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Introduction
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the IPCC in 1988. The United Nations endorsed the creation of the IPCC later that year.
It has a secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by the WMO. It has 195 member states who govern the IPCC.
The IPCC Bureau
The IPCC Bureau comprises the IPCC Chair, the IPCC Vice-Chairs, the Co-Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the Working Groups and the Co-Chairs of the Task Force. The IPCC Bureau is chaired by the IPCC Chair.
The purpose of the Bureau is to provide guidance to the Panel on the scientific and technical aspects of its work, to advise on related management and strategic issues, and to take decisions on specific issues within its mandate, in accordance with the Principles Governing IPCC Work.
The member states elect a bureau of scientists to serve through an assessment cycle. A cycle is usually six to seven years. The bureau selects experts to prepare IPCC reports. It draws the experts from nominations by governments and observer organisations. The IPCC has three working groups and a task force, which carry out its scientific work.
Mandate
The IPCC informs governments about the state of knowledge of climate change. It does this by examining all the relevant scientific literature on the subject. This includes the natural, economic and social impacts and risks. It also covers possible response options. The IPCC does not conduct its own original research. It aims to be objective and comprehensive. Thousands of scientists and other experts volunteer to review the publications. They compile key findings into "Assessment Reports" for policymakers and the general public, Experts have described this work as the biggest peer review process in the scientific community.
The IPCC is an internationally accepted authority on climate change. Leading climate scientists and all member governments endorse its findings. Media, governments, civil society organisations and businesses cite its reports. IPCC reports play a key role in the annual climate negotiations held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report was an important influence on the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for contributions to the understanding of climate change.
In 2015 the IPCC began its sixth assessment cycle. It will complete it in 2023.
Origins
The predecessor of the IPCC was the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG). Three organizations set up the AGGG in 1986. These were the International Council of Scientific Unions, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The AGGG reviewed scientific research on greenhouse gases. It also studied increases in greenhouse gases. Climate science was becoming more complicated and covering more disciplines. This small group of scientists lacked the resources to cover climate science.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency sought an international convention to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. The Reagan Administration worried that independent scientists would have too much influence. The WMO and UNEP therefore created the IPCC as an intergovernmental body in 1988. Scientists take part in the IPCC as both experts and government representatives. The IPCC produces reports backed by all leading relevant scientists. Member governments must also endorse the reports by consensus agreement. So, the IPCC is both a scientific body and an organization of governments. Its job is to tell governments what scientists know about climate change. It also examines the impacts of climate change and options for dealing with it. The IPCC does this by assessing peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The United Nations endorsed the creation of the IPCC in 1988. The General Assembly resolution noted that human activity could change the climate. This could lead to severe economic and social consequences. It said increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases could warm the planet. This would cause the sea level to rise. The effects for humanity would be disastrous if timely steps were not taken.
Structure of IPCC
The IPCC has the following structure:
Funding
The IPCC receives funding through a dedicated trust fund. UNEP and the WMO established the fund in 1989. The trust fund receives annual financial contributions from member governments. The WMO, UNEP and other organizations also contribute. Payments are voluntary and there is no set amount required. The WMO covers the operating costs of the secretariat. It also sets the IPCC's financial regulations and rules. The Panel sets the annual budget.
Activities other than report preparation
The IPCC bases its work on the decisions of the WMO and UNEP, which established the IPCC. It also supports the work of the UNFCCC. The main work of the IPCC is to prepare assessment and other reports. It also supports other activities such as the Data Distribution Centre. This helps manage data related to IPCC reports.
The IPCC has a "Gender Policy and Implementation Plan" to pay attention to gender in its work. It aims to carry out its work in an inclusive and respectful manner. The IPCC aims for balance in participation in IPCC work. This should offer all participants equal opportunity.
Communications and dissemination activities
The IPCC enhanced its communications activities for the Fifth Assessment Report. For instance it made the approved report and press release available to registered media under embargo before the release. And it expanded its outreach activities with an outreach calendar. The IPCC held an Expert Meeting on Communication in February 2016, at the start of the Sixth Assessment Report cycle. Members of the old and new Bureaus worked with communications experts and practitioners at this meeting. This meeting produced a series of recommendations. The IPCC adopted many of them. One was to bring people with communications expertise into the Working Group Technical Support Units. Another was to consider communications questions early on in the preparation of reports.
Following these steps in communications, the IPCC saw a significant increase in media coverage of its reports. This was particularly the case with the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C in 2018 and Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, in 2021. There was also much greater public interest, reflected in the youth and other movements that emerged in 2018.
IPCC reports are important for public awareness of climate change and related policymaking. This has led to a number of academic studies of IPCC communications, for example in 2021.
Assessment Reports
Between 1990 and 2022, the IPCC has published six comprehensive assessment reports reviewing the latest climate science. The IPCC has also produced 14 special reports on particular topics. Each assessment report has four parts. These are a contribution from each of the three working groups, plus a synthesis report. The synthesis report integrates the working group contributions. It also integrates any special reports produced in that assessment cycle.
The Assessment Reports, the first of which had come out in 1990, are the most comprehensive evaluations of the state of the earth’s climate.
This Geneva-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment reports gives the periodic status check that are most widely accepted scientific view of the state of the Earth’s climate.
Hundreds of experts go through every available piece of relevant, published scientific information to prepare a common understanding of the changing climate.
The four subsequent assessment reports, each thousands of pages long, came out in 1995, 2001, 2007 and 2015. These have formed the basis of the global response to climate change.
The fourth assessment report, which came out in 2007, won the IPCC the Nobel Peace Prize.
IPCC reports form the scientific basis on which countries across the world build their policy responses to climate change. These reports, on their own, are not policy prescriptive: They do not tell countries or governments what to do.
The First Assessment Report led to the setting up of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the umbrella agreement under which international negotiations on climate change take place every year.
The Second Assessment Report was the basis for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
The Fifth Assessment Report of 2014, guided the Paris Agreement.NThe Paris Agreement, seeks to keep the rise in global temperatures “well below” 2°C from pre-industrial times, while “pursuing efforts” to limit it to 1.5°C.
Key findings and impacts
Assessment reports one to five (1990 to 2014)
Sixth assessment report (2021/2022)
The IPCC's most recent report is the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The first three instalments of AR6 appeared in 2021 and 2022. Its final synthesis report is due in March 2023.
The IPCC published the Working Group I report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, in August 2021. It confirms that the climate is already changing in every region. Many of these changes have not been seen in thousands of years. Many of them such as sea-level rise are irreversible over hundreds of thousands of years. Strong reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would limit climate change. But it could take 20-30 years for the climate to stabilize. This report attracted enormous media and public attention. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described it as “code red for humanity”
The IPCC published the Working Group II report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, in February 2022. Climate change due to human activities is already affecting the lives of billions of people, it said. It is disrupting nature. The world faces unavoidable hazards over the next two decades even with global warming of 1.5ºC, it said.
The IPCC published the Working Group III report, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, in April 2022. It will be impossible to limit warming to 1.5ºC without immediate and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. It is still possible to halve emissions by 2050, it said.
In a nutshell,
Key findings:
The report is a dense with numbers, charts and graphs; even the summary for policy makers (SPM) is so. But the central message is this — We need “immediate and deep” reduction in greenhouse gases if we must keep the world from warming to more than 1.5°C than average temperatures in the pre-industrial era (the mid-nineteenth century).
Why 1.5°C?
Scientists have determined that if the rise in global warming is limited to 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels, we are kind of safe. This is the “1.5°C target” or “1.5° scenario”. If global warming is limited to 2°C, then it is bad but mankind can still muddle through. Anything beyond 2°C is extremely bad.
How bad? What can happen?
This is best answered in the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterras. In a recorded message to the IPCC press conference of Monday, he described the climate disaster as major cities under water, unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages, and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals.
What else does the report say?
It speaks about the alarming rise in greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming. For example, it notes that between 1850 and 2019, the world emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 2,400 billion tons of carbon dioxide but 42 per cent of this occurred in the last 30 years and 17 per cent in the last ten. To meet the 1.5°C target, the world can only emit 500 billion tons more (called carbon budget); anything more will breach the target, with all its deleterious effects.
It speaks about the possibilities of mitigation — renewable energy, EVs, climate-friendly buildings (those built with materials produced with lesser energy, and those that require less energy to keep cool), climate-friendly cities (compact cities where people walk or cycle, or use of electrified mobility rather than burn fossil fuels), and climate-friendly agricultural practices.
It speaks of the inequality in the world, noting (among other things) that 35 per cent of people live in countries whose per capita emissions exceed the equivalent of 9 tonnes of CO2 while 41 per cent live in countries where the emissions are under 3 tonnes, implying that the impact of those who emit more is felt most by the poor. Incidentally, India’s per capita emissions are 1.8 tonnes.
Is there any hope then?
Climate change is here today, reshaping our world in ways big and small—but that doesn’t mean our future is predetermined. We still have the ability to limit further warming—and to help communities around the world adapt to the changes that have already occurred. Every fraction of a degree counts.
We must accelerate the global transition to clean energy and reach “net zero” emissions as soon possible. But as the latest IPCC report shows, we’ll not only need to cut out emissions—we’ll have to remove some of the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. Fortunately, nature created a powerful technology that does just that: photosynthesis. Plants naturally absorb carbon from the air and store it in their roots and in the soil. In fact, our green allies could provide nearly a third of the emission reductions we need to stay within the 1.5C threshold.
The most urgent thing we can do to help nature fight climate change is protect the natural habitats around the world that store billions of tons of this “living carbon.” We can also help by changing the way we manage working lands like farms and timber forests so they retain more carbon, and restore natural habitats on lands that have been cleared or degraded.
What can we do to stop climate change?
A global challenge like climate change requires global solutions. It will require movement-building and on-the-ground action, as well as new national policies and economic transformations. Here’s a few things that communities, governments, and business can do.
Communities
Governments
Businesses
Finally, the critical recognition reflected in the report regards the central necessity of inclusive decision-making on climate, centering equity, justice, indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge in climate action. The report stresses with unprecedented emphasis that participation and those sources of knowledge and engagement in locally-driven climate action are necessary for effective adaptation and climate-resilient development. Therefore, it is imperative from the perspective of civil society that public participation be addressed effectively both in the process leading up to the COP, and during the COP through meaningful engagement of civil society and indigenous peoples. Moreover, the decisions adopted at COP and throughout this year, need to provide strong mandates to support and enhance community-based and participatory responses to adaptation and loss and damage, essential for effective climate action and justice. Therefore, governments, members of civil society, the private sector must cooperate to realize the near-term immediate efforts needed to avoid overshoot and to center human rights and people-based solutions without which no effective climate is possible.
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