Next week’s BRICS Summit, convened by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Rio de Janeiro, is expected to combine a focus on climate action with two closely interrelated issues: fighting global inequality and building more resilient and effective multilateral institutions. President Lula championed all three policy initiatives while convening the Group of 20 (G20) last November.

Since the 2008-9 global financial crisis, the BRICS grouping has, in many ways, emerged as a counterweight to the influential Group of 7 (G7) of Western advanced industrialised countries. By bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and other influential developing countries, the BRICS has given greater political attention to fighting extreme poverty and, more recently, to delivering on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs). As the appetite for financing development assistance and international organisations declines among several G7 donor countries, some BRICS members are increasingly positioned to fill leadership gaps in key areas such as climate finance, debt relief, and reform of multilateral development banks.

The BRICS and G7 countries converge in the Group of 20 (G20), which South Africa will host this year at the level of heads of state and government from November 22-23 in Johannesburg. Under the theme of “Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability,” the G20 South Africa Summit is expected to further advance an agenda centered on climate action, equality, and the strengthening of multilateral institutions. As South Africa’s Sous-Sherpa, Ambassador Xolisa Mabhongo, stated at the June 19-20 Think Tank 20 (T20) Mid-Term Conference in Pretoria:

“During the past three presidencies [of the G20, led by Indonesia, India, and Brazil, respectively], we have seen the development agenda placed at the center of the G20. … We hope you [the T20] will present concrete proposals that can be considered by us and other G20 members. … The world is dealing with what others are calling a ‘polycrisis’ of converging crises: climate instability, mounting debt, persistent global inequality between and within countries, and, in general, a growing trust deficit and fracturing multilateralism.”

As a member of the T20 South Africa Advisory Council, I presented last month in Pretoria the following three sets of concrete proposals to help advance a global agenda for climate action, equality, and effective multilateral institutions.

Leveraging the Pact & Biennial Summit for Global Governance Innovation

At the 2024 Summit of the Future in New York, world leaders adopted the Pact for the Future— a landmark agreement aimed at rebuilding trust and reinvigorating the multilateral system to deliver urgently needed global public goods. Against a backdrop of divisive politics and widespread mistrust among major powers, the Pact outcome document stands out as a meaningful tool for advancing effective multilateralism. Developed through an inclusive diplomatic process that engaged all 193 UN Member States and key stakeholders, the Pact offers both a compelling narrative and a practƒical framework for achieving near-term global governance breakthroughs in response to catastrophic global risks, such as climate change (see Pact Actions 9, 10, and 52) and inequality (see Pact Actions 4, 8, 34-35, and 47-52).

The Pact offers a roadmap for long overdue, system-wide reforms, priorities also championed at recent BRICS and G20 Summits. These include restructuring the international financial architecture, reforming the UN Security Council and Peacebuilding Commission, and enhancing global responses to climate-induced environmental emergencies. Fully implementing these reforms would help to forge a multilateral system capable of responding to contemporary challenges and empowering people and nations to meet them more effectively.

In our recent report, Global Governance Innovation Report 2025: Advancing the Pact for the Future and Environmental Governance (GGIR’25), my Stimson colleagues and I introduce a unique approach for assessing and promoting Pact implementation. While progress remains slow, signs of movement are visible across key issue areas aligned with BRICS and G20 priorities. Notably, the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings and this past week’s Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) helped to renew momentum behind international financial architecture reforms (Pact Actions 47-52), a prerequisite to addressing global inequality. However, this progress is threatened by proposed steep funding cuts to foreign aid and international organisation financing — an area where the BRICS and G20 governments can mobilise political pressure to reverse course.

Looking ahead to COP30 in Belém, we propose in GGIR’25 a range of forward-leaning policy and institutional reforms to tackle the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution (building on Pact Actions 9, 10, and 52). To overcome persistent deadlocks in climate negotiations, we recommend that COP decision-making should adopt weighted or supermajority voting to mitigate obstruction by major emitting minority countries. Brazil’s proposed Climate Change Council, positioned under the UN and drawing on non-state expertise, could further improve coordination by streamlining currently fragmented climate initiatives.

Additionally, and as a contribution to the 2024 Brazil G20 Summit and the Summit of the Future, we proposed establishing a Biennial UN-G20+ Summit on the Global Economy. This would institutionalise a high-level dialogue bringing together the G20, all 193 UN Member States, major regional organisations, the UN Secretary-General, and the heads of key international financial institutions, as well as the WTO and the ILO. Held every two years at the outset of the General Assembly’s High-Level Week, this forum aims to shepherd a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient global economy.

To support this process, we recommend creating a streamlined, cost-effective “networked secretariat,” led by UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. Operating primarily online, the secretariat would coordinate with senior technical staff from the UN, IFIs, WTO, ILO, and rotating G20 presidency to ensure accountability and serve as a knowledge center to collect, validate, and disseminate collective analysis across the international system between the summits.

Rather than launching new, parallel policy agendas, the upcoming BRICS and G20 Summits can advance existing commitments to climate action, equality, and effective multilateral institutions by maintaining political momentum behind the Pact for the Future. Though only briefly mentioned in Pact Action 48, a Biennial Summit on the Global Economy—as envisioned in greater, more ambitious detail here—holds significant potential for bridging Global North-South divides, promoting sustainability, and addressing systemic inequality by transforming how the global economic governance system functions.