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The emergence of BRICS, a complex yet intriguing entity, is representative of the coming together of nations with vastly different histories, cultures, and ideals. The Great Convergence offers new perspectives on it through a collaborative effort of environmental historians from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

This edited volume attempts to go beyond the economic and geopolitical paradigms to trace the dynamics of environmental change within the BRICS countries from a historical perspective. The contributors insist that the past matters. The past, they say, is crucial to study institutional evolution, efficacy of governance, threads in policymaking, and the emergence of what are often dismissed as irrational human trends.

Focusing on three basic themes-the state, civil society, and historiography-this volume investigates the relations between nature and society over time in each of the BRICS nations and how can they together face the current environmental challenges.