Dearest blog readers, I’m attending my first meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it is so. dang. fascinating. For twenty-ish years, I’ve relied on the IPCC’s reports countless times, and in countless ways. But seeing the IPCC’s consensus-based decision-making process in action is giving me a new perspective on the incredible amount of work that goes into producing each of the organization’s reports. Here are some observations that have particularly struck me as a newbie to the world of the IPCC while attending its 61st session in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Coming to consensus takes more time than you can possibly imagine
There have been Friday nights when my four-person household has failed to come to consensus on what movie to watch, and we all end up sourly reading our own books instead. I served on a PTA board where we nearly failed to come to consensus on whether to fund a teacher appreciation luncheon. Only threats of resignations saved us. And heck, I still haven’t managed mediate a consensus between the different parts of my brain so that I can finally choose a paint color for my home office.
So perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that getting the delegations of the nearly 200 IPCC member countries to come to a consensus on anything is a Herculean task. But, for as many times as I had heard someone say something to the effect of, “The IPCC operates via a consensus decision-making process” over the years, I hadn’t fully appreciated what that meant.
What that means is that a carefully developed five-page outline for a future report—something I might review and say, “hey, this looks great” about—will be discussed over the course of roughly two full days until everyone can live with what is in the outline (and what is not). It means that there will be long discussions that might seem like they’re about semantics—is there a difference between a “resource document” and a “reference document?”—but they’re actually about how this body operates and what becomes part of its operating procedures. And it means that everyone is heard until everyone is reasonably satisfied.
When you have about 400 people in the room who represent hundreds of different countries and observer organizations (of which UCS is one), a range of scientific and policy perspectives, and a range of priorities, real consensus takes a long time to build, even if it’s for something that may seem trivial when written on an agenda.
The level of commitment to the tasks at hand is exceptional and inspiring
I’ll admit that there have been points when my attention flagged during each day’s discussions, and I had to take a break from the listening to delegation after delegation reporting their perspectives and concerns to the larger group. But as an afternoon session that, to me, felt particularly long and difficult dragged past the 5:00pm mark, I looked around the room and it was full. Full of people who traveled halfway around the world to be here. Full of people who were probably just as hungry and ready for some fresh air as I was. Full of people who, even in their most impassioned pleas, always kept their comments respectful and measured.
And in that moment, my heart swelled because I could see the room for what it was: a room full of some of the most dedicated people in the world committed to tackling the climate crisis.
When people have asked me if it’s frustrating to be a climate scientist, I always answer truthfully that yes, it sometimes is, but I don’t know anyone who has ever left the climate movement. At the IPCC meeting, I’m seeing anew what it means to stay in and to keep showing up in service of progress. It’s deeply inspiring.
There is a lot of impressive real-time decision making happening
The current chair of the IPCC, Dr. Jim Skea, is the one wielding the gavel and keeping to the agenda during this meeting. What that also means, though, is that for any given agenda item, he has to synthesize all of the comments from any representatives who spoke and figure out—in that moment—how the panel can move forward.
For example, in the initial discussions of the outline for the Climate Change and Cities report, two themes emerged from the dozens of comments from national representatives. It was clear that the broader discussion of the outline couldn’t move forward until these two issues were resolved, but there was not time to resolve them in that moment. So Dr. Skea hit pause on hearing any more comments, briefly conferred with the leaders who had drafted the outline, and came back to the panel with a proposal to hold smaller group discussions on each of those issues the following day.
He then opened the floor up for a discussion of that proposal until he could make a real-time decision on when it seemed like a refined plan could be articulated. Again, after a brief conference, he came back to the panel with a refined proposal, which was amenable to all. It’s impressive to watch someone take in so much information, so many perspectives, and so many areas of disagreement, and figure out how to steer the meeting accordingly.
Timelines for IPCC reports are long—even longer than I’d realized
On the first day of this IPCC meeting, there was a clear call for the IPCC to produce reports that are actionable and timely. Until this meeting, I’d mostly thought about the amount of time between major IPCC reports—typically 6-7 years—as simply the amount of time it would take a large group of scientists from around the world to assess all the latest climate research and put it into coherent reports, each pushing the 1,000-page limit.
But what I learned during this meeting is that the timeline for the IPCC’s special reports—including the forthcoming Climate Change and Cities report and the Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate Forcers that we discussed at this meeting—is so long that it calls into question whether the processes by which the IPCC currently operates lend themselves toward the production of “timely” and “actionable” content.
Way back in April 2016, the IPCC decided that they would produce a report on climate change and cities as part of this seventh assessment cycle. Eight years later, part of our job during this meeting was to finalize an outline. And if all goes well, the report itself will be published in 2027. That’ll be fully 11 years from inception to publication. While good science and good scientific assessments take time, I am left wondering what has been happening on this front over the last eight years and why it has taken so long to get here.
It has been an incredible privilege to be here in Sofia, Bulgaria, to take part in this IPCC meeting, and I’m grateful to my colleague, Dr. Delta Merner, for the wealth of knowledge about international climate diplomacy that she has shared with me throughout the meeting. I’m coming away from the meeting with a deeper appreciation of the IPCC’s accomplishments over the last 30+ years. And I’m closing out my time in Sofia with hope, because I just watched 400 people from around the world gather and talk respectfully to one another for a full week in service of protecting our shared home.
