India, Sept. 13 -- The 18th BRICS Summit, underway in New Delhi, has issued a Declaration which covers a wide range of climate issues - from clean technology to forests - and reaffirms the group's commitment to the multilateral regime: the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

"The BRICS nations comprise a diverse mix of developing and emerging countries with growing energy needs, industrialisation aspirations and multiple development challenges - it is unlikely that we will hear a fossil fuel phase-out declaration any time soon," Avantika Goswami, programme manager of the Climate Change and Green Economy unit at Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said in a statement by the New Delhi-based think tank.

The Declaration calls for "just, o...