GLOBAL: Reform of UN climate panel

The InterAcademy Council has recommended reforms to a UN climate panel - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC - following errors in some of its assessment reports. A council review committee said in a report that the process used by the IPCC to produce its periodic assessment reports had been successful overall but that fundamental reforms were needed to its management structure.

The IAC includes numerous science academies from around the world, including the US Academy of Sciences and the UK Royal Society. Its report on the operations of the IPCC was requested by the UN and the climate panel to review the latter's 'processes and procedures', including the use of non-peer reviewed sources and quality control of data.

To improve its assessment processes, the review committee proposed, the IPCC should establish an executive committee to act on its behalf between plenary sessions, and elect an executive director to lead the secretariat and handle day-to-day operations.

Further, the UN panel should encourage review editors to exercise their authority, and ensure reviewers' comments were adequately considered by authors and that genuine controversies were adequately reflected in assessment reports.

The IPCC should also revise its process for approving summaries for policy-makers so governments provided written comments prior to plenary sessions. It should ensure a range of scientific viewpoints were considered and that alternative views were properly documented, while every effort should be made to engage local experts on the author teams of the regional chapters.

"The committee found the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall," the report said. "However, the world has changed considerably since the creation of the IPCC, with major advances in climate science, heated controversy on some climate-related issues, and an increased focus of governments on the impacts and potential responses to changing climate.

"A wide variety of interests have entered the climate discussion, leading to greater overall scrutiny and demands from stakeholders. The IPCC must continue to adapt to these changing conditions in order to continue serving society well in the future."

While the current IPCC procedure required authors to critically assess unpublished or non-peer reviewed sources and review their quality and validity before incorporating them into reports, it was clear these procedures were not always followed. Some errors were discovered that were attributed to poor handling of unpublished or non-peer-reviewed works.

The report said that carrying out intergovernmental climate assessment was an inherently difficult task because it involved many thousands of people with different expertise, cultures, interests and expectations. As well, available information on climate change was extensive and subject to different interpretations.

"In fact, a great deal remains to be discovered," the report said. "The processes and procedures for carrying out the assessment must be detailed but not overly prescriptive. And while government representatives must have an important role in the assessment, they must carry out their role without asking scientists to address questions that are beyond the scientific frontier or distorting the scientific findings."

The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme to help in climate change decision-making by producing comprehensive assessment reports. It became a respected climate body and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for informing climate policy and raising public awareness worldwide.

But the organisation's impartiality and the accuracy of its reports have come under intense scrutiny after it admitted a mistake in its 2007 climate assessment in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

Appearing before the academy in June, former IPCC chair Professor Robert Watson said in reference to the error: "To me, the fundamental problem was that when the error was found it was handled in a totally and utterly atrocious manner...The IPCC needs to find a mechanism so that if something needs to be corrected there is a rapid way to get a correction made."

The 18-member InterAcademy Council board is composed of the presidents of academies of science and equivalent organisations. It was established in 2000 to assist in providing evidence-based advice to international bodies on climate change issues.

The IAC review committee was chaired by Harold T Shapiro, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University in the US. Roseanne Diab, Executive Officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa and professor emeritus of environmental sciences and honorary senior research associate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, was vice-chair.

Comment:
If Pachauri did not exist, we climate sceptics would have had to literally invent him. He is in fact every sceptic's dream. How could we have asked for more when he embodies the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in all completeness? Interestingly, he also strongly epitomizes the typical climate activist and their organisations that they are attached. Did he mould both in his image or its vice versa is however for history to judge.

Next month 194 governments of the IPCC are scheduled to meet in Busan, South Korea. This is where a plot to ouster Pachuari could be unleashed. Pachuari remains defiant: "At the moment, my mandate is very clear. I have to complete the fifth assessment" The Indian Government who Pachuari is their candidate is equally defiant, backing him to the hilt. If Pachauri goes, we leave the IPCC! And if India leaves the IPCC, it can trigger an exodus.

We launch our "Save Pachauri Campaign". This is the least we can do for a patriot of our country. He accomplished what climate sceptics were unable to do by functioning as our Trojan horse that effectively destroyed the IPCC from the inside.

Rajan Alexander