Disagreement over publication timelines is stalling the release of key reports from the United Nations’ main body for assessing climate science, which is also facing a funding crunch.
The issue comes down to when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release the working-group reports leading up to the group’s seventh global assessment—which usually comes every five to seven years, the next one due in 2029—and whether those reports will be released in time to inform the second “global stocktake” under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The stocktake report, which gives a snapshot of global climate progress to date, is due to conclude in 2028 at the COP33 climate conference, reports Carbon Brief.
Bill Hare, CEO and senior scientist at Climate Analytics, explained that failing to release the working group reports in time to inform the stocktake would be a “major historical break [that] would be used to weaken the international climate process and Paris Agreement.”
A timeline to publish the three reports in 2028 was proposed by the IPCC’s co-chairs and backed by a coalition of developing and developed countries. But that plan is being blocked by another group of countries including China, India, Kenya, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, which argue for a longer timeline to give developing nations more time to review and approve the reports. That delay would mean the working group reports come after the stocktake.
Due to the clash, governments have taken more time to agree to a publication timeline for the seventh assessment than for previous assessment cycles, Carbon Brief writes. While the deliberations have gone on for more than two years and nine months, previous assessment timelines were all agreed to in under two years.
At the same time, the IPCC faces a looming funding crunch, United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen warned at a recent meeting. “Expenditures from the IPCC trust fund have exceeded contributions over the last few years,” she told a recent meeting, a development that could affect both this assessment cycle and the transition to the next cycle if it continues.
The IPCC is funded by voluntary contributions from governments, but is facing a US$2-million gap due to lost funding from the United States and uneven contributions from other countries, Inside Climate News reported.
Closing that gap is fairly achievable—a handful of countries could close it with contributions of less than $500,000 each—but Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, said the group’s issues might indicate a deeper-rooted problem.
“We may be seeing a fraying of the tacit assumptions that held the IPCC together,” alongside deeper uncertainties about the health of global climate agreements, Hulme told Inside Climate News.