Environment › Climate negotiations and finance

UNFCCC negotiations and the Paris framework

Global climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement: the annual conferences, national pledges and the stocktake, loss and damage, adaptation, and the blocs in which countries negotiate. Prelims has asked about the Paris Agreement of 2015 and about BRICS summits and membership.

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2016: the Paris Agreement reached at the UNFCCC meeting of 2015

Showing 1 of 2 subjects, those that changed from 16 to 31 August 2026.Show all

BRICS as a negotiating bloc

Prelims and Mains

The eleven country group is where a Global South position on climate and on trade is now written jointly, which is why its declarations read as one document on both.

South Africa joined the four founders in 2010, and expansions in 2024 and 2025 took the group to eleven members, Indonesia the latest.
India held the chairship in 2026 and hosted the leaders' summit in New Delhi.
BRICS environment ministers, meeting on 18 August, adopted four outcome documents and made opposition to carbon border measures a formal position of the bloc.
They urged developed countries to triple adaptation finance for developing countries by 2035.
The New Delhi Declaration of 12 September lifted those positions into a heads of government text, calling carbon border measures unilateral, punitive and discriminatory.
It accepts a continuing role for fossil fuels in developing economies, asking instead for just, orderly, equitable and inclusive transitions.
It launches a BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership and backs Ethiopia's COP32 presidency.

What changed

Background reading: The Indian Express, 13 Sep 2026: Need 'orderly & inclusive' energy transition, fossil fuels will continue playing key role: BRICS declaration (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 17 Aug 2026: BRICS Environment Ministers adopt four outcome documents (opens in a new tab)

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2025: BRICS summits and membership
Prelims 2014: BRICS summits and membership

Also filed elsewhere

Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism · on Climate finance, carbon markets and carbon pricing
The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) entered its definitive phase in January 2026, and it is not the climate logic of it that developing exporters object to.