This weekend, there will be the annual gathering of the so-called BRICS+ leaders, this year hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It will be symbolically powerful, as always, since the political club was launched in 2009 – perhaps more so this year, as the summit will mark the first time Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited New Delhi in seven years. Of course, it also consolidates the expansion of the club to include five other formal members, with a number of other partner countries potentially in line to become full members.

It also coincides with the 25th anniversary of when I first coined the acronym, which, contrary to frequent misinterpretation, was based on a proposal to suggest fairer and more representative global governance, including Brazil, Russia, India and China. It was not an idea to create an investment concept. That idea came through a variety of investment management firms as a result of the popularity of these countries and the awareness of their economic growth potential that followed.

I have argued on many occasions that the most positive development in terms of global governance was the resurrection of a sleeping group, the G20, in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008. While this included many more countries than I originally envisaged – which laid the foundations for part of its subsequent decline in effectiveness – by including the largest BRIC countries, it was certainly an improvement on the role of just the G7 in representing the shifting world in which we were emerging.

While their inclusion in the G20 almost definitely played a role in creating the mindset for some of the BRIC leaders to create their own club, I never believed this was a body that, just like the G7, could solve truly global problems. As difficult as it is, world challenges need representation from the key nations of the old dominant world, i.e. the G7, and, of course, the rapidly rising world, of which the most economically important countries are the BRICS+. If there can’t be a reorganised G7, as my 2001 paper originally proposed, a focused G20 is better than a world in which each of the G7 and the BRICS+ follow their own paths to deal with global issues.

This confusing environment is why I agreed to set up BRICS+THINKING, to support leading academics from both parts of this world in writing specific policy papers to suggest ideas as to how to solve genuine global problems. Our first papers will be published within the next couple of months.

Against this background, what should the BRICS+ leaders have prepared for at this latest meeting?

Firstly, they are right, as always, to remind the world that the existing global international institutions don’t accurately reflect the changing dynamics of the world, economically and otherwise, whether this be the IMF, World Bank, UN or others.

Secondly, however, the BRICS+ countries should show clearer attempts as to what they think they can achieve together beyond this powerful symbolism. After all, their combined GDP growth has slowed since their creation in 2009, and one might imagine that a minimum ambition would be to develop policy initiatives that would result in better economic outcomes for all their members than might otherwise be the case if they didn’t have the club.

One of our forthcoming papers will focus on what the BRICS+ leaders can fruitfully achieve collectively if they were to develop more focused ambition, including why they should expand further and what the criteria for country inclusion should be.

A highly likely topic of focus at this summit will be the excitable idea of a BRICS currency and, certainly amongst the media, the idea of some alternative to the US dollar in the world monetary system, despite the various obvious and significant challenges to such a development. A second forthcoming paper will also be published shortly on this topic, in which, perhaps, it is feasible to envisage a world of an alternative BRICS payment mechanism for trade between member countries, rather than a broader currency to challenge or replace the dollar. The latter would not only require dramatic constitutional changes in member countries, such as abandoning their own currencies and central banks losing control over their currencies, but would, of course, require quite significant reforms of their financial systems. A BRICS payment system is something that might emerge if BRICS countries were truly focused and determined.

A central topic in the middle of all the various areas of focus relates to the bilateral relationship between their two most important members, China and India, and, as another of our planned B+T papers will discuss, areas where these two might fruitfully cooperate more ambitiously. If they did, this alone could not only change the image of the BRICS+ group elsewhere, but also have its own impact on the rest of the world, especially, but not only, in terms of global trade.

Ultimately, the BRICS+ members need to recognise the realities of today’s complex world. Just like the US and its G7 colleagues, and while they may enjoy the multipolarity that has come into existence, they need to recognise that genuine global challenges cannot be solved – whether they be AI governance, climate change, infectious diseases or global economic imbalances – without much better and more serious cooperation amongst us all.

Photo credit: Photo: Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India. Licensed under the Government Open Data License – India.