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(Photo: IPCC)
Last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Hangzhou, China, marked the third time that governments have failed to agree on a timeline for the organisation’s seventh assessment cycle (AR7).
A large group of countries pushed for the reports to be published by the end of 2028, to allow them to feed into the UN’s second global stocktake – a mechanism that will gauge progress towards the Paris Agreement goals.
However, others – including the Chinese hosts – pushed for a longer deadline, warning of “compression in the timeline” that could affect participation, particularly from developing countries.
The meeting ran over by more than 30 hours, meaning that many small delegations – especially small-island developing states and least-developed countries – were unable to stay to the end.
As a result, the final decisions were made without their participation.
According to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), reporting from inside the meeting, timeline discussions will be taken up again in the next IPCC meeting in late 2025, “with hope that the panel can finally break its deadlock”.
“The absence of a timeline puts potential contributing scientists in a difficult position,” one IPCC scientist tells Carbon Brief.
He notes that the “call for authors” will open soon, but warns how challenging it will be to accept a nomination “if there is no clarity on when a massive time commitment for the IPCC is expected”.
The meeting also saw outlines agreed for AR7’s three main reports – despite the “entrenched positions” of some delegations “complicating efforts to find consensus”, the ENB reports.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, IPCC chair Prof Jim Skea says the process was “probably the most difficult session I can recall”.
In a further complication, reports emerged ahead of the meeting that US officials had been denied permission to attend and a contract for the technical support unit of one of the working groups had been terminated.
It was the first US absence in IPCC history.
Skea says that the IPCC will “have to start thinking more seriously” about how to manage a potential US withdrawal, but the priority last week had been to “get through” the meeting and its lengthy agenda.
He adds that the IPCC has still “had no formal communication from the US at all”.
Below, Carbon Brief unpacks the deliberations at the meeting and the decisions that were made.
Splits in Sofia
IPCC “sessions” are meetings that bring together officials and experts from member countries and observer organisations.
Collectively, they decide on the work of the IPCC, including the scope, outline and timeline for reports – all overseen by the IPCC’s “bureau” of elected scientists.
