Who shapes climate science? The equity question facing the IPCC

Meena Raman is deputy director at Third World Network (TWN), a public interest lawyer and an expert on international climate negotiations. Leon Sealey-Huggins is senior campaigner in global climate justice and just transition at War on Want. Both organisations are members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ).

The world urgently needs the next assessment of climate science. But speed cannot be the only consideration. Equally important is whose research informs it, whether scientists from developing countries can participate meaningfully, and how its findings shape global climate policy.

Meena Raman is deputy director at Third World Network (TWN), a public interest lawyer and an expert on international climate negotiations. Leon Sealey-Huggins is senior campaigner in global climate justice and just transition at War on Want. Both organisations are members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ).

The world urgently needs the next assessment of climate science. But speed cannot be the only consideration. Equally important is whose research informs it, whether scientists from developing countries can participate meaningfully, and how its findings shape global climate policy.

The timeline of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) is a major point of contention at its sixty-fifth meeting in Addis Ababa this week. Since early 2024, it has been contested principally between developed countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) seeking earlier completion, and many developing countries calling for more time.

Many developed countries, SIDS and some Least Developed Countries (LDCs) want the AR7 Working Group reports completed by 2028, to inform the second Global Stocktake (GST2) of the Paris Agreement. IPCC assessment cycles have generally taken five to seven years.

But the IPCC’s findings would remain relevant after 2028. Reports completed in 2029 could inform countries’ next nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in 2030. The stocktake assesses collective progress, rather than prescribing individual emissions targets.

More time needed for input from developing countries

Between IPCC60 and IPCC65, developing countries – including Algeria, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Mozambique, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe – have raised concerns over an earlier AR7 timetable and its impact on inclusivity. Russia and Belarus have expressed similar concerns.

An earlier completion date could also affect the scientific integrity and robustness of the AR7 assessments, these governments argue.

Developing countries have emphasised equity in the IPCC’s work, both in process and substance. Their emphasis on a six-to-seven-year assessment cycle is linked to ensuring that the reports reflect scientific literature from the Global South, including research led and funded by institutions in developing countries.

Who funds research, where institutions are based, which questions receive attention and whose work is assessed shape the IPCC’s evidence base. Scientists in developing countries face unequal access to funding, institutional support and international collaboration.

Extending a deadline alone cannot resolve these inequalities. The timetable must be designed alongside measures to strengthen research capacity and enable meaningful participation, otherwise existing inequalities risk being reproduced in successive assessments.

Timeliness doesn’t guarantee political action

Equity is not only about who participates. It also concerns the assumptions behind scientific models, the development pathways they describe and how their findings are subsequently used. Consider mitigation scenarios assessed in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The IPCC itself acknowledges that most do not explicitly incorporate assumptions about global equity, environmental justice or income distribution within regions.

These scenarios draw on assumptions about development, technology and mitigation, and can shape climate policies. The IPCC calls them projections, not predictions or forecasts. Yet when global emissions pathways become reference points in UN climate decisions, the distinction between projected outcomes and an equitable distribution of responsibilities can blur.

Timely science does not guarantee political action. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 identified emissions reductions of 25–40% below 1990 levels by 2020 for developed countries as a group, under a particular scenario. Yet Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, while Japan and Russia declined new commitments under its second period.

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The first Global Stocktake in 2023 recognised the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to 2019, and reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions around 2050 to limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot.

These benchmarks were highlighted in AR6’s mitigation report. However, the report had an important caveat, that most modelled pathways do not explicitly account for global equity and are projections, not forecasts. But when the 43% figure entered the Global Stocktake decision, it did so without this caveat. This was a fatal omission, given that Article 14 of the Paris Agreement requires Global Stocktake be conducted in the light of equity and the best available science.

Including findings from such models in international climate decisions without their caveats is problematic. Such assumptions affect how future energy use, emissions reductions and development opportunities are distributed across regions.

Emissions-cutting pathways put burden on Global South

A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Indian scientists, published in Climate Policy, examined 556 mitigation scenarios. The researchers found that global inequalities in income, energy use and emissions were projected to persist until 2050, raising questions about whether these pathways reflect equity.

In the scenarios underlying the 43% global reduction figure, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030, against 50% in North America and Europe. Developed countries are projected to retain higher per-capita fossil fuel consumption in 2050, while developing countries reduce consumption from already low levels. These pathways place a disproportionate mitigation burden on developing countries, despite developed countries’ historical responsibility.

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Some of the severest projected restrictions on energy use are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, home to many Least Developed Countries (LDCs), where essential infrastructure is yet to be built, even as climate impacts worsen. Yet these scenarios constrain energy consumption and development prospects.

The scenarios also rely on large amounts of land-based carbon dioxide removal, with more than 70% projected in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. This has implications for food security, livelihoods and biodiversity, placing burdens on communities most vulnerable to climate change and least responsible for it.

The IPCC’s findings carry considerable scientific and political weight. Its assessments must uphold the highest standards of scientific integrity, inclusiveness and equity, both in process and substance. There must be no shortcuts for political expediency.