Svante Bodin is chair of the advisory board of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) and affiliated with the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University. Örjan Gustafsson is professor at Stockholm University and chair of the board of the Future Earth Global Hub in Stockholm.
The intersection of climate science and climate policy is where researchers come to communicate their latest findings about the urgent crisis we are facing, and politicians come for insights to inform their decisions on how to tackle it. This exchange makes all kinds of sense, yet navigating this space has never been particularly easy.
We know this from personal experience. One of us, Dr Svante Bodin, brought his background in meteorology to work on diplomacy while at the Swedish Ministry of the Environment, including the UN climate negotiations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The other, Professor Örjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University, regularly consults for governments across the globe on climate change in the Arctic and on the nexus of air pollution and climate change.
We have both built our careers at the forefronts of climate policy and climate science, wondering why the two domains, with so much to gain from closer coordination, always seemed to be at arm’s length.
Now, we find ourselves puzzling over the same thing as the IPCC struggles to adopt a timeline for its next assessment report. These cornerstone reports take some five to seven years to produce, and this one could be delivered in 2028, in time for a Global Stocktake under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – a check-in on how the world is doing on climate action.
The problem is that the IPCC hasn’t been able to agree on this deadline.
Special report on 1.5C hits the spot
This lack of alignment goes against the original intent, because the IPCC was established in 1988 expressly to provide the scientific basis for a global response to climate change. And, at the time, it did so spectacularly: its First Assessment Report (FAR), delivered in just two years, set the stage for the UNFCCC itself, opened for signatures at the Rio summit in 1992.
The only other time when the two international bodies truly aligned was when diplomats asked researchers for a special report on global warming of 1.5°C. The report, delivered in 2018 in response to this unique request, ended up being arguably the single most relevant and impactful output of the panel, both for the climate negotiations and for wider audiences.
So, how did we end up here, with science assessments not tuned to policy needs and imperfect timing – and what is there to do? In our Comment for Nature Climate Change, we call for a new approach to how the UNFCCC and the IPCC interact, one that can help both bodies rise to the challenge of the deep and rapid decarbonization the world needs to secure a livable future for all.
Missed opportunities for collaboration
The IPCC was conceived as a separate body in part to preserve the integrity of science and keep it safely away from the influence of politics. This ‘separation of research and state’ has largely been uncontested since.
We argue that it has led to many missed opportunities for effective collaboration and may have hobbled the panel in its ability to inform and facilitate effective climate policy-making.
Countries fail again to decide timing of key IPCC climate science reports
Other international agreements chose to keep their science closer, such as the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, the most prominent and successful global environmental treaty. It has a scientific assessment panel, which acts as a true in-house advisory body rather than a negotiating working group.
The remarkably successful United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (UNECE CLRTAP) even has built-in monitoring and assessment bodies, such as the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme.
Closer co-operation is possible
We argue that better alignment between the UNFCCC and the IPCC is possible even while keeping the existing legal structures intact.
First, the UN climate negotiators can and should keep pulling the lever that brought them the 1.5°C special report. If the UNFCCC does regular reviews of its policy priorities and needs for scientific input, and communicates them to the IPCC, the latter can be sure its flagship assessments and any special reports are truly policy-relevant, timely and impactful.
Second, the two bodies need to get closer. The UNFCCC, as a major stakeholder, should be invited into the scoping process for the assessment reports, and the IPCC, staying firmly outside the UN forum, should inform a permanent platform or mechanism within the convention that would help it translate policy-relevant science into policy.
Comment: The IPCC must produce its flagship report in time for the next UN global stocktake
Such closer co-operation is feasible, above all, if countries – which are parties to both international bodies – start viewing their IPCC and UNFCCC-related policies as interconnected and acting like it. This would help avoid a repeat of the case of the 1.5°C report, which the UNFCCC commissioned – and then failed to agree to “welcome” in its formal decisions.
It took two years to produce the First Assessment Report by the IPCC in 1990. Climate science has come a long way since then, of course, but it is lamentable that, unless the IPCC reaches agreement at an upcoming meeting in Peru in October, we will be looking at two years of failure to align on the most basic element of the science-policy interface.
Clearly, we have no more time to lose while stuck in this unfortunate gap between the two disconnected bodies of the climate arena.
