[Buzzing sound, tuning in a radio to the right frequency. A low droning note grows in the background, and a clock ticks ominously]

[Media clips talking about climate change]

KIM KENNY, HOST

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, best known as the IPCC, is the paramount arm of the United Nations when it comes to advancing knowledge of climate change, its impacts and its prevention. The mega reports it has released since its creation in 1988 are formative in shaping public opinion and policy on climate change. But how are such reports created? How do experts in climate science, communication and policy come together to produce them? In this episode of Climate Decoded, we are going to explore the question: How does the IPCC, through its major reports, inform global climate policy? And to understand the process behind launching an IPCC report, we’re going to start by going straight to the source.

[Climate Decoded theme music starts]

GREG DAVIES-JONES, HOST

You’re listening to Climate Decoded, the podcast that deciphers climate change communication. We untangle how different narratives illuminate or obscure pathways to climate justice.

[Climate Decoded theme music fades out]

[Sounds of Greg walking into the headquarters of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, heading towards a guard inside the entrance]

GREG

Bonjour, ça va?

GUARD

Ça va bien, vous?

GREG

Ça va bien, merci! Hi, how’re you doing? Haven’t seen you in a long time [laughing]

GUARD

Yeah! You are back?

GREG

I’m back! I’m here to see Werani Zabula, from the IPCC.

GUARD

Ah, okay. This way –

GREG

Yes, merci. Thank you.

GUARD

Oui, au revoir.

GREG

I've just arrived at the home of the IPCC, in Geneva, Switzerland.The building has a distinctive design: ship-shaped and an exterior covered with glass panels of a dark blue hue. It sits perched just above the shoreline of Lake Geneva, and looking southeast, you can't help but see the commanding presence of Mont Blanc in the distance. And to get in the building, you first have to go through security.

GUARD

Your name?

GREG

Greg Davies-Jones. And the passport – oh yeah, that was my old – [laughing] I had longer hair then.

GREG

I first stepped foot here five years ago as an IPCC intern. I was fresh-faced and eager to begin my first role in the international climate world. And it was back then in 2018 that I also first met the co-host of this episode, Kim!

KIM

Hey! Yes, Greg and I first met right here in this building. He was at the IPCC, and I was at the World Meteorological Organization. That's the main agency in the building. It was over coffee one Tuesday lunchtime when we first crossed paths. And that’s where the idea of this very podcast was first born. In the years since that impromptu coffee, the IPCC has become increasingly prominent and influential. So now Greg’s back at the IPCC to explore how the agency works with government administrations across the globe to encourage action on climate and implement suitable policies to stifle emissions. So in short, we’re asking: How does the IPCC inform global climate policy?

GREG

To start answering that question, I’m going to wrap-up with security and jump in the lift to the 8th floor, where the IPCC HQ is. That’s where the action is happening. 

GUARD

You know inside?

GREG

Very well, yeah. Thank you very much. See you soon, au revoir.

[Sound of pressing an elevator button, elevator doors closing]

KIM

When it comes to climate communication, the IPCC reports are certainly one of the biggest outputs that hit the global stage. But does a giant report necessarily mean that it’s the most effective? With the help of experts we will be exploring the three key steps in the IPCC report process — firstly, how the climate research is aggregated by IPCC authors, secondly, how the communication teams pull this together to form an IPCC report, and thirdly, how policymakers globally are engaged in the process.

GREG

Exactly. And as part of that, we will be looking at some of the key points of debate in the production of IPCC reports. Whose voices are or are not included in the process, how the fine line between being policy relevant but not prescriptive is walked, and what changes are on the horizon at the IPCC? 

[Tapping sound of elevator going up]

KIM

So Greg’s on his way up to the 8th floor, where the IPCC HQ is.

[Squeaky sound of elevator door opening]

KIM

The IPCC is the premier United Nations body charged with providing scientific assessments on climate change. It was created in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Program, also known as UNEP, and the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO. The IPCC has three working groups that assess three main aspects of climate change: Working group 1 looks at the science of climate change. Working group 2 addresses adaptation to climate change – that's how we handle, or adapt to, the impacts of climate change. And working group 3 focuses on climate change mitigation – the strategies for reducing how much the climate changes in the first place. The IPCC publishes what it calls assessment reports every 6 to 7 years. The assessment reports contain four principal parts: three reports, one from each of the three working groups, plus a synthesis report This is the IPCC’s reason for existence:  meticulously prepared and comprehensive reports filled with world-class, up-to-date science that go straight to the hands of governments around the world, who use them to inform/shape their respective climate change policies. So, Greg, what’s it like stepping into the IPCC HQ?

[Sounds of people talking in the background as Greg moves through the halls of the IPCC]

GREG

The first thing you notice is the Nobel prize award given to the IPCC for its work on the 4th assessment report in 2007. Just beyond this is a display table showcasing various reports published over the last few years. The floor has an open plan design, with a central communal area. The offices populate the exterior of the building, each with its own sweeping glass door, and behind one of them is Werani, an IPCC information and communications specialist and a former colleague of mine. 

[Sound of Greg and Werani walking down the hallway]

WERANI

Welcome to the IPCC Secretariat –

GREG

Yes, the Secretariat.

WERANI

We are about a dozen people who work in the Secretariat. Our offices start around here. So we have the office of my colleague who does communication, social media, my office, publications, the secretary of the IPCC’s office, and colleagues who assist in travel, and IT … and as we go down the corridor, we have colleagues in finance and legal and the deputy secretary … and finally, the head of communications.

GREG

Well thank you very much, Werani.

WERANI

You’re welcome!

GREG

One thing to notice is that the offices Werani showed me house people who work on communications, finance, and more. This is where the overall IPCC communication strategy  is conceived. But of all the hundreds of scientists in the working groups, who work on the research that goes into the reports — very few are here in this building. Instead, those scientists are spread all over the world. So to understand how the IPCC assesses climate science, I had to say farewell to the HQ and take a short train ride northeast to the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne to talk with an IPCC scientist.

[Sound of train moving, train door opening]

GREG

At Lausanne station, I was greeted by a fresh breeze and the bustle of a small city approaching the lunch hour. Time was tight, so I hopped into a taxi and headed to the University of Lausanne.

GREG

Bonjour monsieur!

TAXI DRIVER

Bonjour, bonjour.

GREG

University of Lausanne?

TAXI DRIVER

Ah, ça c’est Université de Lausanne – in French, c’est the same

GREG

The same. [laughing]

[Sound of taxi driving, distant music playing in the background]

TAXI DRIVER

Merci à vous, au revoir, merci!

GREG

Au revoir, bonne journée!

GREG

Once deposited at the university entrance, I made a beeline for the Geopolitics department. Here I met Yamina Saheb in a small, sun-dappled office at the far end of the building. She’s usually based in Paris, but she’s in Lausanne for a conference.  

YAMINA SAHEB

I work on climate policies. I was born Algerian and I am a French citizen at the same time. And I had the opportunity to be nominated as an author for the last IPCC report on climate mitigation.

GREG

Yamina’s IPCC work has given her a window into how the IPCC collects the research that goes into the reports. The process starts with assessing the science that’s already known.

YAMINA

The mandate of the IPCC is to assess the scientific literature and to provide a summary of this assessment to policymakers to move on.

[Music with muted but reverberant chimes starts in the background]

GREG

The IPCC does not conduct its own scientific research. The literature the working groups review is usually a combination of scientific, technical and socio-economic literature. The research they’re digging through comes from all sorts of sources — a geochemist pulling up ice cores from Antarctica, a marine biologist tracking the impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms, an anthropologist observing how communities adapt to sea level rise, an economist examining the relationship between increasing temperatures and economic losses, or a modeller developing mitigation pathways to produce various future global scenarios. The working groups review all that literature to develop a better understanding of climate change, its current and future impacts, and adaptation and mitigation options.

[Music fades out]

The authors who write and compile these reports number in the hundreds. They’re leading experts hailing from across the globe, and they’re each nominated by member governments and observer organisations. The author teams are intended to reflect a range of scientific, technical and socio-economic views and backgrounds. Balance is sought across regions, genders and research experience, as well as a mix from both industry and non-profit sectors. But that doesn’t mean it’s equally possible for all experts to be involved. Authors volunteer their time. They are not paid. And most will simultaneously hold down full-time and demanding professions. Furthermore, to be an author, first, you must be able to access the scientific literature used to inform the assessment reports. 

YAMINA

The IPCC is based on assessing the scientific literature. If you were in South, except if you are in emerging economies, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, you don't have access to scientific literatures, because these scientific databases you must pay for them, it's a lot of money for developing countries. And you are eliminated, you are there selected, but you cannot really contribute.

GREG

Lack of access to databases and lack of payment for contributing authors mean despite the IPCC’s endeavour to include a diverse range of authorship, these and more inherent financial and technological barriers structurally exclude many authors from developing countries, also known as the Global South, from contributing. And those countries are often the same ones that are experiencing and will continue to experience the most adverse consequences of climate change.

[Music grows in the background – contemplative, heavy]

Research has shown that certain institutions have a strong influence over the IPCC. Many of the authors will likely have passed through said institutions at some point in their careers – the World Bank, UNs Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, etc. – all prestigious and predominantly western-domiciled institutions. There’s also a regional imbalance - most IPCC authors come from countries in the Global North least affected by climate change. And there are similar imbalances in gender and disciplines. There are more men than women, and there are more engineers, economists and physicists than there are social scientists. All in all, the way IPCC reports are put together have room for improvement in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even if IPCC authors are technically granted a seat at the table, they can still be excluded via language and cultural norms.

[Music fades out]

YAMINA

In theory, the IPCC, like any UN organisation, you could work with any national language, any language from any country member of the UN. In practice, this is not the case. In practice. English is the dominant language. And all the meetings are in English. So if you don't speak English, you are out from the meetings, you can be there sitting, but you're out. And then there is another weakness that is related to its cultural difference – I have the feeling I'm not an Anglo-Saxon person by culture – in the Anglo-Saxon culture, kids are raised to be vocal, to speak up. It's not the case in many other cultures, and especially I think, especially in developing countries. And that's why in the meetings, the meetings are dominated by first, all those who are culturally Anglo-Saxon, and then those who know the Anglo-Saxon codes. So I had to learn these codes, because I worked at the international level, but I do understand that the colleagues who live in developing countries, who come from non-Anglo Saxon culture, that the IPCC process and the way the international work works, exclude them de facto, you are de facto out.

GREG

The barriers that hinder global south authors from engaging effectively in international processes are also present in how literature for the reports is selected. If there’s little consolidated research in English about a concept, the concept is much less likely to be included in IPCC reporting – and that’s knowledge lost from the policy informing process. In the most recent report, Yamina helped introduce the concept of sufficiency. Sufficiency is an emission reduction approach that’s defined as avoiding demand for energy, materials, land, and water while delivering wellbeing. But because there was little English-language literature about sufficiency –

YAMINA

This means that does not exist, so that's the first shock I got. While in French, it exists, (given that I speak both languages). So for me, this idea of ‘it’s not science based etc.,’, just because it does not exist in English is just bullshit. You know, I speak five languages, so for me, it's bullshit to exclude things because they don't exist in one language.

GREG

The IPCC stipulates that for any source written in a language other than English, an executive summary or abstract in English is required if it is to be referenced. This means crucial climate related information can often be excluded. Different knowledge systems don't tend to be valued or documented in the same way as Western scientific disciplines and don't make it to the page as a result. Yamina says change is needed.

YAMINA

You need to put a limit to the number of publications in English. Okay it's the language we use in the international discussions – but English is not the international language. There are plenty of people who do not speak English, they do exist, they are victims of climate change. And you cannot just ignore them. And you cannot capture the way societies are organised/work. You cannot capture this if you are not native from these countries.

GREG

So, considering the challenges posed by English language dominance and barriers to scientific databases, how can the IPCC improve and enhance participation from the Global South?

YAMINA

So from the IPCC perspective, I think that all the authors from the South who are selected to contribute, the IPCC should look for funding to provide them with full access to the scientific databases. That's one thing. The other thing is to put in place programmes or collaborations to make sure that people from the South will publish. We need to use, I think, the IPCC to build capacity in the South. And to build capacity, we need to put in place programmes to have peer reviewed publications with people from the South, this is how we build capacity.

GREG

The IPCC has a lot of change ahead if it is to ensure more voices are included And the organisation has gone through a lot of changes over the past decade, particularly in terms of how the IPCC communicates the results of its assessments with the world

KIM

A lot of those changes were led by Jonathan Lynn, the now-retired head of IPCC communications. Jonathan was the first head of IPCC communications, taking the helm for a decade. He actually was Greg's supervisor back when Greg was interning at the IPCC in 2018. These days, Jonathan spends his time in a quiet village in the south of France and occasionally helps out the IPCC as a consultant. I caught up with him over Zoom to talk about how the IPCC’s communication has evolved, and the realities of how scientists and the comms team work together. 

[Journalists talk and type in the background]

Before joining the IPCC; Jonathan was one of the handful of Geneva-based journalists who sat in UN briefing rooms rapidly jotting down notes as the media liaison conveyed the results of the latest IPCC Assessment Report, AR 4 in 2007.

JONATHAN LYNN

I worked for Reuters all over the place for over 30 years. But in that job, it could often be very frustrating as a reporter dealing with some of the stories and the way some of the agencies worked, especially when there was a big story breaking. I often thought, you know, if I was running this for them, I would deal with the media differently.

KIM

He got his chance when the IPCC was going through a period of upheaval. The organisation was getting more attention than ever, so the member governments and the IPCC agreed that a communications strategy was needed. Part of that strategy was having a senior communications officer, and Jonathan landed the job. He started in 2011, just before that year’s Conference of the Parties, or COP. Jonathan started making changes as soon as he joined the IPCC. When he first started, journalists would get the report and be expected to write a well-informed story that same day.

JONATHAN

I mean, the IPCC's, the way of communicating the report was, "here's the report, there is 1500 pages, bam, there you go".

KIM

Journalists could go to the IPCC report press conferences, but that still left them with massive amounts of technical information to sift through. So Jonathan instituted an embargo. An embargo is when a source – the IPCC, in this case – gives journalists information – that’s the report – before it’s public, with the requirement that the journalists don’t publish anything about it until a specific date. Having an embargo meant that journalists had time to write stories that were more accessible for the general public.

JONATHAN

It was something that had to be very, very carefully signed off by the scientists – there was no way that they would want a non specialist like me coming in and taking, you know, taking the report or talking to them saying, "Okay, this is what it's about".

KIM

Explaining the reports in less technical language would make it easier for nonspecialists to understand, but would also mean diluting complexity and nuance. And that was a big no-no in the IPCC’s book.

JONATHAN

IPCC reports go through a formal quasi-legal process. And once it has been agreed, you can't change it; you can't translate it into simple language for the benefit of non-specialists because the discussion that has led to those checks is very carefully balanced, and by simplifying it, you introduce a distortion that either the scientists or the governments feel is inappropriate.

KIM

Because of this, it’s vital that the IPCC scientists and communications team connect early, so the reports can be as clear as possible from the start.

JONATHAN

The communication process really starts while the science is being developed. And so we bring communications experts into the  teams of the technical support units – those are the groups that support the groups of authors in the different working groups. And they work with them on communications aspects of the reports, and particularly making sure that the authors themselves, the scientists, are having the leading input into that communication content. While the reports are being developed by the authors, those communications experts also work with them to develop what you might call the messaging around the report. So the understanding of what that scientific language means when you're talking in a less formal context, say in a newspaper interview or to an audience of non specialists.

KIM

The communications team must walk a fine line when developing the messaging – they have to ensure the science is correct while also making it understandable to nonscientists. This is particularly delicate in IPCC reports because the reports’ content informs critical climate policy decisions. Part of making the report’s science comprehensible to readers is that most crucial tenet of communication: “Know your audience.” So who is the IPCC’s audience? Although the IPCC has gained more widespread publicity since its creation in 1988, it has had one main audience from the beginning.

JONATHAN

Unlike other organisations who are really there to talk to the public, our mandate states specifically that our prime audience is policymakers.

KIM

Policymakers. Science into the hands of policymakers. Via reports. The IPCC Assessment Reports are massive – thousands of pages of scientifically dense material. In the latest assessment cycle, the reports of Working Groups I, II, and III total almost 10,000 pages. To make the reports more accessible to the IPCC’s principal audience, each report is summarised in a shorter document called the Summary for Policymakers, or SPM. These summaries are on the order of 50 pages long. It reminds me of this schtick My fellow student in graduate school would say about the Odyssey – everyone knows of it, references it, but how many people have actually read the whole 3,000 year old classic? How many people have actually read the entirety of AR6? Realistically, many people rely on the summaries and the analyses of others to understand the reports.

[Percussive, grooving music starts]

KIM

All of this summarising is in service of the IPCC’s 195 member countries, every one of which signs off on the Summary for Policymakers before it’s released into the world. The Assessment Reports underpin international climate negotiations such as the COP. And so these reports are foundational in informing climate policy worldwide. Before hitting policymakers’ desks, the 195 member governments of the IPCC discuss and conduct a line by line approval. Every phrase - from ‘nature-based solutions’ vs ‘ecosystem based solutions’ to ‘unequivocal’ vs ‘discernible’ – is scrutinised in a way that only people who are painfully aware of how much effect these tiny differences will have on the policies they’ll  have to adhere to going forward can scrutinise.

JONATHAN

The Summary for Policymakers is supposed to be a short sort of non-specialist document, but often it's longer than it should be as a result of some compromises and discussions.

KIM

Report-writing, which may not smack of great theatrical drama, reaches one its highest drama moments in the meetings where the SPMs are hashed out. Representatives from  each of the Member countries gather in the same room with scientists - one of these rooms was actually the Salle Obasi in Geneva, a giant room Greg and I have both strolled through in-between when it hosts important WMO and other UN meetings. That’s where all the discussion, disagreements, and eventual compromises happens for every little bit of language.

JONATHAN

We're part of a UN process and the UN works by consensus, so you can't have one government saying we want to do this, we want to change it to that, unless every other government in the room agrees to that proposal. So they really will spend a lot of time trying to discuss it and trying to find a way to make it work. But sometimes it just doesn't. So what you can do then is the chair can say, look, we've tried and tried. We don't agree on this, we're going to propose putting a footnote into the summary that will say country, you know, here's the language asterisk, Country A didn't agree with the statement. but the panel as a whole is very reluctant to do that.

KIM

If you’re ever interested in reading some of the tea behind the negotiations, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, or IISD, publishes the Earth Negotiations Bulletin – some of that juicy gossip. Regardless of back and forth, eventually, all the ideas coalesce.

JONATHAN

It's an incredible pleasure, when at the end of those long, say passionate and sometimes really quite tense approval sessions, it finally all falls into place, and everyone's happy and congratulating each other and all the differences are gone, and you've got a product which you know can go out to the world and can make a make a big difference.

KIM

Each report has its most controversial points. The SPM suffers from what a lot of high-profile summary docs suffer from – cherry-picking. This cherry picking has historically happened around IPCC Reports and SPMs, not just AR6. For AR6, one cherry-picked concept of note is negative emission technologies, or NETs. NETs use strategies like carbon dioxide capture and carbon dioxide removal. If a reader cherry-picks lines from the summary for policymakers heralding NETs, they have more of an excuse of leaning on this argument of “we don’t need to change so much right now because technology will magically fix everything and save us someday in the future.” But of course, despite how nice and easy it might sound, technology will not be a silver bullet, at least according to AR6. AR6 tells us we need NETs alongside other solutions. Everyone has a different interpretation of what points they want to highlight, and how those points may serve them. A lot of this is to say that it’s important to pay attention to who is summarising the summary, and why they might be motivated to highlight certain points. And for those brave enough to take on the odyssey of the full report, there you’ll get the top tier comprehensive science straight. Regardless of how diluted the summary may be from the full report, or how certain players will cherry pick certain lines, the SPM does go a huge way towards of communicating the IPCC’s messages to its main audience of policymakers. But it’s not only policymakers eagerly awaiting the IPCC reports. There’s also, well, everybody else.

JONATHAN

So the public is a secondary audience, it's a very important one. Extremely important because in many, not all cases, but in many cases, governments listen to the public, because the public are voters or taxpayers or whatever, and so the public can put pressure on governments.

KIM

Part of the IPCC’s brand is having great science, so it can be tempting to just lay out the scientific evidence and let it speak for itself. But that’s usually not enough.

JONATHAN

What we try to do is lay it out and say, "This is what's happening. This is what you can do about it". What we know from studying science communications and cognitive psychology and these sorts of things, is that it's not really about the facts. People don't want to be lectured by facts. And people tend to have a certain prejudices and predispositions, which are based on the communities they live in, and the communities they identify with.

KIM

The public is an expansive audience – it can be divided into an infinite number of overlapping groups, from industry to the media to your neighbourhood. The best way to reach everybody is to make sure that the people explaining the IPCC reports in different places have local knowledge. That way, they can explain issues in a local context. Part of appealing to your audiences is speaking their language, speaking to what is urgent to them. It follows another tenet of good comms: Meet your audience where they are. Talking to the public also requires that scientists know how to talk to nonscientists. Terminology can get dicey — the same words or concepts can be used differently by scientists versus the general public. An example of that is the concept of “uncertainty” in science.

JONATHAN

If a scientist is asked, you know, is it 100% safe to eat this or do that? And they say, Well, you know, the range of 95%, so it's not safe. And for them, that's about as safe as it gets. But to the the nonspecialist has the opposite meaning? Or so, "Are you are you sure this is gonna happen?" "Well, we can never be 100% sure." "So you don't know then."

KIM

The IPCC offers training to help scientists figure out how to talk about the reports’ technical material, like uncertainty, in a more accessible way.

JONATHAN

Nonspecialists understand very well, because they know the probability of in their lives crossing the road or getting on a plane or taking up fire insurance on their house, they understand those things. So it's really a case of presenting those things.

KIM

IPCC information is presented in formats other than verbal communication by scientists and written reports – there’s also a large visual aspect to the IPCC’s comms. Nonverbal comms can be super powerful in sending a message quickly. The strongest IPCC visual I think of – and my fellow Climate Decoders on this pod laughed at me calling them “iconic,” but I think that’s what they are – are the scenario graphs the IPCC produces. These scenario graphs represent 8 different possible future pathways, from a below 1.5 degree world to an above 4 degree world. In a second of looking at these graphs, you get a visceral idea of how much power our global choices have in directing our global fate. The cover art for the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5 Degrees is an artist’s rendition of a similar graph in the report – a splash of pastels representing algorithmic predictions. If you want to see that and other cool art, you can check out Environmental Graffiti, started by Alisa Singer. Other forms of visual comms the IPCC does include videos, animations, and an increasing presence on social media. Creating visuals to show scientific concepts has the same requirements as talking to the public – you have to know your audience. You have to know what your audience knows and how they think.

JONATHAN

One thing we've done is kind of user testing of the graphics. Well, first of all, we've worked with communications at experts to look at, 'how does a graphic communicate?' You know, simple things like, 'which way across the page do people look, i.e. left to right up or down?' If you have something in red or something in green, does that connote something already? So what colours do you use?

KIM

The final report graphics can still be pretty complicated. But like with the rest of the report, some of that is necessary to preserve the scientific accuracy. The summary for policymakers has simpler graphics, as do the media publications. But the IPCC is strict – if you make a simplified graphic to make the information more accessible, you have to say it’s based on the IPCC’s work, but isn’t the real deal. Whether creating graphics or holding press conferences, IPCC communication is always evolving. Jonathan echoed what Yamina said earlier about how the IPCC and its communication needs to keep evolving.

JONATHAN

We need to do more and we need to find networks of journalists and partner organisations and people who we can work with in developing countries. We need to do more in other languages, so we're very very anglocentric. We know it's not a one way thing, it's a two way thing. There's still a lot we can do to make that more of a dialogue; a two way discussion.

KIM

So here we are. Let’s say the target audience is reached, is met where they are – the science is in the hands of the policymakers. Now what do they do with it? The science has been discussed and agreed upon, and the assessment report has been shared with policymakers and the public. But the IPCC’s reports aren’t created just to inform – they’re supposed to help governments make climate policy.   

GREG

To find out how this happens, we talked to a policymaker with over 30 years experience in local government.

DEBRA ROBERTS

I am Debra Roberts and I currently occupy the post of one of the co-chairs of Working Group II. And that's the Working Group that looks at the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change.

GREG

We spoke with Debra over Zoom from her home in Durban, South Africa. She’s been impacting climate policy for a long time – in 2019, she was listed as one of the world’s most influential people in climate policy. The IPCC’s main audience is policymakers, but it steers well clear of being prescriptive. In fact, The IPCC unequivocally describes itself as “policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive”.

DEBRA

No IPCC report, or finding will ever tell governments what to do, but it will offer government's a range of solutions and it will outline clearly the consequences of different decision paths.

GREG

The IPCC’s tenet of political neutrality is part of what makes it impactful – and, in essence, it is its very identity. Yet the neutral stance of the IPCC has faced criticism, and some have even questioned if neutrality is truly exercised. The argument is that the IPCC is inescapably biassed and prescriptive because of what it excludes rather than includes in its reporting. It’s true that the policy options to combat climate change included in IPCC reporting have potential world-changing power. Power of this magnitude requires input from diverse actors representing our global society. And some believe the IPCC can improve the diversity of contributors and achieve a more power-shared world-changing process.

Let’s park this for a minute and accept IPCC neutrality as given. Well, there are also some who question this stance due to the urgency and scale of the climate crisis. Considering the loud call for transformative change to tackle climate change, there’s a question mark on whether a neutral IPCC is the right approach. Would an agency more explicit and direct about the efficacy of climate policy options be a better leader for change? Well, what is clear is that transformative change requires remodelling present power and political paradigms. A politically neutral and non-prescriptive stance does not usually rock the boat. It doesn’t stress power relations nor challenge the political status quo. And so some are not sold on the IPCC’s philosophy. They wonder if it could undermine achieving the change required to tackle climate change. On the flip side, others believe IPCC’s neutrality has helped wield a strong bond between science and diplomacy – a bond vital to achieving a global response to climate change. And this is what should be guarded at all costs.

DEBRA

My sense is, you know, that the idea behind being policy-relevant, but not policy-prescriptive, is the DNA of the IPCC. What that DNA has delivered is an element of international trust in science, which has been hard won through that impartiality.The moment policymakers deem the assessment to be partial in some way, favouring someone's interests over the other, then the trust breaks down.  And so for me that DNA has to remain; It's what gets the IPCC the credibility and trust, which is vital if the science is going to be used to inform decision making.  

GREG

The IPCC provides policymakers with assessments concerning the causes, impacts, and responses to climate change. By providing policymakers with all that information, the IPCC is providing the ballast for the science-policy bridge. So how, then, do the reports actually impact policy-making?

DEBRA

We bridge this huge gap between the worlds of science and policy, and enable the flow of scientific information.It's a two-way flow, because we begin to understand by talking with the policymakers what their priorities are, so you get that information flowing back into the scientific world and influencing the science that's done.

GREG

The next phase of the science-policy conversation sees policymakers digging into the IPCC's assessments and potential policy solutions.

DEBRA

As a policymaker, you need something that's going to help you focus, you know, hone in quite rapidly on areas where you can act and can act with impact. They look to those reports to help them inform the priorities that they're going to pursue either in terms of their decision-making, their policy development, their resource allocation; so that they're a critical toolbox, I think, for the policymaker.

KIM

How exactly to carry this out depends on individual policymakers making policies that work in their own local contexts. What have been the biggest policy “wins” for governments taking these pathways, what have been the most successful steps taken via the IPCC process to address climate change? At the country level, Bhutan and Suriname are worth a nod as they've already achieved nominal carbon neutrality, a net balance between carbon emitted into and removed from the atmosphere. Many nations have committed to carbon neutrality within the next one to three decades – Uruguay has committed to be carbon neutral by 2030, Finland by 2035, Austria and Iceland by 2040. Six countries have passed their carbon neutral targets into actual law: the UK, Denmark, France, Hungary, and New Zealand. The United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, which budgets billions for climate action and sets the US to reduce its emissions by about 40% by 2030. Despite these targets, many critics say it's not enough. On the global scale, the IPCC has had big policy wins. The first assessment report in 1990 led to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC. This is the body that oversees the COP, that big annual climate conference Jonathan mentioned earlier. And the UNFCCC's whole mandate is to support the global response to the threat of climate change. Another big win was the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. The urgency inspired by the IPC science that was on display in the Fifth Assessment Report in 2013 and 2014 gave a lot of scientific weight to the 2015 COP in Paris which led to that landmark agreement. Special reports like the Special Report on 1.5 Degrees Celsius further increased the urgency to act.

GREG

Another policy win is the increasing prominence of the reports. Because the IPCC releases reports that are scientifically refined and well publicised, coupled with the growing global awareness of the climate crisis, it’s harder and harder for policymakers to claim ignorance. At COPs, negotiators have a spotlight on them. Everyone knows they have all the material they need to make key decisions. This is a very powerful element of the science-policy interface that the IPCC offers.

KIM

From an individual government perspective to a global perspective, let’s go down to the hyper local level, even to your own dinner table, where IPCC reports may be having greater influence.

DEBRA

The IPCC has gone from something that national governments used to have discussions, but it's really become in many ways a household presence now. And for me, that's probably the most exciting development, that the science is creeping out of the negotiating halls, out of the approval sessions, and it's literally creeping into our lives. And making us think about the way we live them. And so that's probably the most profound policy impact to my mind that the IPCC has had.

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KIM

The IPCC and the assessment reports that have come out for the past three decades have changed many minds and policies. But here’s the thing – more must be done.

GREG

Like Yamina Saheb pointed out earlier, it’s not currently possible for a globally representative group of experts to be equally involved in developing the IPCC’s reports. Barriers of language, money, and access to the scientific literature hamstring who can contribute easily to the reporting process. This is a climate justice issue – where people most vulnerable to climate change are the same people often left out of the conversation. And when this is baked into the report development process, it’s also baked into the policy that stems from those reports. Yamina says the problems the IPCC is navigating reflect the reality of the world – the same problems exist on a grand scale. Other powerful institutions are grappling with similar questions.

YAMINA

The IPCC suffers from the weaknesses of the scientific community. This is how I would frame it. But the IPCC should be aware, and I think they are aware, of the weaknesses of scientific community and should put in place solutions to avoid having reports that are based on these weaknesses, to eliminate these weaknesses. It's not the IPCC fault, it's the scientific community weaknesses.

KIM So Greg – now that you’ve left Geneva, and we’ve chatted with Yamina, Jonathan, and Debra, and deepened our perspectives on the IPCC – what are your main takeaways from all of this?

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GREG

Well Kim, the IPCC certainly has its work cut out in the coming decades. For one thing, there's just far more science out there about climate change to review than there was 35 years ago, and the amount continues to grow. But most significantly, climate change is a crisis demanding deeper and more extensive action the longer it's left unchecked. And that action must be international and unified, which brings to the surface something important that I want to emphasise: the IPCC has created one of the strongest examples of global scientific diplomacy we've known. An example that can synchronise the global action that's needed right now. And that can even provide a blueprint for future diplomatic processes addressing international concerns.

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KIM

The good thing is that it seems like that need for change is being acknowledged, and more changes are coming in the next assessment cycle. That'll be AR7 in about 5 to 7 years. Debra mentioned a couple of exciting changes the IPCC has coming down the pipe, particularly the Special Report on Cities, which she predicts could be the 1.5 report of the Seventh Assessment Cycle. So I'm already looking forward to reading that when it comes out. One point Debra made that really struck me was that sometimes the best way to communicate about climate change is to not even refer to it by the name. It struck me coming from someone who spends their career talking about climate change.

DEBRA

So I think it's really important to be sensitive to what the priorities of a society are, talk to the actual needs, their actual aspirations. And certainly, in some circumstances with some communities, I won't even refer to climate change. Because that just isn't part of the narrative of their lives. So I think we have to become very savvy when we engage with people to realise there isn't a one size fits all in terms of communication, that we need to talk into people's priorities and urgent needs. We need to move the debate from the mind to the heart of many societies, and I think that requires a more complex approach to communications.

GREG

Making all these changes – it’ll be a process. And like Yamina said, the IPCC isn’t alone in facing these issues of climate justice, but the IPCC has global pull. Yamina pointed out that this is an opportunity – for the IPCC to make communication about climate science and policy better for the world at large.

YAMINA

We must decolonize climate science and climate scenarios. The IPCC suffers from the weaknesses of the scientific community. However, the IPCC has a role to play to put the scientific community under pressure to deliver on the 21st century challenges. Otherwise, they will not do it, we will not do it.

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KIM

Thanks to Yamina, Jonathan and Debra for their conversations and thoughts. Since recording this episode, Professor Jim Skea of the UK was elected the next IPCC Chair. He succeeds the South Korean economist, Hoesung Lee, who is stepping down after nearly 8 years at the IPCC's helm. Skea will chair this next Seventh Assessment Cycle, which will result in AR7, released sometime in about the next 5 years. Skea ran with a campaign focused on greater inclusivity; he was selected from four candidates, one of whom was Debra Roberts.

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You've been listening to Climate Decoded. This episode was produced by Isabel Baudish, Chantal Cough-Schulze, Greg Davies-Jones, Lara Davies-Jones, Kim Kenny, and Jens Wendel-Hansen. More info about the IPCC, a transcript, and references used for this episode can be found in the show notes on our website, www.climatedecoded.com. Follow us on all the socials at Climate_Decoded. If you'd like to support the show, consider subscribing to our Patreon channel. For $5 a month, you'll get exclusive episodes about climate change communication and more behind the scenes content about us and our interviewees. And if you can't swing Patreon, a great way to support the show is simply referring it to a friend. It really helps us grow our audience and get more people thinking and talking about, and acting on, climate change – which is ultimately our goal with Climate Decoded. From our climate comms community, keep up the good work and talk again soon.

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