Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

The BRICS nations claim to offer an alternative to world leadership by the United States and its Western allies. In practice though, last week’s BRICS gathering in Russia illustrated once again that while these governments are eager to focus on failures of the West, they are unwilling to acknowledge the need for businesses to address the climate crisis or human rights abuses in global supply chains.

BRICS was created in 2009 by the governments of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and later South Africa — hence the name. The coalition has recently expanded to include Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia also participated in the meeting hosted last week. While the BRICS was originally created to highlight investment opportunities, it has evolved into something more significant, promoting a new global political and economic force that is challenging the post-World War II model shaped and led by the US and Western Europe.

A core component of the BRICS agenda is to challenge the imposition of global environmental and human rights standards on businesses. According to BRICS members and many commentators from the Global South, efforts to incorporate environmental and social norms into global business are a form of Western imperialism. Countries like the US, Britain and France developed their industrial bases beginning in the 19th century. The BRICS take exception to efforts by the West to impose what they see as burdensome conditions on less developed states in a much shorter time frame. They claim that these efforts are primarily motivated by Western governments’ desire to stifle the economic growth and competitiveness of less developed states, which is not the case.

Read the full Forbes article.
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Michael Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Professor of Business and Society and Director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.