The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – who are they and what to do they do?

By Katie Fawcett
October 2020

The IPCC - Who are they?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. The IPCC was created to develop reports to provide policy makers with the most recent consensus on climate change science, including its impacts and risks, along with adaptation and mitigation advice to inform policy and negotiations on climate-related issues. Along with the physical impacts of climate change, the IPCC also considers the social and economic implications.

The IPCC - What do they do?

Since the publication of the First Assessment Report in 1990, the IPCC has produced a number of leading methodology reports, special reports and technical papers in response to requests for information on specific scientific and technical matters from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), governments and international organizations. Here it is important to note that the IPCC doesn’t carry out its own research, but bases its assessments and reports on peer-reviewed literature produced by scientists from all around the world. This means the IPCC is able to find the present scientific consensus on climate change and can highlight any gaps where further research is required. For more information on the full list of publications (historic and upcoming) click here.

 The IPCC - How are they structured?

The structure of the IPCC is designed to reflect the interest of developed and developing countries and the author teams and review process are structured to prevent any bias or political conflicts of interest. One representative from each of the world’s 195 member countries is chosen and these representatives meet every year. These representatives elect a bureau of 30 scientists and, along observer organisations (including NGO’s), nominate a range of experts and lead authors to produce the reports and form the working groups. There are three working groups, each with two chairs - 1 from a developed country and 1 from a developing country. This structure is outlined in Figure 1.  It should be noted that government representatives cannot edit any of the material in the reports, and that the final decisions are made by the lead authors for each chapter to ensure they remain independent of policy. The final decision on the authors and experts is with the members of the Bureau.

Figure 1: The structure of the IPCC (reference: IPCC website, accessed 19/09/2020 https://www.ipcc.ch/about/structure/)

Figure 1: The structure of the IPCC (reference: IPCC website, accessed 19/09/2020 https://www.ipcc.ch/about/structure/)

The IPCC - Is it possible to be truly objective?

Despite the rigorous measures put in place to ensure the review process is comprehensive, unbiased and impartial, there have been criticisms of the processes followed to develop the reports over recent years.[1] In 2009 a chain of emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked which highlighted authors discussing ways to hide contradictory or uncertain evidence regarding modern and historical climatic warming. The group responsible for these hacks were were later found to have taken certain sentences from the emails out of context and used them to argue that global warming was a scientific conspiracy and that scientists manipulated climate data and attempted to suppress critics[2].

The emails did, however, highlight other issues with the IPCCs procedures[3] and led to a review of the IPCC’s processes by the InterAcademy Council (IAC). The IAC found a range of issues such as the potential for authors being chosen by the Bureu to promote specific policies. Loopholes in the peer review process allowing lead authors to review their own work, make edits to reports after the last round of reviews and to overrule reviewers and not address comments. There was also an absence of any binding requirement for incorporating the full range of views. Finally, it was discovered that many of the authors had intellectual conflicts of interest as they work for environmental activist organisations such as WWF and Greenpeace and therefore may be promoting their own interests.

Finally, only 10% of the countries in the IPCC submitted any review comments during AR5, and the remaining 90% of countries signed off the reports without commenting, with limited input into their creation and with no scientific knowledge. The IPCC accepted these criticisms and claims to have adjusted their procedures to address these areas of concern, however there are arguments that not all issues have yet been addressed.  

The Future of the IPCC

In summary, although the IPCC undergoes a strong peer review process, there is still work to be done to reduce bias and to minimise any potential of conflicts of interest from the IPCC report production processes. Improvements should also be made in the way countries can contribute to the reporting process to ensure that the reports represent the interests of all nations, particularly developing countries who will be impacted by the effects of climate change most severely.

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