By Yaroslav Lissovolik

In the beginning of June 2026 India hosted the second BRICS technical meeting of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Group, with the bloc’s representatives supporting India’s leadership in advancing this critical agenda during the year of its BRICS chairmanship. The theme of disaster resilience is clearly taking on mounting importance amid the rising intensity of adverse climate change episodes facing the global economy. BRICS+ with its rising economic weight in the global economy and now with the majority of the planet’s population, is in a position to pro-actively advance the agenda of global efforts to mitigate the risks of natural disasters. In this vein, there may be scope to bring together the BRICS emerging institutional framework together with regional development institutions led by BRICS+ economies to provide support for disaster resilience as one of the most critical areas of global economic policy coordination.

The second meeting of the BRICS DRR group featured a range of views expressed by BRICS representatives on the spheres and modalities of building disaster resilience. In particular, China’s Lekun Zhuang concurred with Indian colleagues that disaster reduction is a key area of collaboration and stressed China’s readiness to deliver its contribution within this development track, most notably in the critical area of technology: “we are ready to share our experience and reflections on early warning systems, resilient urban development, and science, technology and innovation in DRR”.

In terms of research and policy recommendations on the pathways to building BRICS disaster resilience, India’s experts lead the way, with actionable insights and recommendations delivered recently by Dr. Sanjay K Srivastava, Chair Professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru. In particular, Dr. Sanjay K Srivastava calls for integrating disaster relief and resilience into the operations of the BRICS New Development Bank via the introduction of a “dedicated BRICS Disaster Risk Financing Facility, potentially seeded by the New Development Bank and modelled partly on India’s own NDRF (National Disaster Response Fund) architecture”. The Indian scholar further calls for elaborating “a set of concrete deliverables before the 2026 Summit: a BRICS DRR Roadmap with measurable targets and timelines; a framework agreement on transboundary early warning systems covering the Third Pole and coastal geographies; a seed-funding commitment from the New Development Bank for a BRICS Disaster Risk Financing Facility; and the formal establishment of the Science and Technology Advisory Panel”.

While fully supporting India’s push to advance disaster resilience across the Global South, as we observed in our recent publications[4], the system of disaster resilience could be explored by BRICS more broadly to include mechanisms for building critical reserves in medical supplies as well as fuel reserves. Such a system would need to involve the regional integration arrangements and their development institutions and reserve platforms. One example of how regional arrangements are building such reserve capabilities is ASEAN – this regional bloc’s countries are developing joint strategic energy reserves, including the proposed regional oil storage hub and the strengthening of the ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA). The coordinated BRICS+ system of disaster resilience should connect such regional reserve focal points across the Global South, providing thus an inclusive horizontal system of disaster management.

There is also the obvious need for such a system to be integrated into the framework of global multilateral institutions. This in turn calls for coordination between the BRICS Disaster resilience system with institutions such as COP, WHO, IOM, with closer collaboration with the United Nations being a key institutional anchor for disaster relief initiatives coming from the developing world. Another crucial platform for coordination in this sphere is the G20, where the BRICS economies can advance their initiatives in building disaster/crisis resilience to the global level.

There may also be a need for building a network of science/research centers, universities (most notably the BRICS Network University and the BRICS+ Universities Association) and think-tanks to support the BRICS+ efforts to build early warning systems and track emerging risks. Dr. Sanjay K Srivastava further argues that disaster resilience may be one of the drivers of BRICS institutionalization and proposes that “India should push for the establishment of a BRICS Science and Technology Advisory Panel on Disaster Resilience — a standing inter-institutional body that curates research, identifies gaps, and provides annual recommendations directly to the rotating presidency. Such a panel, drawing on institutions in BRICS countries, would give the bloc’s climate diplomacy the epistemic backbone it currently lacks”.

Furthermore, the BRICS need to integrate the emerging framework of disaster resilience into a broader system of crisis mitigation that encompasses not only natural disasters, pandemics and shortages, but also financial and economic adversities ranging from global economic slowdowns to regional economic crises. The ability of BRICS+ to coordinate actions in crisis/disaster management would be greatly enhanced if such frameworks were also integrated into the existing institutions and platforms such as the BRICS New Development Bank as well as the BRICS CRA and the BRICS Multilateral Guarantee (BMG) mechanism. The BMG mechanism, together with the re-insurance platform (Re-insurance pool and Re-insurance company) discussed by the bloc, could play a crucial role in monitoring and mitigating the risks associated with natural disasters and other crisis episodes. And of course, there also needs to be due connectivity of the BRICS disaster resilience system and its financial support ecosystem with the platforms for regional integration arrangements and regional development institutions – this may raise the system’s flexibility and agility as well as endow it with a wider range of potential sources of financing.

Yaroslav Lissovolik is the Founder of BRICS+ Analytics.