Why have countries been pushing for a vital global climate report to be delayed?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suspended an important meeting on Friday in Addis Ababa without setting out a firm timetable for its next report. The world’s governments are due to meet in less than a month for the Cop31 climate summit, and this leaves the future of scientific advice to governments on the climate in doubt.

What has happened?

The IPCC – the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists – met for a week but, despite progress in many areas, was unable to come to agreement on the substantive issue of setting a launch date for its next comprehensive assessment of global knowledge of climate science. The seventh assessment report, known as AR7, was expected to be published in 2028, seven years after the last report in 2021. But some want this timetable to be delayed to 2029, or later.

Who wants a delay and why?

A loose group of governments led by Saudi Arabia, Russia and India, and also including China and Kenya, have raised objections to publishing the report in 2028, arguing that climate science is dominated by developed countries, which they say has skewed its findings.

But many scientists, and experts, worry that a delay would prevent AR7 being used to inform the next round of pledges of emissions cuts, due to be discussed by governments at the Cop33 climate summit in late 2028. Under the timetable set out by the 2015 Paris agreement, 2028 is a crucial year as it will be the second “global stocktake”, by which governments’ pledges on emissions are scrutinised to ensure they are in line with the goal of holding temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

Saudi Arabia has a long history of obstructing climate action, including seeking to water down previous IPCC reports, and has employees of its oil company and scientists with oil links on the IPCC committees.

Would a delay enable more science from developing countries?

Most of the science that will be in AR7 has already been published and is now under review. IPCC reports take years to compile, combing nearly every possible source of data, and that is done at an early point in its reporting cycle. Establishing new sources at this late point is more difficult.

The IPCC argues that it already takes pains to include scientists from around the world and keeps a critical eye on equity to ensure against developed country bias. Much of the basic science it relies on is based on the global workings of the climate system, and understanding the underlying physics and chemistry, which do not differ from developed to developing countries.

Critics also point out that Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and India are all powerful economies with well-established scientific institutions and research bases – if they wanted to produce scientific models themselves, they could have done so by now, or could have provided financial assistance to other developing countries to do so.

One possible compromise is for the IPCC to start working now on new ways to bring in more science from the developing world, and undertake a critique of its processes to that end, while keeping to the 2028 timetable for the first part of its four-part report, which deals with the underlying physical science, and allowing the other parts – which cover the impacts of climate breakdown around the world, and solutions to it – to be delayed.

What do civil society activists think?

They are divided. Some are against a delay and view it as a danger to progress on cutting emissions. Some leading figures support it, arguing that whose research informs the science, and whether scientists from developing countries can participate meaningfully, is as important as speed. Others have issued statements deploring the row while carefully not taking sides.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “It is deeply frustrating that governments have failed to agree a way forward. Developing countries must have a meaningful voice in shaping that science, and wealthy nations must provide the funding needed to make that possible. But legitimate concerns about fairness cannot become an excuse for endless delays.”

Oscar Soria, director at the Common Initiative group, said: “The failure to agree the timeline is not a procedural detail, it has real consequences.. The answer is not to choose between urgency and equity, but to provide the resources and support needed to achieve both.”

What happens now?

A group of 117 scientists, many of them from developing countries, including several from China and one from India, have written an open letter vowing to push ahead with their work. “Our message to governments and to the world is simple: we will keep working,” they wrote. “Equity is built into how our assessment is being drafted. Author teams are working from a far wider evidence base than in AR6. It includes literature from the global south, non-English sources, grey literature and Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge.”

The IPCC’s chair, Jim Skea, has also pledged to reconvene as soon as possible.

The issue is certain to come up at the Cop31 talks in Turkey next month, where governments will be asked what they are doing to show a sense of urgency in tackling the climate crisis, in the face of what is likely to be the strongest El Niño in decades, supercharged by global heating, and likely to cause huge amounts of damage – in developed and developing countries.