The fierce political battle over the world's most influential climate report seems to have been settled in favor of the oil and coal countries. After a week of discussions, no consensus was reached on the timing of the report's release. It is now uncertain whether it can appear in time for an important climate summit in 2028.
This completes the chaos at the authoritative UN climate panel IPCC. Never before has the discussion around the publication timeline derailed so completely. That IPCC chair Jim Skea ended the meeting without an agreement on that timeline or the budgets is seen as a victory for several countries with fossil fuel interests, who want to delay the report until after the 2028 climate summit.
In particular, oil and coal countries Saudi Arabia and India want at all costs to prevent this compilation of available knowledge on global warming from arriving in time for that summit. This is because at that moment the progress made toward the Paris climate goals must be assessed. Those goals include limiting global warming to 2 degrees, preferably to 1.5 degrees. The evaluation of international climate policy becomes much more difficult if the latest knowledge is not available.
Torpedoed
Before closing the meeting, IPCC chair Skea tried to get the 2027 budget approved so that the hundreds of international scientists can continue working on their parts of the report. However, this was blocked by the Indians and Saudis.
Together with several poorer countries, they argue for delaying the IPCC report, claiming it is to give climate scientists in poorer countries more time to do their work. This would allow those poorer countries, with fewer climate scientists and less funding, to be better represented in the final IPCC reports. Critics warn that countries like Saudi Arabia, India, Russia, and China are now mainly using this legitimate discussion to protect their fossil interests.
Whether the chance that the report will arrive on time has now been definitively torpedoed has not yet been openly stated, but it has become much more difficult. At least in the first months of 2027, it will be virtually impossible to continue the work normally, making the deadlines very tight for the involved climate scientists.
World Leaders
That the 195 attending countries did not reach agreement this week in Ethiopia is very damaging for the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC. The panel, with its compilation of all climate knowledge, is considered a relatively stable party in an otherwise completely politicized climate debate.
Earlier this year, President Trump withdrew the United States from the IPCC, causing the panel to lose an important funder. Although the US was not always the most enthusiastic leader in climate diplomacy, American climate scientists and their work are seen as virtually indispensable. The US also had a moderating political effect on countries like Saudi Arabia. Experts do not rule out that the current impasse partly arose due to the US departure.
The meeting is now over and the attending country delegations and independent climate scientists remain confused about how to proceed. A beginning of an answer to that question may come sooner than expected. At the end of next month, many world leaders will travel to the international climate summit COP31 in Turkey. Behind the scenes, it is said that the battle over the IPCC will continue there.