Won’t quit even if UN panel finds faults: Pachauri

He was asked whether he would consider stepping down if the UN-constituted Inter-Academic Council review was to come to the conclusion that procedures have not been followed.

Accepting moral responsibility for the error in the fourth assessment report which had claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035,Pachauri said he also accepts the responsibility placed on him by the world governments by electing him as Chairman of the IPCC.

“Well,I certainly accept moral responsibility. But I also accept the responsibility that all the governments of the world have placed on my shoulders,and that’s by essentially electing me as chairperson by acclamation,” he told Karan Thapar in CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate programme.

Asked whether he was ‘determined’ to finish his term ending in 2015,he said he will not withdraw from the task assigned to him. “I have a task,I have a mission to end the fifth assessment report and I am not certainly not going to withdraw from that,” he said.

To a poser on whether it was a system failure,he maintained it was more of a “procedural failure” and said,“We will do everything humanly possible to ensure that the error in the fourth report is not there in the fifth report.”

“Absolutely”,was his reply to a question on whether one single failure was being ‘taken out of proportion’.

“Absolutely. One error does not dilute the findings of the IPCC that the glaciers are melting,” he said.

Asked whether he felt embarrassed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon setting up a committee of top scientists to review IPCC,he said,“That is wrong.”

“Let me correct that. That is something that the IPCC has initiated. We wrote a letter to all the governments on February 16 saying that we would like to set up a review committee to look into our procedures and practices and then we joined hands with the United Nations Secretary General.

“You can look into the documentation,and the letter to the Inter-Academic Council has been jointly signed by Mr Ban Ki-moon and me. It is wrong to say that the Secretary General has ordered something.”

Pachauri said the IPCC theoretically is not a UN organisation.

“Theoretically,as an organisation,we are not responsible to the UN at all or the Secretary General. But it is a body which was set up on account of and as a result of UN General Assembly Resolution of 1988. We felt that we should join hands with the United Nations Secretary General.”

Refusing to comment on the reported statement of his predecessor Bob Watson that the structure and the working of the IPCC required changes,he said when he steps down in 2015,he would not comment on the working of his successor.

The climate expert refuted claims that one of the primary ideas behind setting up the review committee was to ensure that he steps down before the next assembly of the IPCC in Korea in October. “Well,I don’t know who says that,but let me tell you the terms of reference of that particular review committee have been drafted by us in the IPCC. It has not been drafted by somebody else.