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Victoria Bela

The UN’s climate science body is pressing ahead with its work despite the US government’s withdrawal from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this year, the organisation’s top official has said.
According to IPCC chair Jim Skea, around 110 to 120 of the UN body’s 195 members typically show up when it meets.
“So the US has not been there. It’s one country, more or less,” Skea said on the sidelines of the Regional Ecological Summit in Kazakhstan last week.
“The meetings are still working, and we are still making progress.”
Skea said that as an intergovernmental body, the IPCC did not take a position on individual countries, “but we can’t help but observe the huge deployment of renewable energy in China”.
“Chinese companies are also selling their technologies on the international market,” he said, adding that this had “global implications”.
In January, US President Donald Trump announced that his country would withdraw from 66 international organisations that were “contrary” to its interests, including 31 United Nations entities.


The IPCC, which was among the list of entities, provides governments with comprehensive assessments of the state of global scientific knowledge on climate change.
“The other side has been on the scientific side of it, because the US federal government did not nominate any authors for the current set of working groups,” Skea said.
Countries contribute to the IPCC by nominating scientific experts to working groups that write assessment reports. The IPCC does not conduct its own research, but rather synthesises information from the scientific community.
While the US government did not nominate authors, Skea said the American Geophysical Union had set up a hub and organised US-based observer organisations to nominate authors, with financial support from philanthropic groups to help them attend meetings.
“So altogether, we have 50-something US-based authors in the current working group reports.”
The ecological summit in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana, held in partnership with the UN, brought together the leaders of the Central Asian countries and representatives from around the world to advance coordination on environmental issues and climate change.
The IPCC was created in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Membership is open to all UN or WMO member states.
The climate science body is on its seventh assessment cycle, which formally began in 2023 and is expected to end in 2029 or 2030 with a final synthesis report.
In February last year, China hosted a plenary session in Hangzhou where the IPCC gathered to agree on draft outlines for the working group contributions to the seventh assessment report.
Skea said that “everybody collaborates” in the sharing of data for the IPCC’s work, including China, filtered through bodies including the WMO.
During the plenary session in Hangzhou, the delegates debated outlines for contributions to a methodology report on carbon dioxide removal technologies and carbon capture, use and storage, according to the IPCC.
Skea said it was “almost inevitable” that the world would exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of average warming above pre-industrial levels within the next few years.
The landmark Paris Agreement established the target of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees and keeping warming “well below 2 degrees”, due to the increased risks and impacts of climate change beyond this point.
Skea said that if the world was to exceed that benchmark, carbon dioxide removal was “the only way in which you can actually cool the planet again”.
Carbon dioxide removal could also help compensate for sectors that were difficult to decarbonise, he added.
Skea said that while a lot of progress had been made towards mitigation, more work must be done in the realm of adaptation.
“With it being almost inevitable that we exceed 1.5 degrees, adaptation measures are going to really matter, and relative to the last cycle, there will be more emphasis on adaptation this time round.”


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Jim Skea, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says carbon dioxide removal is “the only way in which you can actually cool the planet again” if global temperatures surpass a key benchmark. Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images

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The Regional Ecological Summit which took place in Kazakhstan this week. Photo: Victoria Bela

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China

As global temperatures near key threshold, the IPCC is focusing on adaptation and carbon dioxide removal, chair says


As global temperatures near key threshold, the IPCC is focusing on adaptation and carbon dioxide removal, chair says.


United States

UN climate body presses on after US quits, while China leads with renewables

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As global temperatures near key threshold, the IPCC is focusing on adaptation and carbon dioxide removal, chair says

As global temperatures near key threshold, the IPCC is focusing on adaptation and carbon dioxide removal, chair says