Amazon summit approaches: the tests ahead

The climate summit that the autumn has been preparing for moved into its final phase in mid-October, and the final phase carried the particular combination that the gathering’s approach always produces: the host city ready, its preparations completed through the months of the planning, the texts drafted through the sessions that the negotiators have conducted, and the finance question unresolved, the question that the summit will have to answer. The summit’s opening, scheduled for the coming weeks, will test the year’s climate politics against the institution’s oldest question, and the testing will be conducted in the presence of the year’s other pressures, the trade conflicts, the budget seasons, the wars. The tests ahead are the ones that the preparations have been conducted for.

The texts that the negotiators have drafted are the part of the summit’s preparation that will be tested first. The agreements that the sessions have produced, the mitigation language, the adaptation plans, the mechanisms that the previous summits established, all of it has been assembled into the draft that the summit will negotiate from, and the draft’s completeness will be measured by the gaps that the finance question leaves; the texts are the summit’s foundation, and the foundation’s strength will be tested by the negotiations that the gathering will conduct. The preparation is the product of the year’s work, and the product’s fate will be decided at the summit.

The finance question is the one that the summit’s outcome will hinge on, and the question’s state, as the summit approached, was the state that the year has produced. The commitments that the developed countries made remain unfunded at the levels promised, the largest economy’s departure has removed a contributor, and the vulnerable countries have made the funding the summit’s central test; the gap is the arithmetic that the negotiators will confront, and the confrontation will be the summit’s most difficult session. The finance is the summit’s question, and the question’s answer will be the gathering’s verdict.

The summit’s politics, as the approach accelerated, were the politics that the year has established. The host country has sought to use the gathering’s location to dramatise the stakes, the coalitions of the vulnerable countries have organized with the particular energy that the emergencies give them, and the larger economies have calibrated their positions to the domestic pressures that the year has produced; the politics are the negotiation’s environment, and the environment will shape the summit’s outcomes. The gathering’s politics will be conducted in the presence of the year’s records, and the records are the summit’s backdrop.

The summit’s tests, when the gathering opens, will be the tests that the year’s preparations have been building toward: the finance question resolved or deferred, the texts completed or left, and the institution’s capacity demonstrated or questioned in the year of the largest economy’s absence. The tests will be conducted in the Amazonian city through the weeks that the summit schedules, and the conduct will be the year’s climate record in its final form. The Amazon summit approaches with the texts drafted and the finance question unresolved, and the approach is the preparation’s final phase; the gathering will convene, the negotiations will run, and the tests ahead will be the ones that the year’s climate politics has been preparing for, whichever way the answers go.