United Nations: A UN-ordered review said on Monday that the global panel on climate change needed to “fundamentally reform” how it operates after embarrassing errors in a landmark report dented its credibility.
The review also said that the climate panel should only make predictions when it has solid evidence and should avoid policy advocacy.
The five-month probe recommended an overhaul of the position of Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who said he would accept whatever fate member-states decide for him.
The United Nations ordered the review by the Inter Academy Council, which groups 15 leading science academies, after a political uproar over its landmark 2007 study that critics called the “Climategate” scandal. The IPCC released a 938-page study in 2007 pointing to evidence that climate change was already hurting the planet. In 2009, the IPCC was rocked by a scandal involving leaked emails which critics say showed that they skewed data.
One part of the report said that Himalayan glaciers which provide water to a billion people in Asia could be lost by 2035 — an assessment later traced to a magazine article. The IPCC admitted that the glacier reference was wrong, but says its core conclusions about climate change are sound.
The review found the IPCC has been “successful overall” but called for changes in its leadership structure, stricter guidelines on source material and a check on conflicts of interests. AFP
