Sovereignty dominates biggest ever BRICS summit in India

An anti-western cabal? Not really. A plot to take over the world economy? Not quite, though frankly that is happening anyway.

The biggest BRICS summit yet closed in New Delhi with eleven member states, ten partner countries, and a 140-paragraph declaration adopted, in host prime minister Narendra Modi's words, without a single objection.

Sovereignty first

In only his second summit as a full member, Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto told the leaders' session that Jakarta would not take instruction from anybody.

"We do not like being dictated to by one or two specific powers," he said.

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His answer is to look to his people first: feeding, fuelling and educating Indonesians ahead of flashy interventions abroad.

Vladimir Putin expressed a similar sentiment that he and his fellow leaders were seeking to develop their own nations, "not building our work in opposition to anyone".

But the issue of sovereignty goes wider.

"The Global South stands in the front row of global crises," India's Modi told delegates, "yet occupies the back row in decision-making." He wants a "pyramid of privilege" replaced by a "platform for partnership", and rule-takers turned into rule-shapers on artificial intelligence, cyberspace and biotechnology.

On institutional reform the declaration reiterated previous demands for change to the United Nations Security Council's outdated configuration; better representation at the International Monetary Fund for the countries most closely involved with it; and calls for a functional World Trade Organisation.

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa made the case for Africa hardest, noting that a continent with 54 UN seats and nearly a fifth of humanity still has no permanent voice on the UN's most powerful council. "This is neither just nor sustainable," he said, before demanding accountability for what he called the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, the crimes in Sudan and the illegal war against Iran.

Money talks

De-dollarisation was progressive rather than revolutionary. The main steps were for the BRICS Payment Task Force to keep working towards cross-border payments that are "fast, low-cost, more accessible, efficient, transparent and safe", and to promote settlement in local currencies. Cautious, because the stakes are so high, but the direction of travel is not in doubt.

The war in the Middle East was unavoidable on the topic of energy sovereignty, awkwardly so with Iran and the UAE effectively on opposite sides of the conflict. The final declaration calls energy security "a crucial foundation" and defends mixed energy systems that still include fossil fuels. But the declaration avoided any blame around the current blockages in the Strait of Hormuz as the price of securing unanimity.

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Climate language has hardened. Carbon border levies are condemned as punitive and protectionist, "net zero" has disappeared, and the demand is for adaptation finance that is additional, predictable and accessible. Ethiopia's COP32 presidency and India's COP33 bid both won backing.

Food delivered the most concrete result: Russia's long-pushed Grain Exchange, a digital trading platform for a bloc growing more than forty percent of the world's food. But across BRICS, members have been building their resilience.

"For years, Indonesia was a major importer of grains, rice, and corn," Prabowo said. "Now, we have become an exporter."

Like the wider Global South, BRICS has no shortage of internal differences. Nevertheless it has enough shared needs, hopes, and increasingly power, to be a unified force for change.