<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 10px 10px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12.928px; line-height: 1.3em; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #424952;">The emerging markets story, including the BRICS and beyond, has thus been a powerful catalyst for trade and investment and poverty reduction globally over this period, notably helping to boost growth in the Asian, Latin American and African regions. This ‘shifting wealth’ phenomenon has underpinned the basic agenda of the BRICS as a political association working to shift global governance norms and arrangements established under a United States ( US ) – led post – Second World War, to reflect the present and future configuration of world economic and political power.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 10px 10px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12.928px; line-height: 1.3em; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #424952;">This Evidence Report provides a summary account of the role of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in shaping the current global development landscape. It first looks at the origin of the BRICS as a political association, then considers their economic trajectories in the first decade and a half of the new century, followed by an investigation of the political and global governance implications of the involvement of the BRICS in the new economic and political geographies unfolding in the multipolar world of today. Finally, the report considers the BRICS as a vector in the evolving development cooperation scene.</p>