IPCC suspends meeting without setting AR7 publication timeline

Delay could keep AR7 from informing 2028 emissions pledges

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists. The IPCC suspended a weeklong meeting in Addis Ababa on Friday without setting a firm timetable for its next report. The panel made progress in many areas, but governments could not agree on the substantive issue of setting a launch date for its next comprehensive assessment of global climate knowledge. The world’s governments are due to meet for the Cop31 climate summit in less than a month, and the unresolved schedule leaves the future of scientific advice to governments in doubt.

Storm waves crash into homes in Long Beach, California, 11 October. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images.

The seventh assessment report, known as AR7, was expected to be published in 2028, seven years after the previous report in 2021. Some governments want that timetable delayed until 2029 or later. Many scientists and experts worry that a delay could prevent AR7 from 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 also the year of the second global stocktake, by which governments’ emissions pledges will be scrutinized to ensure they are in line with the goal of holding temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

The objections come from a loose group of governments led by Saudi Arabia, Russia and India and also including China and Kenya. They object to publishing AR7 in 2028, arguing that developed countries dominate climate science and, in their view, have skewed its findings.

The IPCC argues that it already takes pains to include scientists from around the world and keeps a critical eye on equity to guard against developed-country bias. It says much of the basic science underlying its reports concerns the global workings of the climate system, including physical and chemical processes that do not differ between developed and developing countries. Most of the science intended for AR7 has already been published and is now under review. IPCC reports take years to compile, drawing on nearly every possible source of data early in the reporting cycle, and establishing new sources at this late stage is more difficult.

Critics of the proposed delay pointed out that Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and India are powerful economies with well-established scientific institutions and research bases. They said those four countries could have produced scientific models themselves by now if they wanted to, or could have provided financial assistance to other developing countries to do so.

The Guardian said Saudi Arabia has a long history of obstructing climate action, including seeking to water down previous IPCC reports. It also said employees of Saudi Arabia’s oil company and scientists with oil links were on IPCC committees.

Participants remain divided over the timetable. Some oppose a delay and view it as a danger to progress on cutting emissions. Some leading figures support changing the timetable, arguing that whose research informs the science and whether scientists from developing countries can participate meaningfully matter as much as speed. Others have issued statements deploring the row while carefully not taking sides.

One possible compromise would have the IPCC begin working immediately on new ways to bring in more science from the developing world and undertake a critique of its processes to that end. It would retain the 2028 timetable for the first of four report parts, which deals with underlying physical science, while allowing the parts covering the impacts of climate breakdown around the world and solutions to it to be delayed.

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.”

A group of 117 scientists, many from developing countries and including several from China and one from India, wrote an open letter vowing to push ahead with the assessment. “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.”

IPCC chair Jim Skea has pledged to reconvene the panel as soon as possible. The Guardian said 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. The outlet said the talks will take place against what is likely to be the strongest El Niño in decades, which it described as supercharged by global heating and likely to cause huge amounts of damage in developed and developing countries.