Eleven BRICS member states have proposed a voluntary carbon market framework covering agriculture and nature-based solutions, with the bloc's Agribusiness Working Group directing most credit-sale proceeds to farmers.

The framework appeared in the Business Council's annual report, submitted to BRICS leaders at the closing ceremony of the group's eighteenth summit in New Delhi. The proposal calls for shared carbon accounting standards, a unified classification system across member countries, and digital monitoring infrastructure designed to lower verification costs for smallholder farmers.

What does the framework actually build?

Rather than create a parallel registry, the system would connect with existing voluntary carbon registries and remain open to both domestic and international buyers. Farmers, farmer organizations, and Indigenous communities would function as primary beneficiaries. Companies pursuing emission reduction targets and financial institutions building green portfolios would supply buyer demand. Governments could draw credit proceeds to support national climate commitments and attract green finance.

The operating number behind the council's pitch sits roughly 1,000 kilometres south in Bengaluru, where Google has committed to purchase one million rice-methane credits over four years from Mitti Labs. The project works with more than 70,000 smallholder rice farmers across three Indian states and aims to halve methane emissions while reducing water use by nearly forty per cent.

How does credit revenue reach the farm gate?

Mitti Labs channels payments to growers who alter irrigation practices, and the BRICS proposal borrows that direct-payment architecture as a template. The challenge the framework confronts is measurement economics: making carbon verification affordable across fragmented agricultural landholdings. Pilot projects between member states would test compatibility between national systems before broader implementation.

"The framework's success will depend on whether credit revenue reaches farmers promptly while maintaining credible verification and affordable participation," the Business Council report states.

What does this change for corporate buyers and farmers?

Corporate procurement teams gain access to a larger pool of agriculture-linked credits with standardized terms, provided the common classification system holds across jurisdictions. For farmers, the framework's value rests entirely on whether credit revenue actually clears bank accounts within planting seasons rather than years later.

Beyond India, the bloc now spans eleven countries. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formed the original membership. Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined in subsequent years, expanding the proposed market's geographic reach across four continents.

The proposal stops short of creating a new compliance market or substituting existing registries. It extends voluntary mechanisms into agriculture at scale, and it routes revenue to growers who have historically been excluded from climate finance.

What regulatory milestone decides what happens next?

The Business Council has delivered the report to BRICS heads of state, but no binding implementation deadline has emerged from the summit. The next test sits in the pilot projects between member states, which the proposal identifies as the compatibility checkpoint before wider rollout. The Economic Times of India first reported the proposal from the New Delhi annual meeting.

The council's framework treats carbon sequestration through farming practices as a measurable, tradable category on comparable terms across jurisdictions, provided the shared digital platform for monitoring, reporting, and verification can clear the cost barrier that has priced small farms out of compliance markets since voluntary carbon trading began.