20131128_AS
Source: IPCC
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zMk0tCjY3I
Date: 28/11/2013
Event: Achim Steiner: 25 Years of the IPCC
Attribution: IPCC
People:
- Achim Steiner: Executive Director, UNEP
Achim Steiner: The history of the IPCC and UNEP, in fact, even pre-dates the 25th anniversary, because the United Nations Environment Programme was one of the key fora that governments use but that also scientists utilise in trying to, first of all, bring to the attention of the international community the emerging science of the phenomenon of global warming, climate change. Then the discussions and negotiations around how governments could establish a scientific body to assess the climate science that was becoming available to the world, and, together with our sister agency the World Meteorological Organisation, we became de facto midwives, if you want, for the establishment of the IPCC.
For 25 years now, together with WMO, UNEP has hosted the Secretariat of the IPCC. Together with WMO, we provide the senior management positions for the IPCC. We have contributed to the work of the IPCC, both in terms of review work, contributing scientific research studies, but also providing an important element of the outreach and communications platform. Communicating climate science, communicating the complexity and substantiveness of the IPCC's work, involves more than simply producing the findings. It is trying to create a bridge between the complexity of cutting-edge scientific research, the intergovernmental process that the IPCC embodies and the person in the street who needs to understand what is the meaning of all this work, what are the opportunities, what are the challenges that we face in addressing climate change.
Over the years, clearly UNEP has drawn very much on the work of the IPCC. As the United Nations Environment Programme, we are one of the key entities in the multilateral system, and certainly in the United Nations family, on being an environmental authority, as member states have called the mandate and mission of UNEP. Trying to address the phenomenon of global warming and climate change, both from a scientific and also planetary perspective, has very often been influenced by the way that the IPCC has been able to generate both new knowledge and understanding but also confidence in the emerging science, and even trying to interpret the issue of uncertainty.
Because one of the key things that we in UNEP do is to try and alert the international community, the community of nations, to the need to act, even in the absence of perfect knowledge. The Precautionary Principle is a principle that has emerged over years in addressing many environmental issues. We are still in the midst of trying to firm up, not only the science of climate change in terms of what happens in the atmosphere - perhaps the greatest challenge is to try and understand what will be the implications here, in a terrestrial sense, in our marine ecosystems, and to communities across the world, be they rural dwellers in Africa, be they the city dwellers in central Europe or in North America, or the concentrations of populations on the Asian subcontinent.
Our work, over the years, has also tried to bring additional elements to the attention of the international community that the IPCC may not yet be in a position to address, or where new areas of enquiry may, in due course, influence the agenda that member states will set for the IPCC. Our work on short-lived climate pollutants, in recent years, in the atmospheric brown cloud, is one example of how UNEP has been able to be a companion to the global body of emerging science on climate change, and also to encourage, for instance, a group of nations to act on certain findings, at least in an exploratory sense, and to, perhaps through the negotiations of the UNFCCC, member states and parties agree to make it part of the international climate negotiations.
Our task, 25 years after the establishment of the IPCC, remains in one sense the same - WMO and UNEP host the Secretariat of the IPCC. We are, in many respects, also part of the UN family, beginning with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to bring to the attention of the international community the work, the findings and implications of the IPCC's work. But our role, hopefully, in the coming years will continue to evolve, alongside that of the IPCC. As the science becomes ever more clear, the challenge will be on: what are the options for addressing it?
In the United Nations Environment Programme, 25 years after the establishment of the IPCC, we believe that the confidence in the mind of the public must be that, first of all, leaders across the world are able to negotiate a collective response to the phenomenon of global warming. Secondly, that it is feasible to still address the objective of staying within a 2-degree scenario. Thirdly, that it is doable, both in an economic and a developmental sense, that we do not abandon a significant part of the life, as we know it today, in order to achieve a climate change objective.
Let me end by saying that in celebrating the 25th anniversary, I think we can be immensely proud of what we have been able to achieve, through the establishment of the IPCC. The world today is seized by the topic of climate change, despite some of the media cynicism, some of the setbacks in the negotiations. It is a fact that the world is alerted to the phenomenon of global warming, that it is beginning to understand that we must transform our economies in the 21st century, in order to, first of all, arrest further global warming, and secondly, prepare the world for dealing with what is now becoming inevitable, in the sense of a future in which global warming is part of the way we must think about how we manage economies, infrastructure, agriculture, food security and our health systems.
But, above all, the IPCC must remain, if you want, a touchstone amongst very diverse views, interests, and sometimes also competing interests and objectives, in trying to address this challenge in the planetary context. No nation, on its own, can succeed in reversing climate change today. That must, and will remain, I think, the reason why nations across the planet will continue to support the IPCC, its mandate and also its mission. And that is also the commitment that we bring, as the United Nations Environment Programme, to the future work of the IPCC. Thank you.