and trained its exporters within 24 hours; supply-chain planning follows the training, not the communique.
2. Expect more government-run readiness support in exporting countries. The Delhi session model, official bodies walking exporters through covered products and embedded-emissions calculation, lowers the data-collection barrier for EU buyers sourcing from those markets.
3. Watch the trade-deal track, not the rhetoric track. The India-EU FTA's CBAM annexure and CCTS recognition would change actual certificate costs; ministerial statements do not.

Importers and exporters who want to ground the geopolitics in their own numbers can check which goods fall in scope with the CN code lookup and model certificate liability with the CBAM cost calculator.