Papers presented at a workshop held at the Fundaô̇ Casa de Rui Barbosa in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 2014.

This book is the result of a collaborative effort in which environmental historians from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa came together to offer new perspectives on the new and somehow intriguing entity. These scholars forged a dialogue from their own historical traditions to find common threads and common challenges. The contributors focus on three basic themes that can serve as building blocks for future research: the state, the civil society, and the academia, that is, what has been written in each country on the relations between nature and society over time. The historical perspective is crucial for understanding the environmental and social challenges which might be faced by the BRICS nations in the years to come.