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Concerns Raised Over Delays in Next Global Climate Change Assessment


The European Union, Britain, and climate-vulnerable developing countries have expressed concerns about potential delays in the next global assessment of climate change by the United Nations’ climate science panel, following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the process.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assembles climate scientists from nearly 200 countries to evaluate the planet’s health, is set to meet in Hangzhou, China, on February 24 to plan its next global report. IPCC assessments, which involve the work of hundreds of scientists, are typically released every 5 to 7 years.

In a joint statement seen by Reuters on February 21, the EU’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, and ministers from 17 countries, including Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Marshall Islands, and Guatemala, emphasized the importance of timely contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report. “We owe it to everyone suffering the impacts of the climate crisis now, and to future generations, to make decisions about our planet’s future on the basis of the best evidence and knowledge available to us,” the statement said.

The Trump administration has halted the participation of US scientists in the IPCC and will not attend the upcoming meeting in Hangzhou, Reuters reported on February 20. Officials familiar with the talks indicated that the countries behind the statement were concerned the report might not be completed in time to inform the next Paris Agreement “stocktake” in 2028, when nearly 200 countries will assess their progress towards curbing climate change and agree on tougher measures to avoid escalating warming.

Last month, US President Donald Trump ordered the US to withdraw again from the Paris climate agreement and reversed the Biden administration’s sweeping climate policies. Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk is leading the administration’s efforts to cut what he calls wasteful spending, slashing federal funding for climate-related work and removing employees working on climate science, climate justice, and clean energy.

A second statement, published on February 21 by the Least Developed Countries, a group of 45 of the world’s most vulnerable nations, emphasized that there is no excuse for any delays in the process. “Any backtracking on this process issue will be seen for what it is, politicisation of science at the expense of vulnerable countries,” the statement said. “People in the developing world have nothing to gain from restricting access to freely available IPCC science.”

The 39-member Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), which includes vulnerable Pacific and Caribbean islands as well as wealthy Singapore, also issued a statement on February 21 calling for timely and essential scientific inputs for the next Paris Agreement global stocktake. “Wielding the best scientific analysis will improve our collective understanding and bolster our defences in this fight to address climate change,” said Aosis chair Ms. Ilana Seid, Permanent Representative of Palau to the United Nations.

The last Paris Agreement stocktake, at the COP28 climate summit in 2023, saw nearly 200 countries agree to transition away from fossil fuels. That deal was informed by the IPCC’s previous report, which highlighted the drastic changes humanity had caused to the planet’s climate and the sharp cuts to emissions needed to avoid further disasters. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment, released in phases from 2021 and 2022, was finalized in 2023 with the publication of a nearly 8,000-page synthesis report.

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