Climate machinery grinds toward Belém

The preparations for the autumn climate summit moved through the late spring with the particular machinery that the climate process has built over three decades, and the machinery’s work was the quiet part of the season: the technical meetings, the draft texts, the finance negotiations, and the coalition-building that the summit’s outcomes will depend on. The summit, scheduled for the Amazonian city in the autumn, will be the first since the largest economy’s withdrawal from the agreement, and the machinery is preparing for the summit that the withdrawal has made harder and, in the view of the participants, more important; the preparation is the work that the headlines will not carry until the summit’s final days.

The finance question is the one that the preparations have circled since the previous summit, and the question is the one that the vulnerable countries have made the summit’s central test. The commitments that the developed countries made, the hundreds of billions that the new climate goal requires, remain unfunded at the levels promised, and the financing gap is the subject of the negotiations that the spring’s meetings have conducted; the largest economy’s departure has removed one of the largest contributors, and the gap’s closing has been made harder by the departure. The finance text, the document that the summit will have to produce, is being drafted through the sessions, and the drafting is the machinery’s most consequential work.

The leadership vacuum that the withdrawal has opened is the other part of the preparation’s context. The European Union has positioned itself as the keeper of the agreement’s flame, the host country has sought to use the summit’s location to dramatise the stakes, and the coalitions of the vulnerable countries have organized with the particular energy that the emergencies give them; the competition for the leadership is real, and the competition will be conducted in the sessions and the coalitions that the spring has been building. The summit’s outcomes will be shaped by the leadership that the preparation produces, and the producing is the work of the months before the gathering.

The negotiations’ substance, beyond the finance, is being prepared through the technical channels that the process has built. The mitigation commitments that the countries will bring, the adaptation plans that the vulnerable regions are assembling, the loss-and-damage mechanisms that the previous summits established, all of it is being advanced through the sessions and the submissions that the spring’s calendar has scheduled; the texts are being drafted, the positions are being coordinated, and the coalitions are being built with the particular patience that the climate process has always required. The summit’s success will be measured by the texts that the preparation produces, and the measuring will be conducted in the autumn’s final nights.

The summit in the Amazonian city will be the first test of the climate system without its largest member, and the test will be conducted in the presence of the year’s other crises: the trade conflict, the wars, the budget pressures that the developed countries face. The machinery that grinds toward the summit knows the odds, and the machinery grinds anyway, because the climate process is built on the assumption that the grinding is the only way; the preparations will continue through the summer, and the summit will gather in the autumn with the texts, the coalitions and the gaps that the machinery has produced. The climate machinery grinds toward Belém, and the grinding is the process’s oldest habit, the habit that the withdrawal has tested and the summit will either reward or punish.