From Rule-Taker to Rule-Maker? BRICS Carbon Markets and the EU’s CBAM

This research investigates how carbon markets function as instruments of regulatory authority and sites of contestation in global energy and climate governance by analysing the interaction between the European Union’s Emissions Trading System and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (EU ETS–CBAM) and emerging carbon- pricing instruments in the BRICS countries. Existing research examines CBAM’s distributive impacts on developing countries and traces the diffusion of ETS design from the EU to other jurisdictions, but it rarely connects these strands in Global South debates. The project addresses this gap by asking: How does BRICS, as an organisation, appropriate, resist, or repurpose EU CBAM templates, and with what implications for global governance? The study adopts a regime-complex approach to global governance with a focus on Southern institutionalism. It conceptualises the EU ETS–CBAM as a node of regulatory authority that exports carbon constraints through trade, and BRICS carbon markets as a node of adaptation to this authority. Empirically, the study analyses the sources and modalities of BRICS’ opposition to CBAM and draws on policy documents, negotiation records, and secondary data on carbon-market design. It advances three contributions. First, it specifies the conditions under which EU norms are selectively adopted, reframed, or contested. Second, it contributes to the literature on majorpower groupings by showing how BRICS navigates external EU constraints through coordinated and differentiated carbon-market responses. Third, it contributes to climatejustice debates by demonstrating how competing distributive and normative claims are materially encoded in the institutional design of BRICS carbon markets.