IPCC expert on fighting to keep to the science as global climate politics flares

It returned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) back to public attention at an unexpected time, in between the issuance of its 1,000-page reports on the state of global warming every few years.

Many countries want these reports, covering the science behind the latest trends and ways to tackle the growing risks, by 2028, in time for a review of whether global climate efforts are sufficient. But others want a longer timeline, an ask that critics think represents some governments avoiding advice they do not want to hear.

More IPCC meetings are scheduled with national delegates worldwide, in December and next year, to address this issue, along with details on the scope and budget of the exercise.

So how does this whole process work? What is the IPCC doing in the years between the major reports, and what challenges do they have to deal with? More broadly, how is the IPCC keeping itself useful – given that most people today generally think they know enough about climate change?

Dr Theresa Wong is head of science at the technical support unit of IPCC’s Working Group II. Image: IPCC.

The interaction and debates between science and policymakers becomes “more heated” as global warming raises the stakes for governments to get climate action right, Dr Theresa Wong, a member of the IPCC team, tells the Eco-Business Podcast.

The growing threats from climate change is also outpacing our understanding of them, added Wong, head of science at the technical support unit of IPCC’s Working Group II, which specialises in climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation.

Tune in as we discuss:

• The latest work on an IPCC special report on cities
• Upcoming work to finalise contents for the next set of main assessment reports
• What the debate over report timelines show about the state of science and policymaking today
• Whether the interface between policy, politics and science benefits climate action
• How the IPCC can keep itself relevant amid greater public understanding of global warming

Could we start with a quick introduction to your work in the IPCC, please?

I serve as the head of science for the technical support unit that has been set up to provide support to the newly elected co-chairs for Working Group II of the IPCC. It’s been more than a year now.

I’m based at the Singapore Management University and together with my counterpart at Deltares in the Netherlands, we stay close to our co-chairs, professors Winston Chow and Bart van den Hurk, to make sure we listen to and translate what we hear from different stakeholders into action.

We do lots of background research. We collect and collate statistics. We bring together ideas and information on important, relevant initiatives that are emerging or building on past initiatives.

We are doing quite a bit of outreach now in the Asean region, which experiences a lot of impacts from climate change. It is a region that is slightly under-represented in the nominations of experts and authors.

There is also a lot of communication done. We have produced graphics on the process for writing, for instance, the special report on cities. And also, we are supporting the meetings with various stakeholders that the co-chairs are obviously having a lot of.

Author nominations just closed for the special report on cities. What is the profile of these authors, and how would you be deciding who makes the team?

Nominations closed at the end of September. Government focal points and observer organisations submitted their lists of potential authors. I just want to caveat that we are not looking for all the authors of the cities report now. We were looking for coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and review editors.

We are looking for the best people in their fields for these leadership roles, and they will then define what will be written. So there are still opportunities down the road.

Overall we had around 1,200 nominations – that is quite a lot of people to go through!

I’m happy to say we have slightly more developing country than developed country nominees come in. Slightly over a third of nominations came from Europe, and a quarter are from Asia.

We are still seeing more male candidates; female participation is around 44 per cent. 

We are always trying to improve on these metrics to make sure we have new and competent voices. For every IPCC cycle, we are always given the mandate and challenge to be more inclusive and participatory. For the special report on cities, we are also looking for experts in the practice of climate mitigation and adaptation. Maybe they are not in universities, but in leadership positions in the UN or other organisations, or have published flagship reports on cities, for example.

So we do have a criteria of scientific competencies, but we are also looking at other criteria to make sure we don’t miss out on the best people.

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If there are more perceived interactions between governments and science, it is because things have become urgent. The stakes seem to be increasingly high, so the debates also increase and the interaction between science and policy becomes more heated.

What would be covered in the cities report, and when is it coming out?

It covers a plethora of issues relating to the physical context of climate change in cities, cities’ emissions reductions potential, and cities as producers of emissions.

The outline of the report is online. The first chapter is more of a framing chapter on the major issues. The second goes into impacts. The third is on solutions. The fourth is on policy relevance. The fifth chapter is quite interesting, it will be a gallery of case studies, to show that context matters in choosing the types of actions cities can take to tackle climate change.

We are expecting the report to be done in early 2027, in advance of the other parts of the next assessment reports.

Looking ahead, there is a meeting in December to discuss and finalise the scope of the next cycle of assessment reports. How does this work?

The scoping process is interesting. Experts were also selected not just based on academic achievements but also on their work experience on the ground. We are into planning and implementation, and the hope is that as we mature, we get reports that are more and more actionable.

So the scoping meeting will be held in Kuala Lumpur in early December. In the lead up, the IPCC bureau with the co-chairs and vice-chairs will be meeting often to plan out the meeting. They will have a vision statement on how they view the seventh set of assessment reports (AR7).

The outcome of the meeting is to produce an outline of AR7 reports. This outline, again, needs to be validated by government focal points. 

We are expecting a very packed schedule. Some of these events have been known to run late into the night, and sometimes overrun in the last day, but we hope to avoid that. There are different activities – parts of the day where experts work together in a plenary on the overarching issues, and also times when we break out into working groups. For example, Working Group II experts will be looking at assessing impacts, assessing changing vulnerabilities of different groups of people and some adaptation solutions.

We have also created opportunities from now till then for others to have their say about what AR7 should include. We have launched a pre-scoping survey for those nominated but because of space limits cannot come to the meeting. We are also asking experts on what they think has changed since AR6 (published 2021-2023). There are also webinars ahead of the meeting.

There was some contention on the next set of reports being possibly not in time for the next global stocktake on climate action. What does this show about the state of science and climate policymaking today – is there a struggle between them?

If we are seeing a lot of this struggle, I think it is because climate science is becoming more and more important to policy. There is so much more at stake now for the actions to be taken down the road.

If you have been able to access some of the reporting from the previous plenary from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, we did see that the panel did not yet agree on the schedule and deadline of the reports.

Countries that argue for going with the schedule as proposed (by 2028) have underscored the importance of feeding into the process of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), such as the global stocktake and also the global goal on adaptation – a work programme trying to set common global indicators to measure and monitor climate adaptation.

The Bulletin also reported that several small and developing states stated the IPCC reports coming in time would also provide information for decision-making amidst what they saw as a climate emergency and an existential crisis for them. Some countries have said that the IPCC reports would help plug gaps in scientific capacities.

But there were some other countries which felt that the report needed more time. The argument on the other side was that developing countries sometimes need a lot more time for the best science to emerge. I think it is not so surprising that in many developing countries, there is much more friction in doing research because of the resources available to them.

So there are arguments on both sides.

Correct me if I’m wrong – this is the second time the IPCC will be engaging in such a process? The first global stocktake last year was informed by the IPCC’s last round of assessment reports.

If you look at the history of the IPCC, it was established in 1988, and at that time it was the basis of setting up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change itself. It is not new that the IPCC feeds into these processes.

AR5 (published 2013-2014) contributed to the setting up of the Paris Agreement. Before that, there was also the Kyoto Protocol. Definitely AR6 was taken on board in the first global stocktake and in work on the global goal on adaptation. So the IPCC really does service some of these milestones.

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(Putting out the assessment reports) takes a long time as the IPCC was set up to maintain the integrity of the process. This is why it has the reputation of being the one-stop shop for what you need to know on climate risks.  

The IPCC’s work is at the core a scientific process. But governments have a say in the scope and summary of the reports. Is this kind of interface between policy, politics and science good for advancing climate action?

Governments are major stakeholders as they make sense of the science and take action recommended in the reports. 

Government delegates are there to nominate experts for the scoping meetings. They also nominate the authors. It is in their interest that the science is accurate, so that they can make the right decisions.

This is what the assessment reports really aim towards. The process very much remains a scientific and technical one, with something like 800 experts having contributed to AR6. This is a really big enterprise that tries to bring together very comprehensively what we are looking at in terms of climate risks and threats.

The summary for policymakers of the reports does go through governments. I would say it is a matter of science and its messaging. The messaging could have its nuances adjusted. But the science is pretty clear.

Some governments are being pushed to act in ways they may not like, for instance in phasing out fossil fuels, or recognising certain global inequities. Given IPCC’s work guide policymakers, have you experienced greater interference from governments in deciding what the IPCC can say or not?

If there are more perceived interactions between governments and science, I think it is because things have become urgent. The stakes seem to be increasingly high, so the debates also increase and the interaction between science and policy becomes more heated.

But as I said, there is an independent, technical and scientific process based on the way the IPCC is set up. At the scoping meeting the experts will be deciding on what we really need to know in terms of the science. Many of them have been in climate policy, have been in implementation, they represent what needs to be done and assessed. Afterwards, the authors will come in to hash out what research is saying about certain climate issues. So I think throughout this period the IPCC maintains itself as a scientific and technical process.

Why does IPCC take so many years on each set of its reports?

I think you know and have seen how long it takes to publish an article from the conceptualisation of an idea, to getting that data, analysing it, submitting papers for publication, getting them reviewed by other experts in the same field to make sure that your analysis is solid, and finally getting a slot in a journal. The process is very long even for people who are clear about what they want to do from the start.

I think this is why the assessment reports take a long time. We want to assess new information, and it involves nearly 800 scientists across the globe. There is care taken at every step to ensure representation of regions and gender, to assess other literature that does not undergo peer review but are also important materials for consideration.

We also need to have meaningful engagements with stakeholders who implement this action. So I think this is just a long process, and the IPCC was set up to maintain the integrity of this process. This is why it has the reputation of being the one-stop shop for what you need to know on climate risks.

People do not make these claims without backing from scientific literature. You will see it in the way the report is set up, in how we report the confidence levels of statements made. This level of care maintains the respect for IPCC data that I think people do not want to see compromised.

People today generally have an understanding of climate change, its risks, and what needs to be done. How does the IPCC value-add in such an environment?

I think there is still a lot to learn. You are right that climate information is getting out into the mainstream. People know about the risks and impacts.

But there is still a lot to do to translate this information for decision-making – in taking what we know of climate risks and interpreting it into what to do about them. We also have to advise on what is effective action or not, and what could be counterproductive, or include trade-offs that are not acceptable to people, say with respect to the other sustainable development goals. 

I want to draw from my previous experience. I have been in the most part of the last 10 years working for two UN agencies in adaptation work. I can say that the threats and risks are moving much faster than the pace at which we are providing information. I was working with country coordinators who were trying to implement projects against water scarcity in farming communities in the Middle East, West Asia and Northern Africa. People were seeing their lands degrade and never coming back to full productivity. Anecdotally, farmers were saying it really has not been the same in the last 15 to 30 years.

There were also a lot of questions on what to do now with the situation we see in say Iraq and elsewhere. Do we implement conservation agriculture? Drip irrigation? There is so much need for understanding local contexts to find the right solutions, and to prioritise what is needed, and that they are convergent with the needs of the community. For instance, if solutions support, or worsen, gender issues. 

While the global community is committed to reducing emissions, there is a growing need on the ground for greater climate adaptation efforts. There is still so much to learn and do for people in national, sub-regional and district planning offices.

Also, there are also finance and technology gaps. Capacity and governance gaps across the entire ecosystem. So, where are the success stories? What are the options we have to tackle climate issues? Are we thinking enough out of the box to meet future risks?

What’s your take on what the IPCC needs to do to remain relevant and effective in the future?

Climate science now increasingly touches on everybody’s everyday life. Whereas the IPCC was set up in the early days to advise governments on what was a very limited set of climate change literature, now we have a plethora of information. We also have risks that are complex and cascading, and we have unexpected effects.

As you said, we may be more focused on the big events, but now there is also the danger of slow-onset events, happening in the everyday space that sometimes we are not aware of.

With this increasing complexity the IPCC is definitely pushed to improve the accessibility of its information, to ensure the information becomes action-oriented. This is an interesting challenge, and I’m sure this is one of the things that we’ll talk about at the scoping meeting. We will also look at new information, and new sources of information, that need to be assessed.

We also need to work on communication. People say the reports are extremely scientific and technical and really hard to read. Even within the IPCC process we need to produce summaries, and afterwards people are making summaries from the reports themselves.

So I think there’s something to be said about trying to make things accessible and relevant to various audiences. This audience has also changed. Policymakers increasingly are bringing on the financial sector, private sector and community enablers to solve climate problems. So the IPCC needs to make sure information is relevant to these groups as well.

So, yes, I think the work is really cut out for all the scientists who end up being involved in AR7.

Correction note: An earlier version of the story misstated that Dr Theresa Wong is part of the IPCC executive committee. We apologise for the mistake.