BRICS to help deliver fairer world order

Toward better global governance

The BRICS nations' contribution to the world, however, is beyond economic terms as they have also tried to promote a reasonably structured global governing system that could better interpret the current global economic and political transformations.

For decades, the existing international institutions, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, are reluctant to make substantial reforms so as to reflect and guarantee the interests of the developing and the less developed nations.

According to media reports, the BRICS nations would announce the establishment of a development bank at the upcoming fifth summit in Durban, South Africa. That idea was first exposed at the fourth BRICS summit at the Indian capital city of New Delhi.

Meanwhile, the BRICS nations would also consider the option of setting up a foreign reserve fund, a business council and a think tank.

Once established, they would certainly serve as a major breakthrough for both inter-BRICS cooperation and global financial system.

However, these proposed organizations do not indicate that the BRICS nations are trying to overthrow the old global rules.

Isabel Christina Heyvaert, Brazilian ambassador to Ethiopia, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the idea of a development bank is to create fund to improve cooperation with the developing countries.

South African Standard Bank's Simon Freemantle, senior analyst in the African Political Economy Unit, and Jeremy Stevens, an international economist based in Beijing, said in their latest Africa Macro report that the bank is not a counterweight to multilateral development banks.

"However, on this specific score, the envisioned BRICS bank is an auxiliary funding institution - albeit more aligned to BRICS' development agenda," their report said.

Still, they said that for the proposed BRICS development bank to be operational, the member nations have to answer a string of questions that concern the bank's funding mechanism, management, and business focuses. How to coordinate the different financial policies of the five members would also pose serious challenges.

Meeting common challenges

As the BRICS nations deepen their cooperation, their increasingly better coordinated efforts have played an important role in defending the interests and rights of the developing nations as the human race are striving to meet such pressing global challenges as climate change and food security.

To curb the adversities of climate change, the BRICS members have been persistent in demanding the developed countries of taking the lead in cutting green house gas emissions, and delivering promised assistance in terms of funds and technology to the developing and the less developed nations so as to promote green growth.

Together, the BRICS group could lend to the developing nations much heavier bargaining leverage in the future negotiations over the distribution of emission reduction quotas.

Food security is another topic that is high on the agenda of the BRICS nations.

Back in 2011, five BRICS members issued a joint statement, calling for closer cooperation to help ensure global food security, which has to start with feeding almost half of the world's total population living in these BRICS countries.

Apart from that, the BRICS nations should also step up their assistance to other developing and poor nations, particularly in the area of agriculture technology so that these nations could better deal with the negative impact of the climate change.

Meanwhile, the five emerging economies should also work to establish a fair global food trading system so as to ensure that food supply is secure worldwide.