Should science and diplomacy advance together? If so, should we better coordinate the calendar of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Climate Conferences of the Parties (COP)? While the IPCC publishes its assessment reports after cycles of six to seven years, countries’ climate action is supposed to step up every five years. A difference that risks the IPCC’s seventh assessment report arriving too late to influence the 2028 COP, which will be the time for the second assessment of the Paris agreement adopted in 2015.
“A clash is evident in the climate communitywrote Fabrice Lambert, climatologist and Chilean delegate to the IPCC, in an article published by the magazine Naturethe 1Ahem October. I believe that the production of the next reports will have to be aligned with the next evaluation of the Paris agreement. We are at a crucial moment. »
A mass of scientific literature to synthesize.
This distortion between scientific time and climate diplomacy time dates back to 2015. By signing the Paris Agreement, the parties committed to submit new nationally determined contributions and their action plan, all every five years (in 2020, 2025 and 2030). Two years before these deadlines, the UN prepares a “Global Balance”, that is, a balance of the actions carried out by the signatory States, a document that allows all parties to determine the next steps to take. This next “global assessment” must occur before the 2028 COP. “The IPCC must do everything possible to meet the most ambitious deadlines [pour produire ses rapports d’évaluation] because the availability of this work will be fundamental for the evaluation of climate action”continues Mr. Lambert. Especially since this next assessment will come at a time when humanity will be about to cross the most significant threshold of the Paris Agreement, i.e. + 1.5°C warming compared to the pre-industrial era.
Between 2022 and 2023, the calendars of scientists and diplomats were perfectly synchronized. The IPCC published its three assessment reports between August 2021 and April 2022, then the summary report was published in March 2023. This gave the UN time to work on this data before publishing a full “Global Stocktake”, which was at the center of the discussions. during COP28, in Dubai, at the end of 2023. But this alignment is unlikely to be repeated.
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