Indians have a special connection with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore—the chairman is an Indian, R K Pachauri, who is also director-general of the The Energy Research Institute. The panel is cited as the last word on the science of climate change despite the fact that it does no original work. This year, its fourth report had some stark findings that was greeted with less scepticism than previous reports.
IPCC's credibility also comes from the fact that governments are already a part of it and unanimously endorse all the reports before they are published. The panel is one of the largest scientific bodies, working as it does with 2,500 scientists worldwide. There have been almost a hundred scientists from India who have been associated with the panel in its four assessments.
Rainbow coalition
Set up in 1988 on the demand of G-7 countries, IPCC is as multilateral as the UN: Any country, which is a member of either the UN or the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) can be a member of the IPCC. The officially stated mandate is to “assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information that relates to human induced climate change”. It, therefore, does not do its own calculation, models or studies but assesses and summarises research work done throughout the world to come out with a fair estimation of different facets of climate change.
The supreme body of the IPCC is the general assembly, where every member country has one vote. The general assembly sets up the work plan, including chapter headings and contents that IPCC follows to conduct reviews of scientific knowledge. These are, therefore, called Assessment Reports, which are then taken back to the general assembly for approval before publication. The executive body of the IPCC is the board, which is elected by the general assembly. The board is headed by a chairman.
Assessing the change
IPCC is divided in three working groups that have their areas earmarked.The first deals with the science of climate change, both with the variations observed in the past and the expected change in future. The second is the possible impact of a human-induced climate change on the biosphere and our socio-economic systems, and possible ways to adapt. The third concerns the mitigation possibilities of climate change, or how much it would cost governments to cut emissions. At the end of these reports, there is a summary for policymakers.
Each assessment takes five years. After the general assembly decides on its contents, the IPCC board begins soliciting coordinating lead authors who are recognised experts in each of these disciplines. These coordinating lead author then solicits lead authors and contributing authors, who each write part of the chapter of the report after looking at peer-reviewed scientific literature of their area of specialisation.
Each chapter deals with a specific subject, and the authors of the related chapter are in charge of writing a synthesis of the available scientific knowledge on the corresponding topic.
After the first draft is prepared, it is read and criticised by other experts of the disciplines concerned. The draft incorporates their inputs and the second draft is re-sent to the same experts as well as to the representatives of the governments of member countries. After at least two revisions, the document is submitted to the general assembly of the IPCC for line-by-line approval before publication.
Overall, several thousand people are involved in the writing and reviewing of the report before it is published.
The Fourth Assessment Report had a large emphasis on developing countries and South Asia that was missing in the previous reports.
— sonu jain

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